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Hermione (Monica Schneider), Polixenes (Matt Merchant), and Leontes (Matt Walker) in A Withers Tale. PHOTO COURTESY OF TROUBADOUR THEATRE COMPANY

A WITHER’S TALE: 91% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET A Withers Tale is a nice change of pace for the Troubadour Company but as they are so cosmically gifted at side-splitting silly stuff, let’s hope that their next production is more seriously funny. Lynne Bronstein – Santa Monica Mirror SWEET The somber saga builds to Walker’s showstopping rendition of “Ain’t No Sunshine,” enhanced [...]

Eric Schneider and Kelly Sullivan.  Credit: Craig Schwartz / The Old Globe

ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS: 100% – Bittersweet

BITTERSWEET As an entertainment, “Robin and the 7 Hoods” succeeds only if you agree to accept it on its own harebrained terms. The film had the advantage of Ol’ Blue Eyes, Dino and Sammy, to get viewers over the hump of the screenplay. Here, Cahn and Van Heusen’s music is the secret weapon. That’s some [...]

Photo: Miles Anderson portrays "mad" King George. Credit: The Old Globe.

THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III: 100% – Sweet

BITTERSWEET The play is less about George III specifically as it is about the boundaries between order and chaos, sanity and madness, good government and bad, and about the general human inability to control ourselves. How can we control millions if we can’t control ourselves? It’s also a thought-provoking companion piece to another of the [...]

Photo credit: Janet Macoska

IN THE HEIGHTS: 88% – Sweet

SWEET This Tony-winning musical makes its L.A. bow in an exhilarating touring edition that pulsates with showstopping song-and-dance numbers while raising one’s spirits with its funny and poignant characters, coping with the challenges of life in the barrio of New York’s Washington Heights. Les Spindle – Backstage BITTER The resolutions to almost all these tangles [...]

Harry Groener and Robert Pine in an Antaeus production of "King Lear." Credit: Ed Krieger.

KING LEAR (ANTAEUS PRODUCTION): 100% – Sweet

SWEET The Matthews team, featuring Morlan Higgins’ stalwart Kent, Kirsten Potter’s villainous Goneril, Francia DiMase’s vindictive Regan and Drew Doyle’s sly Oswald, ultimately had a larger intellectual impact on me — the play administering a lesson on the dangers of dividing language from truth. The Groener crew, with Allegra Fulton’s sinister Goneril and Jen Dede’s [...]

Rod Gilry and Carmen Cusack in "South Pacific". Credit: Bret Hartman / For the Los Angeles Times

SOUTH PACIFIC: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET But this “South Pacific” is to be treasured above all for Cusack, whose interpretation of her character’s embarrassment of Rodgers & Hammerstein riches is so stunningly suffused with heart that it was as if I were hearing the songs for the first time. Nellie vainly tries to “wash that man right outta” her hair, [...]

Photo by Michael Lamont

ROAD TO SAIGON: 67% – Sweet

SWEET Besides being Filipino-American actresses, Joan Almedilla, Jennifer Paz and Jenni Selma all cut their musical-theater teeth playing Miss Saigon’s tragic heroine, Kim, on Broadway or in a national touring company. Their memories of winning the coveted role become the “book” for what Rivera clearly hoped would have the appeal of a real-life A Chorus [...]

Meredith Bishop and Ammar Ramzi in "London's Scars". Photo: Chris Goss.

LONDON’S SCARS: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Hirsch’s ear for the British idiom, especially London slang, is undeniable, and his characters are fascinating — especially the tortured souls of Mary and Habib. However the simmering tension Hirsch strives to build into “explosive” (sorry) moments unfortunately lacks the requisite danger and menace to keep us in anticipation. Director Darin Anthony employs creative [...]

Photo: The performers of "Jawbone of an Ass" are, clockwise from top, Michael McColl, Nan Schmid and Eliza Coyle. Credit: Erin Clendenin Photography

JAWBONE OF AN ASS: 50% – Bitter

BITTER The production’s most amusing elements are Steve Johnson’s set (the wallpaper in Paige Marie’s lost-in-time kitchen deserves a final bow of its own) and Tim Labor’s sound design. Pretty much everything else is excruciating, even though many of these otherwise talented people have been involved with L.A.’s adventuresome Circle X company, and Circle X [...]

Norbert Weisser in the "Arsonists". Photo by Ron Sossi.

THE ARSONISTS: 100% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET The performances, as well as the flames, crackle in Ron Sossi’s slyly sardonic staging — performances that combine perfect comic timing with dense, rich personalities. Weisser’s nervous (and increasingly delusional) Biedermann and Hogan’s uptight wife are hilarious — but the true scene-stealers are Achorn’s rubber-faced, diabolical Schmitz and Bottitta’s ghoulish Eisenring, who are simultaneously [...]

Carson Elrod, Heidi Schreck, Danielle Skraastad and Andrea Frankle. Credit: Stefano Paltera / For The Times

THE WAKE: 69% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET If “The Wake” succeeds more as a character study than as an assessment of the historical zeitgeist, it’s probably because Ellen is too much of an individual to bear the metaphorical burden placed on her. Those blind spots she’s begun to recognize don’t belong to her exclusively. But her journey into understanding the heartbreak [...]

