Curtain Call

Musical Theatre West’s Lofty “In the Heights” is the total package

I get a bit misty whenever I am conscious of seeing artists enjoy the good fortune of getting to perform…

4 months ago

An “Antony & Cleopatra” that embodies lovers losing sight of everything but themselves

Shakespeare is a genius; nonetheless, he’s probably the most overrated writer in history. Ben Johnson famously captured that sentiment over…

6 months ago

“Dear Dead Drug Lord” deals to the heart but not the head

So four schoolgirls in a treehouse attempt to conjure the ghost of Pablo Escobar.... No, not a joke, but the…

6 months ago

LB Playhouse’s latest installment of the Century Cycle: “Gem of the Ocean”

Having just seen my fifth August Wilson play, it’s safe to say that I’m not a fan. Even at his…

6 months ago

“Man of La Mancha” lacks for scale but not talent

Musical Theatre West might be doing Man of La Mancha for the third (or is it the fourth?) time just…

6 months ago

“Crash Out Queens”: LB Opera’s challenging spotlight for Tiffany Townsend

Because this is “a reduced season” for Long Beach Opera, “[...] a chance for us to do some resetting of…

6 months ago

Lack of nuance hurts small-scale “Julius Caesar”

With a plot centering on the concentration of state power into the hands of a megalomaniac, all while the hoi…

7 months ago

The State of the Theatrical Arts in Long Beach

Whether or not the Los Angeles Times’s recent “52 Best Places to See Plays and Musicals in Southern California” comes…

7 months ago

Best of Long Beach Theatre, 2025

  Why didn’t we think of this before?! People love lists, right? In 2025, I saw 20 theatrical works in…

8 months ago

This year, Long Beach Playhouse’s “A Christmas Carol” is a masterclass in theatrical arts

From having seen more than half of Long Beach Playhouse’s 13 prior stagings of A Christmas Carol, I would have…

9 months ago