Michael Quintos

It's a very rare treat—particularly all the way here in Orange County, California—to hear Broadway songs and the stories behind them performed directly by the legendary composer himself, even for just a one-night-only event. But that is exactly the gift bestowed upon a rapt audience recently when the Irvine Barclay Theatre presented DEFYING GRAVITY: AN EVENING WITH STEPHEN SCHWARTZ & FRIENDS to a sold-out crowd on the evening of May 23, 2026.

Beautifully acted, engagingly riveting, and populated with impactful characters, Reggie D. White's thoughtfully sprawling and emotionally layered new play—directed by Lili-Anne Brown—delivers an ambitious, deeply affecting examination of generational legacy, Black identity, masculinity, and the elusive pursuit of emotional healing. Set almost entirely within the walls of a suburban home in Southern California, the touching, and, often times, quite humorous play unfolds across multiple decades, chronicling the intersecting lives of three generations of African-American men connected not only by blood, but by inherited silence, buried resentment, generational trauma, and a complicated yearning for deep connection.

First developed and workshopped at South Coast Repertory’s annual Pacific Playwrights Festival in 2025, celebrated new “it” playwright Talene Monahon’s freshly birthed play EAT ME is currently being presented at OC’s Tony Award-winning regional theater as a fully-formed World Premiere production directed by Caitlin Sullivan. The new work continues performances at its Costa Mesa home through May 3. Equally intriguing and confounding, the brand new play, honestly, comes off for me as one of those creatively-ambitious but somewhat incomplete stage experiments that left me with more questions than answers.

Now having its Southern California regional production, MEAN GIRLS - THE MUSICAL continues performances at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts through May 3, 2026. Produced by McCoy Rigby Entertainment, this fun, high-energy, youthfully-targeted new iteration of the 2018 stage adaptation of Tina Fey’s beloved 2004 film comedy looks and feels like a brand new show—boosted by impressive new visuals and a highly-caffeinated ensemble whose enthusiasm and verve is quite infectious. A dazzling, entertaining show with high-caliber polish, La Mirada's production is a slick, electrically-charged iteration that is a worthwhile new chapter in the show’s evolution.

Bursting with contagious rhythm, irrepressible heart, and an abiding sense of community pride, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning 2008 original Broadway musical IN THE HEIGHTS remains one of the most vibrant and emotionally resonant contemporary musicals to emerge from the early 21st century. For Musical Theatre West, this current 2026 production of the musical—which continues performances at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach through April 26, 2026—is an anticipated return of a musical that this company first staged back in the Fall of 2017. In essence, it's nice to come home to something comfortably familiar.

Initially billed as a show that was 'lovingly ripped off' from the 1975 cult classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Tony Award–winning 2005 Broadway musical comedy MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT™ gleefully gallops back onto the stage in a brand new production with its signature coconut-clacking bravado, irreverent wit, and steadfast commitment to theatrical absurdity very much intact. The show's latest national tour—replicating its 2023 revival directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes—continues its short week-long engagement at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through February 22, 2026 (the show is also scheduled for the Hollywood Pantages Theatre from March 24 through April 12).

Directed by James Vásquez with musical direction by Ryan O'Connell and choreography by Shani Talmor, this remarkably solid new production of the 1965 Tony Award winner boasts haunting visuals and superb performances from its assembled ensemble, led by a trio of excellent leads that offer three distinct portrayals of varying temperaments. This brand new regional revival mounted by Musical Theatre West—which recently opened its latest iteration of the show at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach—continues through March 1, 2026.

Wildly surprising and deliciously savage, Yasmina Reza's machete-edged 2006 dark comedy GOD OF CARNAGE—here directed by Marco Barricelli and continues performances at OC's South Coast Repertory through March 21, 2026—has to be one of the most ferocious dissections of modern-day performative civility ever to grace the stage—an 80-minute, intermission-less pressure cooker that gleefully burns away the polite veneer of bourgeois adulthood to reveal the petulant, immature children actually lurking just beneath. Boosted by a foursome of terrific actors, the play endures as entertainingly voyeuristic in its unsettling relatability. SCR's outstanding production is a brilliantly observed theatrical skirmish—equal parts comedy of manners and psychological boxing match with no clear winners or losers.

In what is clearly proving to be the must-see stage production of the new year so far here in Southern California, McCoy Rigby Entertainment's stunning new production of the 1979 Tony Award-winning classic SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET—now playing a limited engagement at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts through February 22, 2026—has been revived locally with thrilling visuals, Broadway-caliber showmanship, creative hutzpah, and a spectacular cast led by Tony nominee Will Swenson as the titular vengeful London barber and the hilarious Olivier Award winner Lesli Margherita as pie shop proprietor Mrs. Lovett.

Adapted from Nicholas Sparks' ubiquitous 1996 novel (and its popular 2004 film iteration featuring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling), THE NOTEBOOK - THE MUSICAL re-stages a generational love story into a quietly sweeping, memory-fractured stage romance that subtly promotes emotional accumulation over plot novelty. Now on stage at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts, this 2024 three-time Tony-nominated Broadway musical's first national tour continues performances in Costa Mesa through February 8, 2026.

If the longevity of a Broadway classic is judged by its ability to reflect both its historical significance and its present existence in popular culture, this new revival of THE WIZ is somehow caught somewhere between reverence and reinvention.

