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Theater Review: FORMIDABLE! (Aznavour 100th Anniversary World Tour at Town Hall in New York)
AZNAVOUR IS YOUNG AGAIN Charles Aznavour hoped to be still singing before audiences on his 100th birthday. Unfortunately, he died in 2018 at the age of 94. But Jules Grison is celebrating Aznavour’s 100th birthday in grand style, starring in Formidable! Aznavour 100th Anniversary World Tour. Produced and directed by Gil Marsalla, the man behind…
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Theater Review: AVENUE Q (Revolution Stage Company in Palm Springs)
AVENUE Q GETS AN A+ Avenue Q, the delightful musical comedy which affectionately lampoons Sesame Street, opened last night to a packed house at Revolution Stage Company, and it’s a non-stop, positively adorable romp which will have you floating out of the theater, but the run is short, so don’t procrastinate to get seats. Songwriters Robert…
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Theater Review: THE WIZ (Pre-Broadway Tour)
I WISH I COULD SAY “NO BAD NEWS” BUT… The large opening night audience at the San Diego Civic Theatre last night seemed to be having a good time watching the the musical revival of The Wiz, in town through Sunday before a pre-Broadway national tour (the show opens March 29 at the Marriott Marquis)….
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Theater Review: MJ The Musical (First National Tour)
MJ WANTS TO BE STARTIN’ SOMETHIN’ – AND DOES MJ The Musical, now on its first national tour, raises the bar for the bio-musical. It far exceeds a mere revue of Michael Jackson’s iconic music and performance choreography. Set in the rehearsal hall for Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous World Tour, the story follows a documentarian from…
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Theater Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (A.C.T.)
For two generations, a yearly outing to see A Christmas Carol has been a feel-good tradition for San Francisco families. American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) has staged adaptations of this famous Dickens story continuously since 1976, with few gaps until COVID, changing up the production on a regular basis to keep it from getting stale. Right along…
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Theater Review: THE FEAST OF FOOLS (Midwinter Revels at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, Cambridge)
YOU’D BE A FOOL TO MISS THIS FEAST OF FUN The long-playing Midwinter Revels (founded as Christmas Revels in 1971) is a unique mix of professional performance, volunteer talent, and audience participation that has created a joyous community that comes together each holiday season to delight in forms of music and dance that span the…
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Theater Review: CHARLES DICKENS WRITES A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Revolution Stage Company in Palm Springs)
WHAT THE DICKENS? SCROOGED AGAIN Pretty much everyone knows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the lonely miser in 1800s London who is visited by three ghosts (four if you include Marley) urging him to change his ways, or face the consequences of an even lonelier life. The result is redemption and transformation just in time…
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Theater Review: RUTHLESS! (New Conservatory Theater)
WHO DOESN’T LOVE A RUTHLESS CHILD? (ON STAGE, THAT IS) Just in time for some holiday fun, New Conservatory Theater presents the 1992 Off-Broadway smash hit Ruthless. With Book and Lyrics by Joel Paley and Music by Marvin Laird, it’s a dark comedy about a 1950s bored housewife living in the suburbs with her talented…
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Theater Review: LA VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE, DIOS INANTZIN (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels)
A PAGEANT OF PEACE AND PERSEVERANCE Since 2002, Latino Theater Company has been presenting La Virgen de Guadalupe, Dios Inantzin, a holiday pageant re-enacting the story of the appearance of the Virgin to an Aztec peasant named Juan Diego. She instructs him to go to the Spanish Catholic Bishop and tell him she wants a…
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Theater Review: BOOP! THE BETTY BOOP MUSICAL (Pre-Broadway World Premiere at CIBC Theatre in Chicago)
BOOP! BOPS, HOPS, AND PLOPS Light-hearted, rather silly, and occasionally preachy, BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical could have been so much more. Betty Boop seems an unlikely candidate for revival considering that her fame is almost entirely confined to cartoons animated by Max Fleischer in the 1930s. Although she has gained new fans through merchandising,…
