Andrew Child

In approaching the play for a new production at A Noise Within, director Andi Chapman has grappled with these facets of the work and— aside from a few key missteps— has delivered a clever, if forgettable, production.

Even for a seasoned performer, approaching Sondheim’s repertoire can be daunting. “It’s intimidating as a performer because you want to please him, to do something perfect.”

'A dramaturg generally works as a kind of advisor to a playwright,” muses Mwenya Kabwe, a theatre-maker currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. How, then, does a dramaturg engage with a process in which there is no playwright in the strictest sense of the term?

O’Hara has approached the entire evening with such severe gravitas and humble respect that familiar messages seem to land fresh on even jaded ears. How else are we meant to keep singing right now?

If you have yet to see the work of Handspring Puppet Company, hurry to get tickets for Life & Times of Michael K in its limited run. No one to my knowledge is maneuvering puppets quite like these masters.

Pinkleton has thrown every prop gimmick and novel idea in the book at the show, and in the process has disrupted the stuff that simply works about the piece.

It’s hard to succinctly describe Shipping, a new musical by Jen Jackson and Louisa Kellogg with music by Brian Heveron-Smith. On one hand, it’s a scrappy little treat— a cobbled-together weave of local comedy talents that filled the Elysian Theatre with non-stop laughs from beginning to end. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Read the review. </span>

The show is vibrant and candy-colored, featuring an earnest cohort of character actors perfectly placed into their roles, but with a stirring score by Jeanine Tesori and witty book by David Lindsay-Abaire, the piece is an instant classic of contemporary musical theatre.

In a meticulously scripted and carefully crafted medley of songs, the performers highlighted the highs and lows of their careers, illustrating their individual paths to Hairspray and sharing anecdotes of their vastly different lives since the closing of the show.

For all the device’s delicious successes, framing complicated shots of singers through the geometric slats of Ezio Frigerio’s behemoth set in ways that conversely evoke the opulence of a work by the Freed unit or the subtle asymmetry of a Mizoguchi movie, both the live performance and the filmed version suffer when neither is clearly prioritized.

Though the language is easy to imagine as the foundation for a more ostentatious spectacle, the sweeping narration is deftly relayed by a mighty fistful of actors and a polished trio of dancers in a way that allows grand battles and weighty sociopolitical musings to service the intrinsic poetry of the contemporary text.

Director Sean Cawelti has crafted a handful of stunning visuals which punctuate the narrative with video projection, meticulously-rendered puppet choreography, and a particularly stunning sequence with pyrotechnics.

The universe seems to have contrived to allow them to present a near-perfect production. With the gentle sounds of crickets in the background and the sporadic circling of LAPD’s helicopters, the seasoned cast weaves an intimate tale that is booby-trapped with a million Chekhovian guns which fire rapidly in an explosive climax.

The production is entirely fused with the bluish glow of the cellphones which tether the characters together and, in many ways, the continued relevance of the themes of the piece shine through. Musings on connections and loneliness seem freshly pertinent as Bobbie flicks through voicemails alone in her tiny apartment.

In attempting to reinvent Peter Pan for a modern audience, NETworks Presentations has embraced a major challenge. On the one hand, they have a gem. Jerome Robbins’ original production was packed with humor, heart, and adventures that captivated generations of audiences, not to mention a beautifully dynamic score by Morris ‘Moose’ Charlap.

Mike Lew’s two-hander feels ‘of a time’— and it is impressive how quickly these plays that seem to cater to the art sector’s regrowth post-quarantine both in content and structure already feel stale and dated.

As the mystical opening chords begin to play and Liz Toonkel emerges in a stunning sequined costume designed by Stephen James, one might relax back into their seat, assured that a flashy, polished magic show which meekly follows the formula made popular by Copperfield and Blaine is about to unfold

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.

When director Ron Sossi elected to present Stalin’s Master Class at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble for the second time, he was aware that audiences might respond differently to the production than they did to the previous staging 37 years ago.

The success of Fanny doesn’t lie in the nuance or perspective the straightforward script lends to this historical figure, but rather in the eclectic smattering of talents artfully gathered and showcased by the piece.