Filled with a seemingly non-stop parade of awww-shucks delivered puns—of both super naughty and super corny varieties—the show, for lack of a more eloquent description, is so frikkin silly and stupid in the best possible ways a comedy can get. Mind you, this isn't an insult at all—the show is so unapologetically and purposely silly, that the whole thing actually feels like savvy (and sassy) comedic gold, albeit the broad and dorky kind that audiences of all kinds will likely adore and appreciate. Unexpectedly weird in the most winning ways, SHUCKED had me laughing heartily at all of its strange, admirably sustained shenanigans and down-home humor, never once wavering from its 'corny' (haha) machinations not even for a millisecond. The show's rather enjoyable national tour production continues performances at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts through November 23, 2025.

Now presenting an even more over-the-top follow up compared to their first go-round in THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG staged here last February, the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and McCoy Rigby Entertainment revisit the earnestly bumbling folks at the fictional Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society for yet another madcap, mishap-laden production of intense British-style slapstick and comical chaotic shenanigans in its high-flying 2013 'sequel' PETER PAN GOES WRONG which will continue to crack up audiences in the City of La Mirada through November 23, 2025. Amping up the laughs even more this time around, La Mirada's so-good-it-hurts production is this time joined by former Olympic gymnast and longtime 'Peter Pan' herself Cathy Rigby serving as its cheeky 'narrator.'

An intermission-less, two-character, conversational-centric play that focuses on a pair of women's specific immigrant experiences—marked with loneliness, hopes, fears, and puzzlements big and small—Pulitzer Prize finalist Lloyd Suh's absorbing, touching, and occasionally (thankfully) very funny play explores the emotional tug-of-war between comfortable, familiar cultural traditions left behind and the need to accept, learn, and assimilate to the often confounding realities of their new home environment—a sometimes exciting, but sometimes heartbreaking concept that many first-generation immigrants know all too well. Continues at South Coast Repertory through November 16, 2025.

After making a splash when it first visited the OC back in 2022, MOULIN ROUGE! - THE MUSICAL—the dazzling, Tony Award-winning 2019 Broadway stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann's groundbreaking 2001 movie musical—is back full throttle at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa for a limited week-long engagement that continues through November 2, 2025 (the show then travels an hour north to Los Angeles' Hollywood Pantages Theatre for performances running November 4-16, 2025). More impressive than before, this vibrant, high-octane, gorgeous-looking musical extravaganza continues to be an overwhelming spectacle for the senses.

During the recent opening night performance of Musical Theatre West's vibrant new production of the 10-time Tony Award-winning 1964 musical HELLO, DOLLY!, the enthusiastically appreciative audience might as well have chanted 'Hello, Tami!' judging from the reactions during the show's finalé bows. Making her long-awaited return to a Southern California musical theatre stage production after quite a long absence, local favorite Tami Tappan Damiano is nothing short of brilliant taking on the title role in a gorgeous, earnestly joy-filled new local revival of the classic musical, which continues performances at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, CA through November 2.

The current fragile state of, arguably, one of our country's most important founding documents—and whether or not some of our current leaders are legally following it—seems to be top of mind these days, which bodes well for the timely arrival of Chance Theater's latest production, playwright Heidi Schreck's semi-autobiographical 2017 Tony and Pulitzer Prize nominated play WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME, which continues performances in Anaheim through October 26, 2025.

Nominated for 13 Tony Awards, the 2022 musical adaptation SOME LIKE IT HOT is a surprisingly delightful, hilariously fun, and gleefully silly musical comedy that also has an endearingly open-minded new twist that re-contextualizes the movie's main raison d'être into something more empowering and thoughtful. The infectiously joyful show's marvelous touring production—directed and choreographed with rousing, kinetic energy by Casey Nicholaw direct from its Broadway origins—continues performances at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA through October 19, 2025.

Blessed with undeniable vocal talents and an endearingly charming persona, Tony and Olivier Award winner and Disney Legend Lea Salonga recently returned to Costa Mesa's Segerstrom Center for the Arts for the one-night-only Orange County stop of the North American leg of her brand-new, perfectly-curated concert tour 'Stage, Screen, and Everything in Between' to a sold-out crowd that included a mix of rabid superfans, Broadway/musical theater enthusiasts, and, yes, lots of proud fellow Filipinos. Accompanied by a rousing, multi-piece band led by musical director Larry Yurman and a couple of excellent background vocalists (who were showcased in duets with her on a few songs), the concert was, to no one's surprise, an exquisite showcase of Salonga's enduring artistry, stage presence, global appeal, and, of course, incredible talents.

Still quite a rousing crowd-pleaser—offering empathy and kindness as its main endearing ingredient— La Mirada Theatre's brand new, 'non-replica' production of the Tony-winning musical COME FROM AWAY is a superb, rather enjoyable new Broadway-caliber production that is as every bit as appealing as the characters that populate it. Energetically directed and choreographed by Richard J. Hinds, the show exudes a joy and pleasantness that few musicals are able to achieve with such ease. Funny, touching, celebratory, appropriately honorable, and musically endearing, COME FROM AWAY remains an awe-inspiring theatrical testament to compassion, and will forever remind us that even in the shadow of horrific, unbelievable devastation, humanity's capacity for kindness and generosity can—and should—take center stage.