51 stories by "Marc Wheeler"
LOST IN THE DESERT Winner of 10 Tony Awards including Best Musical of 2018, Itamar Moses's The Band's Visit is one of the most highly-awarded shows in musical theater history. And yet, those…
SCROOGED After a year or two since Covid shutdowns made in-person theater nearly unheard of, a new adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has made its way from London to Broadway t…
WHAT A WONDER [Editor's Note: Just after we published Marc Wheeler's glowing review of A Noise Within's production of Alice in Wonderland, the theater had to go dark due to COVID. Fortunatel…
CALIFORNIA STREAMIN' Even after postponing the remaining productions of their 2019/2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Geffen Playhouse is forging ahead. While the UCLA-owned theat…
WHAT A WONDER Childhood whimsy is seen through the looking-glass of adult sophistication at A Noise Within. Based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the L…
OUR INKBLOT INTERPRETATIONS: SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLENDID Theater isn't just what it brings to us, it's also what we bring to it. At least, that's the general idea behind Open Fist T…
LOST … AND FOUND Found: A New Musical is determined to find its way. After a run off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2014, this reworked West Coast premiere "Â now playing a…
MONSTER MASH In an effort to strip away the centuries, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has gone under the knife. Revitalizing the 200-year-old classic is the Beverly Hills-based performing arts …
LIFE IMITATETH ART In Christopher Guest's brilliant 1996 mockumentary Waiting For Guffman, the smalltown residents of Blaine, MO, come together to put on a show. But what if instead the resi…
PAPA, CAN YOU HEAR ME? Every once in awhile a play comes along that reminds what " and how exciting " theater can be. In The Father (Le Père), French playwright Florian Zeller doesn't just …
TAKE A CHANCE WITH FUN When a newly "out" lesbian learns her closeted father has taken his life mere months after revealing to him her sexuality, she has a lot to process. Being an artist, s…
PASS THIS ROACH After a convoluted build-up, there's a late scene in I Decided I'm Fine: A Roach Play that actually works. In it, Ellen (Veronica Tjioie), a trauma-stricken hoarder, exposes …
HYMN-DINGER Sweet lovin' Jesus, Del Shores is back, and he's brought a band of gospel singers with him. In This Side of Crazy, writer/director/producer Shores introduces us to a Southern fam…
IF THE GLOVE FITS… On the heels of Leaving Neverland " the jaw-dropping 2019 documentary that explores the sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson " comes the world premiere of a …
BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CANTEEN In an effort to spark dialogue on Trump-era immigration, The Road Theatre Company has mounted a revised version of Carlos Lacámara's Nowhere on the Border, a …
SWOON LAKE Sir Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake has flown into town and it's a rapturous reimagining of Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet. While productions based on the popular Petipa-Ivanov 1895 revi…
CAN FROZEN MELT YOUR HEART? Direct from Broadway, Disney's Frozen officially kicks off its national tour at the Hollywood Pantages after a tryout in Schenectady, NY, and it's the hygge snowb…
PUNK'D In many ways, Gregory S. Moss's 1980s-themed punkplay feels like a dream. Props and seasons are generically labeled. Flights of fancy are realized like make-believe. Even the era itse…
OY VEY A barrage of human suffering " anti-Semitism, racism, anti-Muslim hostility, misogyny, LGBT closets, slavery, Japanese-American internment camps, miscarriages, PTSD, death, and a lite…
MIRACLE ON NORTH GOWER STREET If you're in need of a miracle, look no further than the Los Angeles premiere of Lance Arthur Smith's new adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street: A Live Musical R…
TOSSING OUT THE BABY BUT KEEPING THE BATHWATER Reluctance takes center stage in Center Theater Group's production of Mike Birbiglia's theatrical child The New One. In his 2018 one-man show, …
PIAZZA EXPLODES LIKE TUSCAN SUNLIGHT From London's Royal Festival Hall to L.A.'s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion comes a rapturous new production of the Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the…
A GREEN NEW DEAL As Little Shop of Horrors teaches us: sometimes you just need fresh blood. In that vein, the Pasadena Playhouse more than delivers. Their audacious revival of the quirky cul…
SHOOTING STAR AIMS, SHOOTS … AND BORES Shooting Star, billed as "A Revealing New Musical" " and getting its World Premiere at the Hudson Theatres in Los Angeles under the direction of Mich…
THE PLAY THAT GOT AWAY I don't know the exact play Michael McKeever was writing prior to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in favor of federal marriage equality, but I suspect it worked much mor…
