Amanda Callas - Page 3

You wouldn’t expect a bittersweet, haunting tale to be this laugh-out-loud funny, but it is.  There is so much charm and sensitivity in this Pacific Resident Theatre production.  The Bespoke Overcoat is almost unbearably poignant, a drama of humanity and rare tenderness. You don’t want to miss this exquisite gem.

Watching Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, I literally forgot I was watching a one person show.  Tony award winning, Broadway and Hollywood star John Rubinstein is a fascinating and charismatic actor, with uncannily perfect comedic timing.  Compelling, thought-provoking, moving, and surprisingly funny, you do not want to miss this one.

At its heart, Middle of the World is something of an unexpected love story between a fallen socialist leader from Ecuador and a young, driven Black finance executive. Middle of the World feels like an elegy, evoking the bittersweet, numbing ache of loss and betrayal. It invokes a sense of loss of an identity, a family, a country.

The award-winning Troubadour Theater Company has been doing their beloved annual Christmas mashup shows for decades, with loyal fans who return year after year. The closest thing I can compare it to is live performances I have seen of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Dog Man: The Musical is a fun, goofy musical romp running through January 7th at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. This bright, happy show is almost solely aimed at children, and what a wonderful thing that is.

The Queen’s Cartoonists execute jazz with exquisite polish, verve, cheeky humor, and manic energy, recalling the early days of hot jazz in the 1920s and 30s. Holiday Hurrah shines bright and merry with the most vivacious, high-energy of holiday tunes.

Fresh and glorious to behold, with bold, impressive stagecraft and truly innovative and imaginative costume design.  There are frequent moments of awe and breathtaking sprinkles of magic.  Although it feels off to me in some of its performance and art direction choices, this is a remarkable and stunningly visual production.

Santasia is a must-see sketch comedy take on the glory and insanity of the holidays at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, created by and starring Brandon and Shaun Loeser.  Ongoing for 24 years and frequently sold out at every show, with performances in Los Angeles and Off-Broadway in New York, Santasia is a phenomenon. 

Cori Cable Kidder's Holiday Spectacular is a marvelous musical holiday revue at the Sierra Madre Playhouse. More than a show, Cori Cable Kidder's Holiday Spectacular is a transportive experience, an escape into a charmed world of nostalgia, holiday merriment and velvety 1940s music of breathtaking loveliness.

70, Girls, 70 is an absolutely delightful gem of a musical from the award-winning Group Repertory Theatre at the Lonny Chapman Theatre in North Hollywood, CA.  Directed with genius comedy by industry legend Bruce Kimmel, this 1970s period show is funny, bright-hearted, poignant, and magnetically uplifting.

Just For Us is a brilliant, award-winning, one-man comedy show by Alex Edelman at the Mark Taper Forum downtown, coming after sold-out hit runs on Broadway, and in London, Edinburgh, and Melbourne. This is must-see, hilarious stand up tackling identity and antisemitism, and it is hard to think of a more essential show at the moment.

Chronicling the story of school residency fraud in the affluent township of Millburn, New Jersey, Lines in the Dust fearlessly tackles uncomfortable, vital issues of identity, education, class, race, and access to opportunity. While describing it, I feel it’s almost inevitable that I am making this play sound like a policy discourse or social treatise, but this enthralling drama is also incredibly human, passionate, and emotionally shattering. Lines in the Dust is a significant tour de force.

Nervous Unicorns is a gripping world premiere play by Jake Sidney Cohen at The Cat’s Crawl in Hollywood. This is a meditative drama about a group of eight people who participate in recovery meetings and then, quite unexpectedly, a supernatural experience changes them all.

Hallucinatory, astoundingly visual, and provocative, this absurdist, surreal satire runs through December 16

The Angel Next Door is a glittering, effervescent hit romantic comedy by Paul Slade Smith at the historic Laguna Playhouse. It’s an elegant, sweet-dry glass of champagne, bubbling over with non-stop laughs, merriment, glamor, and high-spirited hijinks. It’s hard to think of more fun you could have at the theatre right now, or really, more fun anywhere.

Gutsy and gonzo, this wild ride runs through November 5th at Odyssey Theatre

Sexy, gritty, funny, and adult, this recovery drama is a triumph for Rogue Machine playing through November 20

Don't miss this delightful, gorgeously produced classic musical running through October 22nd

With a fresh lineup of new musical tunes and favorite classics, it’s pretty much the perfect Broadway concert show.  I’m still humming “Popular” from Wicked and “Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago nonstop, floating in a giddy haze of joy-soaked musical elation.

Birds of North America Is a brilliantly well produced drama with a quiet, luminous, elegiac quality, at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles. With exquisite subtlety and sensitivity in the writing by award-winning playwright Anna Ouyang Moench, it chronicles the relationship of a father and daughter over the course of roughly a decade.