Los Angeles Theater Reviews

Review: Seth Rudetsky presents Tony Winner Lillias White at OC's Segerstrom Center
by Michael Quintos - May 31, 2024

To close out their 2023-2024 Series, Segerstrom Center welcomed theater aficionado Seth Rudetsky to serve as an interviewer/pianist for Tony Award winner Lillias White for three shows May 16-18, 2024 in one of the most incredibly wonderful, fan-favoring shows that the OC arts campus has ever hosted ...

Review: TOPSY TURVY at The Actors Gang
by Evan Henerson - May 30, 2024

The latest play by The Actors’ Gang, written and directed by founder/Artistic Director Tim Robbins, is a melancholy reckoning over the early days of the covid pandemic...The gods are around for TOPSY TURVY, but they’re contemplative, grouchy and decidedly critical of the poor blighters who have dist...

Review: MISALLIANCE at A Noise Within
by Amanda Callas - May 25, 2024

Misalliance is a delight, a breezy, witty, carefree period romp and delectable social satire set on the sprawling Surrey estate of underwear tycoon John Tartleton....

Review: Chance Theater Stages OC Premiere of ALMA
by Michael Quintos - May 24, 2024

Having its OC Premiere at Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA through May 31, ALMA—the touching, poignant, and very timely play written by Benjamin Benne—delves dramatically into the complex, sometimes contentious, but achingly relatable relationship between a struggling single immigrant mother and her sm...

Review: TURANDOT at LA Opera
by Andrew Child - May 22, 2024

A sharp blade wielded threateningly, forced perspective creating looming palatial walls, the rotting heads of failed suitors, and a princess literally shrouded in mystery quickly orient us within Puccini’s iconic fairytale....

Review: Tony Award Winner Matt Doyle Makes Segerstrom Center Cabaret Debut
by Michael Quintos - May 20, 2024

Matt Doyle—the 2022 Tony Award winner for his gender-bent role of Jaime in the Broadway revival of COMPANY—made his Segerstrom Center for the Arts Cabaret Series debut over a three-night engagement that began on May 2, 2024 with an incredible set that showcased his amazing vocal talents and his char...

Review: GHOST WALTZ at Latino Theatre Company At LATC
by Evan Henerson - May 17, 2024

A moody dramatic dive into the life of a violinist whose celebrated waltz got him mistaken for Strauss. As lovely as Alberto Barboza’s production looks on stage at the Los Angeles Theatre Center – and as melodic as it often sounds – GHOST WALTZ’s impact is as fleeting as the spirits who populate it....

Review: THE BODY'S MIDNIGHT at Boston Court Pasadena in co-production with IAMA Theatre Company
by Amanda Callas - May 16, 2024

The Body’s Midnight is a brilliant, meditative, fiercely funny and brutally heartrending world premiere drama at Boston Court Pasadena.  It is a hard play to capture its essence, both explosively hilarious and lyrical, surreal, and profoundly mournful, a ferocious elegy to all the things that are di...

Review: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at The Nocturne Theatre
by Melissa Heckscher - May 13, 2024

Nocturne Theatre’s production of Beauty and the Beast hits all the right notes. Fans of the original story will be delighted with the stellar performances of their favorite songs, while fans of Meyer2Meyer’s macabre touch will relish the costumes and the overall ambiance of the Nocturne Theatre itse...

Review: THE HOPE THEORY at Geffen Playhouse
by Harker Jones - May 07, 2024

Every immigrant experience is unique and Guimarães’ story is a deeply engaging rumination on the power of faith and the capacity of hope to see one through....

Review: South Coast Repertory Presents World Premiere Play GALILEE, 34
by Michael Quintos - May 05, 2024

Eleanor Burgess’ brilliant, thoughtful, and often bitingly funny GALILEE, 34—currently having its impressive world premiere production at South Coast Repertory through May 12, 2024—is a humorously insightful, beautifully-performed new play that offers an unreliably revisionist examination of suppose...

Review: MONSTERS OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA at Rogue Machine At The Matrix Theatre
by Evan Henerson - May 03, 2024

MONSTERS OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA, a whip smart and heartfelt play by Christian St. Croix produced in its L.A. premiere by Rogue Machine Theatre, argues that in the present, monsters and human beings aren’t easily distinguishable from each other.  Monsters can take human form and vice versa. I guess t...

