Curtain Call

Scary Stories, San Pedro Knows Them Well

San Pedro has an affinity for scary stories and mysteries.

4 years ago

Fun Wins Out in “Sister Act” Musical

Several years ago, Long Beach Playhouse staged Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant but devilishly difficult Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet…

4 years ago

Limited Production Value Doesn’t Prevent “Angels in America” from Shining

Tom Stoppard may have written the four or five greatest plays of the last half-century, but for cultural significance there’s…

4 years ago

“Closely Related Keys” Timely But Unconvincing

For all the bad that’s come from COVID-19, there’s a sliver of a silver lining for International City Theatre. Originally…

4 years ago

Cuts Hurt, Music Helps <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>

Shakespeare by the Sea has made an art of fitting their namesake’s plays into a runtime of almost exactly two…

4 years ago

Shakespeare by the Sea Back at It — If Only Briefly — with Richard III

Maybe you’ve heard, but there’s this clusterfuck called COVID-19, and it’s been an absolute bitch to the theatre world. Although…

4 years ago

Les Enfants Terribles

An Auspicious Start to Long Beach Opera’s New Era In my 10 years reviewing Long Beach Opera, two productions tower…

4 years ago

“Slow Food” Serves Up Pandemic-Friendly Aristotelian Unity, but Little Else

To state the obvious, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a painful reality for theatre, forcing many companies unable or unwilling…

4 years ago

Fictional Behind-the-Scenes Peek at Welles’s “War of the Worlds” Fails to Capitalize on Premise

It’s a promising premise: Orson Welles’s Mercury Players reunite to perform a live musical retelling of their legendary “War of…

4 years ago

Shakespeare by the Sea’s <i>Measure for Measure</i>: Meat and Potatoes Bard in the Wild West

With rare exceptions, COVID-19 has all but put a stop to live theatre. But Shakespeare by the Sea would be…

4 years ago