51 stories by "Marc Wheeler"
DR. STAGELOVE or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING DISNEY'S REMAKES WILL BOMB Huzzah! As if by magic carpet, Aladdin"the stage musical"has flown into the City of Angels for a two-week stint at…
WISHES ARE CHILDEN In the wake of news that Center Theatre Group, home of three major L.A. theaters, is "pausing" productions at their mid-size Mark Taper Forum and offering "select programm…
A LUMINOUS NIGHT MUSIC I'm a little dizzy, bubbly"not from any reception champagne, mind you, but from seeing my very first production of A Little Night Music. It's left me floating. (The mu…
LOVELESS DISINFORMATION As I'm ushered into Antaeus Theatre Company's mainstage theater at Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center in Glendale to see Love and Information, I'm invite…
THE SECRET'S OUT: THIS GARDEN'S IN BLOOM It's been almost a year since Ahmanson Theatre ushered in spring with the national tour of Hadestown. This season (thank ye, Fates!), spring has come…
HELP WANTED AT THE LAPIN AGILE As I wrote last Sunday in my review of Sunday in the Park with George: "art isn't easy." Having just now seen Picasso at the Lapin Agile, I'll add to that Sond…
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE JUST GETS BETTER WITH TIME "Art isn't easy," sing the cast of players in Sunday in the Park with George; the words are most notably sung by the artist-protagon…
WAITING TO EXHALE Getting its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse's mainstage Gil Cates Theater, The First Deep Breath, a 2019 play by Lee Edward Colston II, is an overstuffed family…
CHEAP THRILLS WON'T LIFT YOUR SPIRIT You never forget your first. Mine happened in the West End of London in the year 2000. The Woman in Black* (Stephen Mallatratt's adaptation of Susan Hill…
THE ANACHRONISMIACS Poetry is all the rage in the madcap comedy, The Metromaniacs, David Ives' 2015 English "translaptation" of La Métromanie (1738), an obscure French farce by Alexis Piron…
CLASS ACT Nestled comfortably inside the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Hershey Felder: Chopin in Paris is an enchanting "play with music" on the life of t…
MOULIN ROGUE! It wasn't just the powerhouse romance between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. With its frenetic theatrics and killer soundtrack (virgin ballads locking lips with re-imagined p…
SAY "UNCLE!" Far be it from me to criticize Anton Chekhov. The long-deceased Russian playwright and short story writer is regarded as one of "The Greats" in all of literature; who am I to th…
OUR CELEBRATION This year marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Thornton Wilder. As part of the Wilder125 celebration, about 150 productions of his plays are being staged worldwide, in…
SKIN DEEP As I made my way through a gaggle of gay-listers to see "Los Angeles's steamiest show" at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles, that's when I saw it " yet missed it completely " right…
WHO'S AFRAID OF A MODERN BEOWULF? When Covid hit, I curled up one night, script in hand, poring over Edward Albee's 60-year-old play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Perhaps the daily deat…
PRAISE THE GODS! As soon as the plunger-muted trombone began to wail, and ache, and wail again; as trickled sweat watered ivories being tickled on an upright piano; as the hmmm's of the chor…
SURRENDER (TO) DOROTHY Forty years ago, Dustin Hoffman lit up the silver screen as struggling actor Michael Dorsey in the gender-swapping, smash-hit comedy, Tootsie. Really, who can forget t…
M-I-C-K-E-Y (WHY-OH-WHY-OH-WHY?!) When I saw Lucas Hnath's name attached to A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney " a boldly-titled play now getting its…
DEADWOOD OR GIN? Fine actors of stage, television, and film, JoBeth Williams and Joe Spano unite their decades of work and talent to kick off a national tour of The Gin Game at the Rubicon T…
SCHISM BUDDIES "Are you Jewish?" Spoken by the leading players in playwright Lindsay Joelle's Trayf, the question could also be relevant for the audience itself. Before you walk away dejecte…
THE PLAY WE NEED What starts as a joke ends in a laugh " all the way to the bank! " in The Play You Want, a world premiere comedy by Bernardo CubrÃa. Directed by Michael John Garcés, the…
DON'T MISS AT ANY COST… BANK ON IT Recently I saw a play which forced me to ask: with the amount of stellar entertainment available to us at home, why would anyone spend this much money to…
THE KIDS AREN'T ALL RIGHT Ever heard of Godwin's Law? If you've spent a sizable amount of time on social media you've surely experienced it. An adage from the '90s, Godwin's Law states that …
CAGES … AND THE FUTURE OF THEATER In late September, the long-delayed Tony Awards proudly announced: "Broadway's Back!" Yet even before Christmas, theaters from The Great White Way to L.A.…
