Costa Mesa Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 7

BWW Review: Revenge is Never Sweet in Independent Shakespeare Co.'s TITUS ANDRONICUS
by Ellen Dostal - August 08, 2018

TITUS ANDRONICUS is one of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedies. Characters are stabbed, beheaded, mutilated, raped, baked in a pie, and one is even buried up to his neck and left to die. At first glance it may not sound like an obvious choice for families who attend the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare ...

BWW Review: Salonga, Grier, Hilty, Bart & Company Lead Charming Arden-directed ANNIE at the Hollywood Bowl
by Michael Quintos - July 28, 2018

Quite possibly the most popular family-friendly stage musical of all time, ANNIE---the classic 1977 Tony Award winner for Best Musical based on Harold Gray's 'Little Orphan Annie' comic strip---seems like a no-brainer choice to appear as the annual all-star summer musical at the world-famous Hollywo...

BWW Review: Endearing and Fun SCHOOL OF ROCK Surprises at Segerstrom Center
by Michael Quintos - July 27, 2018

When it comes to seeing a fresh new show with low or even non-existent expectations, nothing is more pleasurable and satisfying than walking out at the end of it with a huge, beaming smile on your face. That was the giddy communal feeling that I and an ecstatic audience experienced recently during t...

BWW Review: BIG FISH Musical Adaptation Makes OC Premiere at Chance Theater
by Michael Quintos - July 16, 2018

An endearing musical with an even more endearing story, BIG FISH is a winsome stage production that is currently making its Orange County regional debut at Anaheim's Chance Theater through July 29, 2018 helmed by its own resident executive artistic director Oanh Nguyen. Filled with hard-to-believe, ...

BWW Review: Musical Theatre West Salutes Old-Fashioned YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
by Michael Quintos - July 12, 2018

George M. Cohan has been attributed to being the father of the American Musical, whose works are the very roots of Broadway and musical theater that we know today. Without his numerous contributions to the American theater, Broadway as we all know it probably wouldn't even exist. This is the idea th...

BWW Review: Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein Perform Together at OC's Segerstrom Center
by Michael Quintos - July 06, 2018

A beloved entertainment icon borne from showbiz royalty, it was certainly no surprise that living legend Liza Minnelli-a past recipient of four Tony Awards, an Oscar, a special Grammy, two Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award-was greeted with thunderous cheers and ovations during her recent return...

BWW Review: Beautifully Sung Revival of THE COLOR PURPLE Enraptures OC
by Michael Quintos - June 22, 2018

While its original production, as most Broadway shows go, offered the expected big sets, first-rate costumes, and impressive production values, the 2015 Tony Award-winning revival production of THE COLOR PUPLE---currently slaying audiences for a week-long stop at Orange County's Segerstrom Center fo...

BWW Review: Lively New Production of NEWSIES Carries the Banner in La Mirada
by Michael Quintos - June 05, 2018

Admirably directed and choreographed by Richard J. Hinds, La Mirada Theatre's NEWSIES aims to be an amiable hybrid between the popularly-received original show and a new iteration that feels fresh for us Fansies forever obsessed with the earlier Disney-backed production that played Broadway and went...

BWW Review: South Coast Repertory Revisits Wendy Wasserstein's THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG
by Michael Quintos - May 25, 2018

Despite being birthed in the early 1990's, THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG-the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Wendy Wasserstein's acerbically witty and vibrantly poignant play about a trio of fascinating, strong-willed Jewish-American sisters-has a remarkably timeless, relatable quality, evidenced by South Coas...

BWW Review: OC's Segerstrom Center Finally Becomes the Room Where HAMILTON Happens
by Michael Quintos - May 15, 2018

For three years, I have obsessed over the Original Broadway Cast Album of Lin-Manuel Miranda's ingeniously constructed, powerfully-rendered musical masterpiece HAMILTON, mostly because it just wasn't possible for me to see the show at its home at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York. Fast forward...

BWW Review: The Phantom Stages A Comeback in LOVE NEVER DIES at Segerstrom Center
by Michael Quintos - May 01, 2018

There are many, very obvious spectacular things that stand out while watching LOVE NEVER DIES, Andrew Lloyd Webber's infamously, uh, troubled 2010 musical follow-up to his long-running global hit THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, now continuing its two-week engagement at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Co...

BWW Review: Appealing New Production of SOUTH PACIFIC Sails Into La Mirada Theater
by Michael Quintos - April 27, 2018

Armed with a grand, sweeping songbook from Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a romantic, progressive-for-its-time book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, it is difficult not to be continually enchanted by SOUTH PACIFIC, the groundbreaking 1949 stage musical based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winni...

BWW Review: Haunting World Premiere Play LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS Sees the Light at South Coast Repertory
by Michael Quintos - April 24, 2018

What our schoolbooks lack in historical accuracy, art can sometimes pick up the slack by being a reliable, more enthusiastic source to fill in those gaps. This becomes abundantly clear immediately upon experiencing the haunting yet beautifully-dramatized world premiere play LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS, Kem...

