THE PENELOPIAD at City Garage

Tracey Paleo – Gia On The Move While Odysseus went off to war……abandoning his family and kingdom for 20 years, it is his wife Penelope who strategically saves Ithaca. But there is a cost. Penelope now sets the record straight by recounting the story we know, with other disturbing facts that have never been discussed. Read … Read more

ANNIE at the Dolby Theatre

Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld Little Orphan Annie has been a part of our collective consciousness for going on a hundred years, first in comic-strip form then on radio then films and finally on Broadway, where the intrepid moppet really defined her place in pop culture. The show ran for six years, won seven Tony Awards … Read more

A PATSY CLINE HOLIDAY CONCERT at Sierra Madre Playhouse

Dana Martin – Stage Raw Cori Cable Kidder is channeling the star power of country music icon Patsy Cline at the Sierra Madre Playhouse this holiday season. A Patsy Cline Holiday Concert promises the most wholesome two hours of country music crooning this side of anywhere. Read more… Through December 23

ALL IS TRUE, or HENRY VIII by The Porters of Hellsgate

Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw Confession: In all my years of reviewing theater, this is the first production I’ve ever seen of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII originally titled All is True, co-written (somebody thinks, who knows?) with Shakespeare’s peer, John Fletcher. It’s the last history play penned or co-penned by the Bard, and it’s a bit of a mess, … Read more

THE BROTHERS PARANORMAL at East West Players

Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Everyone knows that a good ghost story needs to be scary, but to be a great ghost story, it needs to move its audience as well. Where would The Sixth Sense be without the Bruce Willis character slowly realizing his fate or The Haunting of Hill House be without poor, doomed Eleanor? There have … Read more

ANATOMY OF GRAY at Open Fist Theatre Company

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw First produced with the title Gray’s Anatomy at New York’s Circle Rep Theatre in 1994, Jim Leonard’s family-oriented coming-of-age fable strives for the unvarnished poignancy of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as it recounts the story of a fatherless teen in 1880s rural Indiana. Leonard’s revised version, published as Anatomy of Gray in 2006 and currently directed … Read more

BROKEN STORY at The Sherry Theater

Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld In the West Coast premiere of Cyndy A. Marion’s BROKEN STORY, Jess (Lindsay Danielle Gitter), a Manhattan journalist, relates her childhood obsession with a mobster’s daughter whose parents died under mysterious circumstances. Years later, that daughter, Jane Hartman (Lynn Adrianna Freedman), has moved to Los Angeles and become a successful author. … Read more

CLYDE’S at Mark Taper Forum

Terry Morgan – ArtsBeat LA According to a survey conducted by American Theater magazine, Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s is currently the most produced play in the U.S. It’s not surprising that Nottage’s work is being done; she’s received the Pulitzer Prize twice during her illustrious career. But it’s a little disappointing that this show seems to be her … Read more

Confrontations with classics: THE INHERITANCE and PENELOPIAD

Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Also: ’2:22,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Rent,’ ‘Eisenhower’ When a narrative work of art attains “classic” stature, it often settles comfortably into collegiate required-reading lists — but loses its share of the current limelight. So if E.M. Forster or Homer were alive today and sampling theater on the west side … Read more