A GREEN NEW DEAL As Little Shop of Horrors teaches us: sometimes you just need fresh blood. In that vein, the Pasadena Playhouse more than delivers. Their audacious revival of the quirky cult classic – directed with exemplary vision by Mike Donahue – offers audiences something they may not have realized they craved. In this…

I LIKE YOUR STYLE P. T. Barnum claimed there’s a sucker born every minute, but composers like Cy Coleman come along only once in a lifetime. His vigorous score was in the capable hands of musical director Jan Roper for Musical Theatre Guild’s staged reading of Barnum at the Alex Theater. Score, book and lyrics…

NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED THE PHRASE “NEVER AGAIN” Wendy Kout, the playwright of Never Is Now asks the question, “What happens when people from diverse backgrounds experience the firsthand accounts of ten survivors who were labeled ‘undesirable’ and thrust into Hitler’s systematic genocide?” She shows us exactly what happens in a very powerful, emotional and…

SHOWTIME AT THE VANITIES Ethan Coen’s A Play Is a Poem at the Mark Taper Forum strikes me as neither a poem, nor, strictly speaking, theater. I don’t know what it is. For the most part the five short playlets come across as sketches — and not in a good way. Coen attempts to project…

THE NEW NORMAL A weird dynamic takes over the house at Skintight, Joshua Harmon’s comedy, now at the Geffen Playhouse. In broad terms, it feels like a battle of the sexes — with men in the audience, straight and gay alike, cheering for Elliot (Harry Groener), a seventy-year-old billionaire clothier who defines love as something…