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Theater Review: JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (National Tour)
JESUS TRADES SOUL FOR A MAN BUN While the the 50th anniversary tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar is still finding its footing in this truncated version (90 intermissionless minutes), Timothy Sheader’s 2016 Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production was greeted warmly by patrons at Segerstrom Hall, the tour’s kickoff…
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Theater Review: A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (42nd Street Moon)
A LITTLE LITE MUSIC Any theater company that decides to produce the entire body of work created by a single artist, like, say, aiming to produce every play Shakespeare ever wrote, deserves attention for its bravery and intelligence. The 42nd Street Moon, San Francisco’s home for musical theater, has promised to present every musical written…
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Theater Review: THE BEST DECISION YOU’VE EVER MADE (The Second City e.t.c.’s 42nd Revue at e.t.c. Theater in Chicago)
SEEING THIS REVUE MAY BE THE BEST DECISION YOU’VE EVER MADE I entered the Second City e.t.c. on opening night with a sense of unease. Two weeks earlier the Second City mainstage company, the major troupe in its cabaret theater roster, had premiered a show I thought was not up to the iconic standard of…
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Theater Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME (National Tour)
WHAT A GREAT SHOW CAN MEAN TO YOU What the Constitution Means to Me is back at the Broadway Playhouse after a two year pandemic hiatus. Again, it is delivering an entertaining, thoughtful, humorous, insightful, and sometimes disturbing examination of the United States Constitution, its glories and what playwright Heidi Schreck sees as the document’s…
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Theater Review: POOR CLARE (Echo Theater Company)
THE THEATER IS RICHER DUE TO POOR CLARE Every once in a while, a bright shiny play comes along that absolutely restores my faith in theater as a place to be entertained, enthralled, and enlightened while nodding my head in agreement with the universal themes therein. It’s also a pleasure to discover a playwright with…
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Theater Review: SEVEN GUITARS (A Noise Within in Pasadena)
TURNING LYRICAL INTO A MIRACLE In emphasizing the “musical lyricism” of August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, A Noise Within’s promotional copy for its new production echoes the numerous commentaries devoted to this play. Covering its 1995 Broadway premiere, The New York Times described it as “moving and lyrical,” while Los Angeles Magazine called it a “lyrical…
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Theater Review: THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE (Court Theatre in Chicago)
IS LESS MOOR? The Court Theatre artistic management is giving William Shakespeare’s great tragedy Othello a startling makeover. The play has been condensed into a single 110-minute act. The physical and textual results may earn praise from many viewers for their unorthodox exploration of a complex drama. Others, myself included, may admire the risk-taking production…
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Theater Review: THE CLAIM (Shotgun Players in Berkeley)
THE RETURN OF THE SHOTGUN PLAYERS It is always a pleasure to come across a playwright with a love for (and a gift for) language and, better, an appreciation for the comic possibilities of wordplay. Tim Cowbury is just such a playwright, and his play The Claim, which was a runaway success at the 2019…
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Theater Review: THE MINEOLA TWINS (Moxie in San Diego)
DOUBLE TROUBLE IN MINEOLA Paula Vogel, likely best known for her Pulitzer prize-winning How I Learned to Drive, isn’t afraid to tackle tough themes. In The Mineola Twins, she does so by drenching sensitive topics in a twisted, surrealist comedy that is more a series of connected moments than an actual plot. Everything is fair…
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Theater Review: A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
AMERICA’S BEST NOTES Beginning its first season since the COVID shutdown, Musical Theater West has, true to its name, celebrated musical theatre with A Grand Night for Singing, a heartfelt, if sometimes overwrought, salute which happily honors and delightfully reprises the glorious, all-American (in the best sense) Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals and their inexhaustible legacy…
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Theater Review: AS YOU LIKE IT (Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
YOU WILL LIKE IT In As You Like It, the new production at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the company unites William Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy, with the Beatles songbook. And the setting has been shifting from Elizabethan England to hippy America in the 1960’s. Does it sound like a reach for still another way to…
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Theater Review: TOGETHER AT LAST (The Second City’s 109th Revue in Chicago)
TOGETHER IN SPIRIT MORE THAN LAUGHS After an 18-month hiatus inflicted on Chicagoland theater because of the virus pandemic, the Second City has finally opened its 109th revue, the upbeat-titled Together at Last. Second City not only had to endure the COVID disruption, but organizational and backstage turbulence seemed at times to threaten the very…
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Theater Review: MOTHER ROAD (San Diego REP)
ROUTE 66 WAS ONE MOTHER OF A ROAD In John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, we follow along Route 66 the sad travels of Tom Joad and his family, who flee the desperation of Oklahoma’s dustbowl calamity hoping for a safe farming life in California. In Octavio Solis’s Mother Road, there is one…
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Theater Review: MY FAIR LADY (National Tour)
STILL THE FAIREST I’m rather certain one cannot visit enough productions of My Fair Lady. The 1956 musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, tells the tale of Professor Henry Higgins, a puffed-up upper-class grammarian, and Eliza Doolittle, his lower-class, flower girl protégé whom Higgins turns into a lady by changing her speech. With one of the most…
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Theater Review: ASCENSION (Echo Theater Company)
THE ASCENSION OF L.A. THEATER The community of small theater groups in Los Angeles has taken so many debilitating blows over the past several years — before, during and since the COVID shutdown — that it amazes how some continually clamber to re-open. This month the Echo Theater Company forges ahead with two new shows….
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Theater Review: ZOMBIE JOE’S URBAN DEATH (Zombie Joe’s Underground in North Hollywood)
ZOMBIE JOE’S URBAN DEATH RISES FROM THE GRAVE After all the horrors of the last few years, it seemed only fitting that we should return to Urban Death, the signature production of Zombie Joe’s Underground theater company in North Hollywood. Last weekend we checked out its latest installment, this year subtitled “Tour of Terror” and…
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Theater Review: SONGS FOR NOBODIES (Northlight Theatre)
SONGS FOR EVERYBODY In the spring of 2020 the Northlight Theatre was set to present Bethany Thomas in “Songs for Nobodies,” a one-performer show that would celebrate five iconic female singers of the 20th century. Then came the pandemic scourge and the show, like all theater activity in the country, was extinguished. Thomas and “Songs…
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Theater Review: THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND (Marriott Theatre)
DON’T STOP THIS WORLD The Marriott Theater is reopening for business with a revival of “The World Goes ‘Round,” a review (originally titled “And the World Goes ‘Round”) that features songs by the Broadway music and lyrics team of John Kander and Fred Ebb. Patrons expecting a predictable “and then they wrote” compilation of greatest…
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Theater Review: THE SECRET WORLD OF DANNY LOPEZ (Two Roads Theater in Studio City)
WELCOME TO HIS SECRET WORLD OK, mini caveat: I am friends with Samuel Garza Bernstein, whose new one-man 70-minute show, The Secret World of Danny Lopez, opened last week at Two Roads Theater in Studio City. While I never tire of the ever fascinating Mr. Bernstein, the thought of another solo show written by and…
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Theater Review: KINKY BOOTS (Paramount Theatre in Aurora)
The Paramount begins the post-COVID pandemic theater scene with an exhilarating revival of Kinky Boots. We likely won’t see a better musical comedy production the rest of this season. The Paramount is offering area theatergoers the gift of a superlative revival of the musical Kinky Boots. This is the first staging of a major musical…
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