Running through Oct. 25 at South Coast Repertory, Vietgone is a dazzling, inventive, funny, balls-to-the-walls show. Playwright Qui Nguyen's... More >>

I'm sitting at a diner eating borscht. The owner is Latvian, married to the Libyan pizza maker a few shops down. The music playing in the... More >>

About 15 minutes into One Man, Two Guvnors Saturday night, someone's mind went wandering. It wasn't because that person was bored, but because he... More >>

There isn't much rum and no lash in Shakespeare Orange County's The Pirates of Penzance. But there's plenty of sodomy, if the host of swishy,... More >>

Because our corporate overlords demand that every word in this infernal rag drives readers to patronize those businesses that advertise in it,... More >>

Eli Simon wanted to build a theater. Like, a really cool theater. He had the money, thanks to funds from a department of excellence award (given... More >>

There is something really, really weird going on with Shakespeare Orange County's Romeo and Juliet. It has nothing to do with the wildly... More >>

Green may be the hue of jealousy's monster, but in Jim Knable's play Green Man, the color is more the irresistible persistence of memory, of... More >>

There's a show-biz aphorism that if you act with kids or animals, you're going to get upstaged. The same has to be true of puppets. While they... More >>

Maybe you didn't get the memo, but the word alternative doesn't mean opposite; it means "different," as in a different outcome, choice or path.... More >>

Let the masses turn to high-octane visuals, episodic weekly dramas and pretty, witty people in precious sitcoms. The cool kids know the theater... More >>

If you're 12 years old or otherwise brain-addled, you may find Peter and the Starcatcher, a prequel to the story of Peter Pan, is the best thing... More >>

When asked what percentage of UC Irvine's service workers are Latino, Amanda Novoa thinks for a moment, then says, "Well, just by looking, I'd... More >>

The real star of the Monkey Wrench Collective's Slings & Arrows isn't the wholly committed ensemble, the deconstructed concept of William... More >>

Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone and David and Amy Sedaris' The Book of Liz feel as different as lobster bisque does from a breakfast burrito.... More >>

South Coast Repertory (SCR) has won scores of local and national awards in its fiftysomething years, but next to the 20 bestowed upon it by this... More >>

It shouldn't surprise anyone that two of America's most iconic criminals, Bonnie and Clyde, received the musical-theater treatment. Not when you... More >>

If it were possible to speculate in the stock of a creative person, this chump would cobble together whatever few ducats he had lying around and... More >>

It's not often the average person's Spotify playlist veers from Richard Wagner to Dexys Midnight Runners, then to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.... More >>

Though the phrase "going viral" didn't yet possess cultural cachet, Rodney King's odyssey certainly served as a template. From the blurry... More >>

An overview of local theater in 2015 should give people who place value in producing plays that aren't tried and tired some measure of... More >>

Twenty years ago this holiday season, the Reverend Slappy White fell off a turnip truck he'd hitched a ride on in Riverside. Instead of Stanton,... More >>

Actors breaking character. A near lack of production values. Garishly over-the-top gay and Latino stereotypes. Yet, in spite of things that might... More >>

Most Americans equate Cuba with Fidel Castro, cigars, rum and baseball. But it has produced an incredible literary history. From Cuban national... More >>

When Robert Cohen wakes up in his Laguna Beach home, Samuel Beckett is in the kitchen, cooking breakfast. Jerzy Grotowski is on his couch,... More >>

Boo-hoo, women are oppressed by cruel, violent men. They're oppressed in ass-backwards Muslim countries by having to cover their heads in public... More >>

Sex is what sells Venus In Fur, especially to those whose sex life is void of kink or those whose kink it is to watch two people engage in smart... More >>

Jordan Harrison's 2011 play, Maple and Vine, couldn't come to OC at a better time for all you hepcats in love with everything about the 1950s... More >>

Maybe it's a sign of the apocalypse, a realization that as the world grows smaller in terms of connectivity, it appears to be fracturing in real... More >>