Review: NORA at Antaeus Theatre Company
by Harker Jones - May 01, 2024

The problem with NORA is that in the longer, three-act running time of “A Doll’s House,” Nora’s world and its inhabitants would be fleshed out so that they had depth that is not evident in this adaptation....

Review: A CHORUS LINE at The Norris Theatre
by Melissa Heckscher - April 28, 2024

The Palos Verdes Performing Arts' production of A Chorus Line is everything community theater should be: It makes you realize you don’t need a big Broadway house to get a Broadway experience....

Review: A Triumphant JERSEY BOYS Debuts at the La Mirada Theatre
by Michael Quintos - April 26, 2024

A brand-new, reimagined regional iteration of the Tony-winning 2005 musical JERSEY BOYS now at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts is exceeding all expectations. Featuring a superb ensemble cast performing The Four Seasons' greatest hits, this spectacular, high-energy, crowd-pleasing produ...

Review: TWELFTH NIGHT at Actors Co-op David Schall Theater
by Amanda Callas - April 25, 2024

Twelfth Night is a glorious example of how to do Shakespeare right.  This production is full-bodied, fresh, cheeky, lighthearted, inventive, imaginative, and flat-out hilarious....

Review: PRELUDE TO A KISS Returns to South Coast Repertory as a World Premiere Musical
by Michael Quintos - April 23, 2024

Based on Craig Lucas' 1988 play and 1992 film adaptation of the same name, PRELUDE TO A KISS - THE MUSICAL is an admirable first attempt of a new musical that is, clearly, still a work-in-progress. In its current state, this genuinely charming but disjointed musical could use a sharp refocus and som...

Review: Wildly Over-the-top BEETLEJUICE - THE MUSICAL Spooks Laughs at OC's Segerstrom Center
by Michael Quintos - April 22, 2024

Adapted from the 1988 Tim Burton cult classic, BEETLEJUICE - THE MUSICAL is an over-the-top, chaotic, and wildly unhinged reimagining that amps up the kooky-ness of its source material a thousand-fold. Mostly funny and entertaining despite its tonal shifts and forced outlandishness, the show elicits...

Review: KING HEDLEY II at A Noise Within
by Evan Henerson - April 19, 2024

KING HEDLEY II is the eighth and quite possibly bleakest play of August Wilson’s Century Cycle. Pasadena’s A Noise Within is committed to producing the entire cycle, and ANW’s production, under the direction of frequent Wilson helmsman Gregg T. Daniel, wrestles with it valiantly....

Review: STALIN'S MASTER CLASS at Odyssey Theatre
by Amanda Callas - April 19, 2024

Stalin’s Master Class is enthralling, darkly funny, awkward, and thought-provoking about the eternal tension of politics vs art, censorship vs thought, modern art vs people’s tastes, groupthink vs ingenuity, and popularity vs quality. ...

Review: Musical Theatre West Brings MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET Back to Life in Long Beach
by Michael Quintos - April 19, 2024

More like one elongated impromptu jam session than a typical musical, Musical Theatre West's new production of MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET doesn't involve a complex storyline, but instead focuses on imagining what it must have been like to be in the room where music history happened. The resulting concer...

Review: HIGH MAINTENANCE at The Road Theatre On Magnolia
by Harker Jones - April 18, 2024

Ritt raises questions about the ethical and moral quandaries of employing AI to replace humans in a distinctly human space — art — but they aren’t pointed enough to really spark conversation or suggest insights, settling instead for an amusing if slight glimpse into the near future....

Review: PUPPY PALS at the Norris Theater
by Melissa Heckscher - April 14, 2024

Dog-lovers will lap up every minute of this 90-minute comedic dog stunt show that first premiered on America's Got Talent....

Review: OPHELIA at the Odyssey Theatre
by Melissa Heckscher - April 14, 2024

Anything that makes you think is worth watching. And so Ophelia — in all its memory lapses and uncomfortable places — is worth it. Just bring a friend so you have someone to help you put the pieces together when it’s all over. ...

Review: FAT HAM at Geffen Playhouse
by Evan Henerson - April 12, 2024

Huzzah James Ijames’ FAT HAM. Bless its softness, its savory juiciness, its wit and its ostentation. And its Juicy! Hooray for the clothes, the music, the unabashed delight that this whacked-out literary homage enjoys in wrestling with Shakespeare’s existential conundrums and deciding, screw it! let...