REVIEW: 2:22 A GHOST STORY BY RYAN M. LUEVANO Halloween maybe over, but if you’re still craving something spooky, the Ahmanson Theatre is offering the U.S. premiere of 2:22 A Ghost Story play by Danny Robins. The play seeks to answer the question: Is that ghost heard on the baby monitor at 2:22am or something else? The […]

REVIEW: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD BY RYAN M. LUEVANO A new To Kill a Mockingbird play seems well over do even when the first adaptation by Christopher Sergel only debuted in 1990. Since its first publication in 1960, the book by Harper Lee was born to unto the world as an instant classic of modern American literature. […]

REVIEW: THE PROM BY RYAN M. LUEVANO The national tour of the 2019 Drama Desk Award winner for Outstanding Musical The Prom is now playing at the Ahmanson Theatre. The musical takes the familiar notion of a school dance, adds a touching tale of acceptance, then wraps it in a glitzy musical theater bow. It brings new […]

REVIEW: MOULIN ROUGE BY RYAN M. LUEVANO In the ever-growing cannon of jukebox musicals (e.g., Rock of Ages, The Boy from Oz, All Shook Up, Jersey Boys etc.) Moulin Rouge takes the cake—as a matter of fact it is the cake. Moulin Rouge is a jukebox musical of a jukebox musical film. The multi-award-winning musical (including a Tony for Best […]

REVIEW: WHO’S AFRIAD OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? BY RYAN M. LUEVANO Now playing at the Geffen Playhouse is Edward Albee’s 1963 Tony Award Winning play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This classic play takes place in the living room on the campus of a small New England college in 1962 in the wee hours of the morning. […]

REVIEW: PARADISE BLUE BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO The Geffen Playhouse’s latest offering takes us into a world of smoky blue notes and noir milieu set in a jazz club in 1949 Detroit. Tony Award-nominated playwright Dominique Morisseau’s play Paradise Blue takes the stage in a production that is as vivid as it is a vital piece of […]

REVIEW: THE LAST SHIP BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO Like a ship lost at sea, the Sting musical, The Last Ship has resurfaced at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles following a UK national tour and a brief run in Toronto. The musical opened on Broadway in 2014 and ran for 105 performances. Now five years later […]

INTERVIEW: THADDEUS PHILLIPS BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO After sold out runs on four continents, including the international cities of Moscow and Hong Kong, 17 Border Crossings made its Off-Broadway premiere on April 11, 2019 at New York Theatre Workshop and ran for six weeks. Based on Phillips’ actual adventures, 17 Border Crossings is a comical, visually surreal, sometimes harrowing, and […]

REVIEW: THE IMMERSIVE NUTCRACKER FÊTE BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO When we think of The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s ballet comes to mind as it’s the most famous adaptation of this E.T.A. Hoffmann story. However, for anyone who’s been on social media this holiday season, “The Immersive Nutcracker Fête” by Fever also comes to mind. Billed as “the most […]

REVIEW: THE CRIMSON CABARET BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO Immersive theatre is all the rage right now and in the last couple of years it’s been finding it footing on LA. This whole movement started in the UK pioneered by the British theatre company Punchdrunk. Their shows like Faust to the currently running productions of Sleep […]