THE BONEYARD 

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS at the Pantages Theatre

Every once in a long while, a work of musical theatre magic comes along that utterly defies the rigid blueprint of Broadway traditions, opting instead to follow its own unbridled, wildly beating heart. The spectacular new musical adaptation of Sara Gruen’s beloved novel Water for Elephants, currently illuminating the stage of the Pantages, does not merely entertain—it reimagines what the theatre stage is capable of holding. Dynamic, atmospheric, and profoundly moving, this production is an absolute triumph of artistic innovation that renders the 2011 feature film adaptation a distant memory by comparison.

From its opening moments, the production establishes an enchanted theatrical language that feels both startlingly new and deeply rooted in storytelling tradition. While steeped in the dusty, weathered textures of 1930s Depression-era America, the overall concept and staging embrace an almost Brechtian sensibility. Rather than relying on heavy, literal sets or conventional kitchen-sink realism, the show relies on exposed craft, theatrical illusion, and raw ensemble power; we are constantly reminded of the artifice of the stage, yet that awareness only heightens the magic. It is an approach that strips away Broadway gloss and razzle-dazzle to reveal the gritty beating heart of a traveling circus world where survival and romance exist side by side on a razor's edge.  

At the center of this theatrical miracle is an ensemble that sets a high-water mark for collective stage artistry. The ensemble cast, dancers, and singers do not simply execute routines: they double as world-class acrobats, aerialists, and physical performers who look as though they could compete for the top honors on America’s Got Talent or step directly off the Pantages stage and into the big top of Cirque du Soleil. The physical discipline on display is breathless, yet it never feels like a mere display of technique—it is entirely woven into the emotional fabric of the narrative.

The chemistry between Zachary Keller and Helen Krushinski playing the leading roles of the star-crossed lovers Jacob and Marlena gives the show its emotional axis; their connection is palpably grounded and intensely moving. Musically, both deliver knockout performances: Keller’s quiet, luminous ballad "Silver Stars" is a breathtaking highlight, while Krushinski’s solo "What Do You Do?" hits with profound emotional resonance. When their voices merge in “Wild,” their dynamic duet, the show reaches the peak of its undeniable romantic magic.

This seamless fusion of circus discipline, gossamer puppetry, and dramatic storytelling is orchestrated by a creative team working at the absolute peak of their powers. The direction by Jessica Stone is nothing short of extraordinary, guiding the vast apparatus of the show with remarkable clarity and heart. Working in concert with co-choreographers Jesse Robb and Shana Carroll, the latter bringing her legendary expertise as circus designer and co-founder of The 7 Fingers, the movement in the show is unlike anything seen on a musical stage in recent memory. The choreography carries a distinct homage to the angularity, folk geometry, and narrative urgency of classic Agnes de Mille innovation, where every lift, tumble, and posture functions as a direct expression of human longing and endurance.  

The design team is nothing short of inspired, including Takeshi Kata’s sparse but clever sets, David I. Reynoso’s spectacularly colorful costuming, Walter Trabach’s sound design, David Bengali’s projections and Thai Nang-inspired shadow figures, and especially Bradley King’s incredibly provocative lighting.

Still, nowhere is the production’s commitment to imaginative theatricality more spellbinding than in its creation and execution of the stage's animal life. Designed by Ray Wetmore, JR Goodman, and Camille LaBarre, with expert puppet direction by Joshua Holden, the puppetry avoids any attempt at literal, mechanical realism. Instead, through fluid skeletal frameworks, exposed artistry, and the total physical devotion of the puppeteers, creatures like the majestic Rosie the elephant, the tragic circus horse, the lion, and the giraffe are given vibrant, pulsing life. Without ever masking the human performers operating them, these puppets evoke the very essence and breathing rhythm, weight, and emotional spirit of the animals themselves. Watching Rosie materialize and interact with the human cast becomes one of the most breathtakingly soul-stirring achievements of the evening.  

Rick Elice’s book is a showcase of pure craft in adaptation, paying deep deference to Gruen’s original source novel rather than taking cues from the movie, capturing the internal poetic grit and melancholic grandeur of the narrative. The story moves with a visceral momentum, balancing the epic scale of circus life in all its cruelty and dysfunction with tenderly intimate human drama.