BWW Review: Nathan Gunn Aims High with FLYING SOLO at the Laguna Playhouse
by Michael Quintos - April 17, 2018

One of America's most accomplished and in-demand Baritones today, Nathan Gunn has one of those deeply lush singing voices that can pierce your heart just as it can effortlessly command the room's attention. He does exactly both with his impressive world premiere one-man show FLYING SOLO which contin...

BWW Review: Musical Theatre West Surprises with the Delightful NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
by Michael Quintos - April 13, 2018

Once in a while, you come across a stage show that, on paper, may not have had the buzz that other high-profile shows may have had initially, but then you see it … and it just completely surprises you in the best possible way. That pretty much sums up my recent experience with the oh-so delightful N...

BWW Review: South Coast Repertory Stages World Premiere of SHREW!
by Michael Quintos - April 12, 2018

How do you "fix" the misogyny of Shakespeare's now antiquated THE TAMING OF THE SHREW? For playwright Amy Freed, it means injecting it with a noticeable dose of equality empowerment, and then shifting its characters' traits and motivations as if written from a female's perspective. That is the premi...

BWW Review: 10 Reasons Why THE BOOK OF MORMON Tour at Segerstrom Arts Is Still a Hella Funny, Hella Good Show
by Michael Quintos - March 28, 2018

One thing is for certain about THE BOOK OF MORMON: this memorable, whip-smart, and downright gut-busting Broadway musical is still one of the funniest---if not the funniest---musical ever to exist in the 21st Century. The tour's return trip to Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa ...

BWW Review: Powerful New Play CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND Makes World Premiere at South Coast Repertory
by Michael Quintos - March 19, 2018

The tragic events surrounding the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime in mid-70's Cambodia serves as the overarching backdrop that links the past and the (near) present in Lauren Yee's stunning new play CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND---which continues its World Premiere production at Orange County's Tony Award-winn...

Review: JACKIE UNVEILED by Saffron Burrows as One of America's Most Private Public Figures
by Shari Barrett - March 18, 2018

Directed by Jenny Sullivan in the smaller Lovelace Studio Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts so that no matter where you are seated, Burrows will repeatedly pull you into the very private life of this American icon on two of the most traumatic evenings of her life. Act I ...

BWW Review: Catch The Moon - One Handed Catch! West Side Story In Concert Reached For The Stars And Soared At The McCallum
by David Green - March 12, 2018

Leonard Bernstein would have been 100 years old this year, on August 25th to be precise, and there are literally thousands of commemorative events around the globe including performances of symphonies, operas and ballets, lectures, exhibits, and film and music festivals. Last Friday I attended the M...

Review: ALLEGIANCE Musically Celebrates the Power of the Human Spirit
by Shari Barrett - March 07, 2018

George Takei is known for his founding role as Mr. Sulu in the acclaimed television series Star Trek and as an influential social media icon. But long before that fame, Takei was born in Boyle Heights and spent his childhood in the Rohwer Incarceration Camp in Arkansas and later at Tule Lake in Nor...

BWW Review: Melanie Griffith Headlines Stage Adaptation of THE GRADUATE at the Laguna Playhouse
by Michael Quintos - March 06, 2018

Golden Globe winner Melanie Griffith can now be seen on stage playing pop culture's most famous cougar, Mrs. Robinson---the infamous 'mom of a certain age' who uses her predatory sexuality to seduce a recent college graduate into entering a torrid affair---in a new production of THE GRADUATE, which ...

BWW Review: Segerstrom Center Welcomes the Gorgeous Lincoln Center Theater Production of THE KING AND I
by Michael Quintos - March 01, 2018

Featuring outstanding performances from a cast led by Laura Michelle Kelly and Jose Llana, the beautiful and exquisite national tour production of Lincoln Center Theater's Tony Award-winning revival of the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic THE KING AND I leaves audiences utterly spellbound by its...

BWW Review: Del Shores Introduces SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY Inspired by Real-Life Encounters with Quirky People
by Shari Barrett - February 28, 2018

Celebration Theatre is a very small venue known for putting on very big musicals and doing them very well. But I have to tell you, seeing Del Shores claim the stage as his own was really a treat as he transformed himself into not only his mother but several other friends and relatives from his chil...

Segerstrom Center Presents HAMILTUNES: AN AMERICAN SING-ALONG, Hosted by Seth Rudetsky
by A.A. Cristi - February 20, 2018

Segerstrom Center for the Arts invites fans and fanatics of Broadway's mega hit Hamilton to gather on the Julianne and George Argyros Plaza and let their collective voices ring out during HAMILTUNES : AN AMERICAN SING - ALONG. Everyone is a star in this fun community sing - along on Saturday, March ...