PEPPERDINE SMOTHERS THEATRE

by Jonas Schwartz-Owen - December 17, 2024

Lear deBessonet’s rollicking production of Once Upon A Mattress brings festive glee to the Southland....

by Evan Henerson - December 15, 2024

The mixture this time around is entertaining if not the company’s A-game. HOME ALONE-LY HEARTS CLUB, while providing plenty of laughs, feels thin…thin on merriment, thin on satirical edge and certainly thin on script....

by Amanda Callas - December 13, 2024

Little Women Ballet is the world premiere of a charming new ballet at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Mid-Wilshire.  This is a lavish, romantic, nostalgic, family-friendly night of dance that is not to be missed....

by Andrew Child - November 22, 2024

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....

by Amanda Callas - November 20, 2024

Written by acclaimed actress and playwright June Carryl and produced by Imagine Theatre, this light-hearted, fantastical voyage through the savanna is inspired by folktales and origin stories from South Africa.  There is a charming Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland feeling of whimsy and adventure af...

by Evan Henerson - November 19, 2024

As embodied by Rainn Wilson and Aasif Mandvi in the revival of GODOT at the Geffen Playhouse, Vladimir and Estragon are a formidable pair. Beckett’s play about the unknowable darkness of the human condition has - go figure! - long been catnip for comedians, and you get why Wilson and Mandvi would wa...

by Andrew Child - November 18, 2024

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....

by Michael Quintos - November 15, 2024

Led by a brilliant performance by Jason Alexander, this lively, emotionally-grounded, classic-leaning staging still somehow manages to feel fresh, reinvigorated, and much more searing than prior iterations.This latest SoCal-area revival of the landmark 1964 musical—here directed by Lonny Price—is, a...

by Harker Jones - November 13, 2024

NIGHTINGALE is by turns stark, humorous, shocking, and devastating, revealing truths and realities obliquely but with the power of blunt force....

by Evan Henerson - November 12, 2024

Is there some sort of formula for roping in both fans of a hit movie and stage hounds, to catch lightning in a new medium? Judging by what the musical's book writer Bob Gale, director John Rando and the musical team must have been thinking, the answer is you slavishly remake the movie on stage....