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Theater Review: SUMMER SESSION WITH THE BONES BRIGADE (CVRep)
CAN’T SKATE AROUND IT: IT’S THE SCRIPT “Let’s Just Skate While We Still Can” — is this the moral of Summer Session with the Bones Brigade, now playing at CVRep through December 17th? Is it really? Does this play earn this last line of the evening? Akiyo Komatsu/DK, Ethan Zeph/Heath, Alex Michell/Lee Kudos to CVRep…
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Theater Review: THE HEART SELLERS (The Huntington Calderwood in Boston)
THESE GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN Two young women, one from Korea, the other from the Philippines, encounter one another in a grocery story on Thanksgiving morning in a small midwestern American city in 1973. Luna (Jenna Agbayani), the talkative one, the outgoing one, invites Jane (Judy Song) up to her apartment. They are the…
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Theater Review: EBENEZER SCROOGE’S BIG SAN DIEGO CHRISTMAS SHOW (The Old Globe)
A REALLY BIG SHOW The San Diego area does not lack for productions of A Christmas Carol this holiday season. Fortunately, fans of the Charles Dickens classic who would welcome a more hip version of the novel need go no further than Ebenezer Scrooge’s BIG San Diego Christmas Show at The Old Globe. (front) Dan…
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Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (The Bent in Palm Springs)
IT IS, INDEED, ONLY A PLAY; IT’S THE ENSEMBLE THAT MAKES IT MORE The Bent, in partnership with the Palm Springs Cultural Center, runs Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play for its final weekend this Thursday through Saturday. Go see it. The play unfolds on the opening night celebration for the Broadway premiere of Peter…
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Theater Review: GUYS AND DOLLS (San Francisco Playhouse)
GUYS AND DOLLS IS A SAFE BET Just in time for the holidays, San Francisco Playhouse presents a Broadway favorite, Guys and Dolls. It’s amazing. Were this masterpiece from Broadway’s golden age an actual guy or doll, he or she would be scoring Social Security. But make no mistake, this 1950 hoofer is no worse…
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Theater Review: THE GOLDEN GIRLS LIVE: THE CHRISTMAS EPISODES (Victoria Theatre)
AS GOLDEN AS EVER This perennial favorite is back for its 18th year. This “drag” version of classic holiday themed The Golden Girls episodes seems to grow in popularity every year. Since its inception in 2005 when it was originally performed to a select crowd of friends informed by email, it has outgrown the living…
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Theater Review: PROOF (Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company in San Diego)
MATHEMATICAL PLOT ADDS UP TO SOLID DRAMA David Auburn is brave. Writing and marketing a play that, on the surface, centers on math sounds like a recipe for disaster. In a world where most adults pray that the tip at a restaurant will appear pre-calculated for them at the check’s bottom, selling a play about…
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Theater Review: THE RUB (Anzu Lawson)
A HIDDEN HOLLYWOOD CAREER AS A MASSEUSE FOR CELEBRITIES For years, Anzu Lawson’s managers and friends had been urging her to write about her own life after performing as Yoko Ono and writing Dear Yoko, one of several of her own original plays and musicals. And though she had been pitching The Rub as a…
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Theater Review: FROZEN FLUID (Coeurage & L.A. LGBT Center)
CRYOGEN ME A RIVER The subtitle of Fly Jamerson‘s Frozen Fluid, which opened Saturday night at the Davidson/Valentini Theatre, is “An Antarctic Gender Non-Conforming Creation Myth.” Don’t say you weren’t warned going in. I wasn’t bored, and there were even some sweet moments, but what started as a deconstruction of three scientists working at the…
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Theater Review: CINDERELLA ENCHANTED (Berkeley Playhouse)
ENCHANTED, INDEED Now playing at the Berkeley Playhouse, just in time for the holidays, it’s the classic story of Cinderella. This version began as the now-famous Rodgers & Hammerstein musical in 1957, with Julie Andrews playing the heroine in black and white. The ’65 version starred a young Lesley Anne Warren, Stuart Damon (General Hospital),…
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