JD Cullum as Benedick and Torri Higginson as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing." A Noise Within: Craig Schwartz.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: 92% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET A Noise Within’s “Much Ado About Nothing” is nothing but well done and well-deserving of praise. See it before it closes on 21 May 2010. The production is family-friendly and would make a good introduction to Shakespeare or theater for older children. Jana J. Monji – LA Examiner SWEET With regard to Much Ado [...]

Photo: Alan Brooks and William Salyers. Credit: Anthony Masters.

MEN OF TORTUGA: 60% Sweet – UPDATED

BITTER The loss of its host company with the closing of the Pasadena Playhouse threatened the show’s very opening, let alone Furious’ future, and seems to have cast a listless gloom over the production. Whatever the reason, when what’s billed as a “comedic thriller” offers few laughs and even less suspense, there’s a lot more [...]

Photo by Rick Baumgartner

WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM: 100% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET Durang is getting a lot off his chest, and off ours. The laughter he generates is from nonsense about nonsense, unnervingly true and cathartic, and beautifully performed. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET At this point the play takes a surprising twist and justifies your having sat for nearly two hours wondering where [...]

Photo by Debi Landrie

BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA: 78% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET Bart DeLorenzo’s staging preserves the tone, inherent the text, that’s both wry and frivolous, abstract and pop, with one breakout poetical excursion into Walt Whitmanesque grandeur, delivered by a hobo (Brett Hren) and accompanied by Dvorak’s Symphony from The New World. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET In viewing the show at Inside [...]

Thursday, January 7, 2010 -  Deborah S. Craig, left, who plays Deb, and Nick Gabriel, who plays Warren in Ordinary Days, a musical being performed at the South Coast Reperatory Theater in Costa Mesa.  The performance reflects four characters in New York City's busy isolation as they look for personal connections in their lives.   Photography by:  Jamie Rector.

ORDINARY DAYS: 83% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET The lesson: Simple joys have a way of secretly expanding. If you go into “Ordinary Days” with reasonable expectations, you’ll likely come out feeling as if you’ve just had an experience that was more than a little special. Charles McNulty – LA Times BITTERSWEET Though meant to be ironic because it is a story [...]

Critique of the Week – Runner Runner Up

AN OAK TREE by Evan Henerson – CurtainUp (Los Angeles) Clancy Brown is a strong and versatile think-on-your-feet performer. As, no doubt, was Peter Gallagher the previous evening and Meagan English the night before that — and on and on through the hundreds of actors who have shuffled through the tricked-out revolving door that is [...]

Tim Crouch and Meagan English perform in Tim Crouch's play AN OAK TREE at the Odyssey Theatre. Photo: William Adashek

AN OAK TREE: 89% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET On opening night, Gallagher’s grief-stricken father produced an atmosphere of anguish that cast light on some of Crouch’s impenetrable themes. Of course, the tone will necessarily change with each new performer, but the final point, one suspects, will remain elusive. What is clear is that Crouch is an assured puppet master who inspires trust [...]

Stark Sands as "Clyde" and Laura Osnes as "Bonnie" in La Jolla Playhouse's world-premiere musical BONNIE & CLYDE, book by Ivan Menchell, music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Don Black, directed by Jeff Calhoun, playing in the Mandell Weiss Theatre November 10 - December 20; photo by Craig Schwartz.

BONNIE & CLYDE: 50% Bitter

BITTER It’s theoretically possible to turn the “Bonnie & Clyde” saga into a conventional musical play, but the eponymous tuner at La Jolla Playhouse hasn’t found the magic formula. Flummoxed by the challenge of creating likable, sympathetic protagonists while remaining truthful to the facts of their vain, pointless Depression-era death spree, the creative team falls [...]

PASADENA, CA - NOVEMBER 5, 2009: Left to right are Erica Ash, Paulette Ivory, Berlando Drake and Crystal Starr Knighton as the Shirelles in 'Baby It's You' on stage during photo call at the Pasadena Playhouse on Thursday November 5 2009. (Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times)

BABY, IT’S YOU!: 57% Bittersweet

BITTER Serious book problems hamper a strong catalog of early 1960s tunes and the efforts of a talented cast in Baby It’s You!, now at the Pasadena Playhouse. The result is a surprisingly uninvolving biography of Florence Greenberg, the Jewish housewife who discovered and fostered the doo-wop group The Shirelles. Jonas Schwartz – Theatremania BITTER [...]

“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”: 100% Sweet – UPDATED

“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”: 100% Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET An ebullient synthesizer of world data, Joseph is not just alert to the fevered geopolitical madness surrounding us, he’s also endlessly inventive in finding bold theatrical metaphors to depict the extent of the depravity. “Bengal Tiger” marks the breakthrough of a major new playwriting talent. Attending the opening gave me a sense of what [...]