211 stories by "Dan Zeff"
Two young women, one from Korea, the other from the Philippines, encounter one another in a grocery story on Thanksgiving morning in a small midwestern American city in 1973. Luna, the talka…
ACTORS LOOKING FOR WORK: GOD BLESS THEM, EVERYONE! La Jolla Playhouse is presenting the world premiere of a play for the holiday season, and beyond, with the extensively titled Your Local Th…
YOU'LL BE GRINCHING FROM EAR TO EAR For the 27th year The Old Globe is presenting its hit musical Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, continuing its position as one of t…
INCIDENT AT NORTH COAST REP IS ANOTHER IN A LINE OF HITS THAT NEED NO HELP Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a nostalgic domestic comedy drama now on view in an illuminating and high…
THIS IS GREAT THEATER. TRUST ME. Reviewers across the country have honored the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Primary Trust with many positive adjectives, like "touching" and "deeply affe…
ATTEND THIS TALE: IT'S MURDER Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical filled with gore, brutality, hate, and vengeance. But the show, as composed by the great Stephen Son…
DRAC-OOH-LA-LA The play Dracula, in its West Coast premiere at the Old Globe is subtitled A Comedy of Terrors. It's unlikely that viewers will be terrified by the show, but as for "Comedy," …
THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEING THIS IMPORTANCE Is there a funnier comedy in the English language than Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest? Since it opened in London in 1895 the play has …
BOY, OH JERSEY BOY, IS THIS SHOW EVER GREAT In 2004, a new musical called Jersey Boys quietly debuted at the La Jolla Playhouse. It transferred to Broadway the next year, running for 12 year…
A BRIDGE TO GREAT THEATER Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge may be a small play physically, with a single drab set and just five significant characters. But it builds from a sympathetic…
DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO THE PLOT, AND YOU'LL HAVE A BLAST In 1973, a rock musical called The Rocky Horror Show opened in London and ran until 1980 as other productions of the show blossomed t…
ALL ABOARD FOR MURDEROUS FUN Agatha Christie fans rejoice! There is a new Christie adventure in a terrific production at The Old Globe, a novel/play hybrid of one of the Dame's most popular …
DRAGTACULAR Velour at the La Jolla Playhouse subtitles itself "A Drag Extravaganza" and for 105 uninterrupted minutes it validates the label with a smorgasbord of song, dance, film, projecti…
The Coronado Playhouse is currently presenting Exit, Pursued by a Bear, a one-act 80-minute play by American dramatist Lauren Gundersen. who is one of the most successful writers on the Amer…
YOU CAN GO HOLMES AGAIN! The world obviously cannot get enough of Sherlock Holmes. Since the first story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appeared in 1887, the immortal fictional private detective …
LONG MAY THIS PRODUCTION REIGN Since its first production opened in Balboa Park in 1935, the Old Globe Theatre has built a national reputation for ambitious and stimulating productions, but …
DON'T BOTHER FOR DINNER The North Coast Repertory Theater is offering two hours of exceedingly lightweight summer theater in the French farce Don't Dress for Dinner. And being a typical Fren…
ROB MCCLURE IS ON FIRE AS MRS. DOUBTFIRE Mrs. Doubtfire started its theatrical life as the hit 1993 film starring Robin Williams. As happens so often with hit movies, it was adapted into a s…
A BRIEF SHINING MOMENT AT NORTH COAST REP Sometimes less can be more in the arts. Consider the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot. The show set a record for the biggest advance sale in Broadwa…
FAT HAM HATH POWER TO ASSUME A PLEASING SHAPE American playwright James Ijames has written a funny and thoughtful play based on the Shakespeare tragedy Hamlet. The work carries the unlikely …
JUST A SENSE The North Coast Repertory Theatre is currently presenting the world premiere of Sense of Decency, a psychological drama adapted from a 2013 book by American author Jake El-Hai t…
GREAT COMET! Who would have thought that a paltry 70 pages from a mammoth novel by 19th-century Russian author Leo Tolstoy would inspire one of the hits of the recent off-Broadway and Broadw…
RIDE ON! Annie Cohen Kopchovsky was a late 19th-century young English working-class woman who wanted to upgrade her life. So she tried to earn money and recognition as well as elevating her …
WINNING ASSIST Big hits can come in small packages. The wonderful production of King James " which opened last night at the Old Globe Theatre " has only two characters and runs only about 1 …
NORTH COAST REP DOESN'T JUST HEIGHTEN TARTUFFE, IT LEVITATES IT Let's not bandy words. The North Coast Repertory Theatre revival of Molière's comedy Tartuffe is a brilliant success. The pro…
