So Cal Arts & Entertainment

Shinshin Tsai has been one of my favorite So Cal directors since we first met at Chapman University, when he was slated to direct one of my plays for OC-centric New Play Festival. He’s director of Lloyd Suh’s “The Chinese Lady,” a play about Afong Moy— the first...

Been there done that. At times I feel like I’ve seen and heard it all. But sometimes you have to fight the tendency to think you’ve seen enough performances of a classic, be it a play or a piece of music. I heard nuances in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony last night at...

If you’re like me you can’t catch every play you’d like to see, but it’s worth the effort to get to South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa for “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” (continuing through May 3). Not because Keiko Green’s dark existential...

“I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce,” starring Ronnie Marmo as the most controversial comedian of all time, will take the stage at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada for one night only, on Friday, March 21 at 8 pm.  The show about the pioneer...

Rarely is a show extended before it opens, but such is the acclaim for “Such Small Hands” in previews at Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills that it’s been extended through Mar. 30. OC doesn’t get too many world premieres of new plays, so this presentation of Adam...

Those of us who revere Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy sometimes wish they had made feature films during the silent era. While they didn’t do one until sound came in (with their voices perfectly suiting their characters), unlike the comedy superstars of the day, they...

What better time to have a play by the daughter of an immigrant—coincidental though the timing may be—on one of So Cal’s top stages, especially when it’s a compelling, heartfelt drama about lives of five women? When taken as a subtle protest against the misogynistic,...

There’s a tendency to tinker with the warhorses of musical theater and reinvent them for new audiences. But wiser heads prevailed with the revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, which opened last weekend and continues through...

Joan Rivers comes back to vibrant life in Daniel Goldstein’s “Joan” at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa (continuing in its world premiere through Nov 24.) Unlike “Funny Girl,” the focus of this non-musical drama is a woman’s lifelong aspiration to make audiences...

What kind of father sends his teenage daughter into the cellar of a spooky old house, late at night in the dead of winter, for a bottle of booze? The da in the first Irish-language horror film, naturally. “An Taibhse” (“The Ghost”) is set in post-famine Ireland,...