71Mar 28, 2017
REVIEW: ELEVATOR BY RYAN LUÉVANO Award-winning filmmaker and playwright Michael Leoni’s hit play Elevator returns to L.A. for a limited run at The Coast Playhouse. The premise is simple: seven strangers are trapped in an elevator. However, what ensues is a stimulating experience that will keep you on the edge of your seat. In both presentation […]
72Mar 16, 2017
REVIEW: AT HOME AT THE ZOO BY RYAN LUÉVANO Just last September the world lost the great American playwright Edward Albee who had bestowed upon us so many wonderful plays most notably: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? Now the Wallis Annenberg Center […]
73Mar 14, 2017
REVIEW: AH, WILDERNESS! BY RYAN LUÉVANO Explore the humor of playwright Eugene O’Neill in A Noise Within Theatre company’s revival of his 1933 play Ah, Wilderness! The play represents, as O’Neill put it, the “other side of the coin” regarding his work. It’s his only comedy in the sea of tragic visions that populate his oeuvre including: Mourning Becomes Electra, […]
74Feb 28, 2017
REVIEW: ONCE ON THIS ISLAND BY RYAN LUÉVANO The musical Once on this Island may not be a household name like West Side Story or Wicked, however this show, with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, takes audiences to an exotic island in the Caribbean boasting messages of goodwill and […]
75Feb 14, 2017
REVIEW: HALLELUJAH, BABY! BY RYAN LUÉVANO Making a career in the performing arts has always been a challenge, now imagine trying the same thing as a minority in a time when equality does not exist. That’s the basic premise the 1967 musical Hallelujah, Baby! (music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, […]
76Feb 8, 2017
REVIEW: THAT LONG DAMN DARK BY RYAN LUÉVANO It’s not often that a play is able to successfully transcend the limits of the stage and venture into cinematic territory, and even more so in a tiny black box theatre. Ashley’s Rose Wellman’s new play That Long Damn Dark does just that. This West Coast premiere presented […]
77Jan 25, 2017
REVIEW: THE LAST FIVE YEARS BY RYAN LUÉVANO Imagine witnessing the last five years of one of your failed relationships played out on stage for all to see—that’s what the Jason Robert Brown musical The Last Five Years accomplishes. The show written in 2001 is directly inspired by Brown’s failed marriage to Theresa O’Neill. Audiences […]
78Jan 17, 2017
REVIEW: ZANNA DON’T BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO Step into the topsy-turvy land of the sugary 2003 off-Broadway musical Zanna Don’t, by Tim Acito and with additional lyrics and material by Alexander Dinelaris, now playing at Chromolume Theatre. In this high school musical spoof homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is a taboo. So when a […]
79Jan 11, 2017
REVIEW: URINETOWN BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO L.A.’s ‘pay what you want’ theatre company, Coeurage Theatre Company, returns with an extended run of the satirical musical Urinetown. The musical’s story that centers on a town suffering from a severe drought certainly rings true to California’s recent drought issues. Of course the premise here is magnified as society […]
80Jan 4, 2017
REVIEW: AMÉLIE BY RYAN M. LUÉVANO Pulling from cinema stockpile from abroad, American producers have deemed the 2001 film Amélie as a story worth taking to the musical stage, and not just any stage—Broadway is imminent. After the tryout at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, the show is slotted for an opening on April […]