Crucially, the musical identity of the production provides its truest soul. The score, crafted by the brilliant seven-member collective PigPen Theatre Co., comprising Alex Falberg, Arya Shahi, Ben Ferguson, Curtis Gillen, Dan Weschler, Matt Nuernberger, and Ryan Melia, is perhaps the single finest element of the entire production. Infused with a rich bluegrass and early roots-Americana feel featuring subtle hints of banjo and mandolin, the music evokes the haunting weather-beaten intimacy of early golden-era singer-songwriters with the rustic snarl of Tom Waits. The lyrics could have been credited to Joni Mitchell and I wouldn’t have been surprised for a moment; they are deeply poetic, completely character-driven, and utterly devoid of musical theatre cliché.

Water for Elephants is a breathtaking reminder of what happens when creators unapologetically throw away the rulebook and totally trust the evocative power of live theatre. Bold, inventive, and emotionally resonant, it is a production that will linger long after the big top comes down.

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THE VISIT at Pasadena Playhouse

Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote The Visit in 1956, sitting amidst the fresh rubble and collective amnesia of post-WWII Europe. It was never meant to be a polite parable; it is a brutal breakdown of how human beings trade their core principles for comfort, nostalgia, and self-justification when they feel cheated by time. The impoverished villagers of Güllen sell out their integrity because they are desperate to reclaim a prosperity and beauty that slipped away while they weren't paying attention. They don't view their surrender as evil, but as a long-overdue restoration of what they are owed.

Utilizing Maurice Valency’s 1957 translation, which premiered on Broadway in 1958 starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in their last stage appearance, Dürrenmatt’s ultimate message remained intact. The genius here lies in charting how astonishingly fast raw greed takes root and how effortlessly transactional desire overpowers centuries of cultivated morality, religion, and civilized behavior. The moment the promise of wealth enters the room, ethics aren't discarded with a bang; they are quietly dismantled under the guise of civic duty.

Now lovingly and with perfect timing revived at Pasadena Playhouse, Dürrenmatt’s thinly-veiled grotesque comedy feels less like history and more like an immediate, terrifying mirror. As we live under the ominous, gathering shadow of modern fascism in America, The Visit lays bare the exact mechanism by which societies fall: not through sudden, villainous coups, but through the quiet, incremental rationalizations of ordinary people shedding their integrity and virtue to assure their own financial ease and physical comfort. The great Swiss dramatist’s accusation about the inherent lack of morality lurking just below the manners and better judgment in our species has only grown more pronounced, making the impoverished fictionalized town of Güllen’s slow slide into complicity painfully recognizable.

It is a pity, then, that director Darko Tresnjak’s production feels so intent on drowning Dürrenmatt’s piercing admonishment  in sheer theatricality.

Visually, the staging is undeniably spectacular. The scenic design by Alexander Dodge and every creative production element is breathtaking in scale and execution and the veteran ensemble cast—many of them returning to the Playhouse stage from their successful run in Tresnjak’s incredible revival of Amadeus earlier this year—is unquestionably committed. Yet, the production suffers from a concept that smothers its own intent. It feels overproduced, over-engineered, and ultimately pretentious, so fixated on its own visual cleverness and dazzle that the biting, dark heart of the play gets lost beneath the gloss. When a production about the rot of materialism becomes this enamored with its own spectacle, the play's urgent warning loses its sting.

What keeps the evening grounded—and what illuminates the production's overindulgence—is the talent at its center. Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays, Salieri in the previously mentioned Amadeus, certainly the performance of the year so far,  offers a brilliant and quite unexpected turn as Anton Schill. Having so often seen Mays go delightfully, virtuosically over-the-top, his quiet, deeply underplayed choice here comes as a profound revelation. Mays approaches Schill with an understated and gentle dignity that makes his character’s isolation heartbreaking. Paradoxically, his subtle restraint accentuates just how hyper-articulated and overproduced the surrounding direction feels by comparison.

Opposite him, Melinda Page Hamilton is a triumph as the vengeful billionaire Claire Zachanassian. Hamilton plays "the visitor" as the most disarmingly charming antagonist any tragic antihero could ask for—magnetic, sharp, and icy. Nowhere is her character's driving philosophy clearer than when she lays bare the cynical engine of her revenge: “The world made me a whore… now I have turned it into a brothel.” It is a chilling line Hamilton delivers with the quiet authority of someone who knows that every soul in Güllen has a price tag.

The chemistry between Mays and Hamilton is electric. Their quiet, layered interplay forms the genuine core of the show, proving that Dürrenmatt’s drama shines brightest when the actors are simply allowed to breathe together without scenic grandiosity competing for space. Around them, the supporting ensemble is entirely fine and well-cast, though few manage to stand out or break through the heavy scenic framework.

Dürrenmatt gave us a terrifying roadmap of how easily human decency is auctioned off for a sense of ease. Pasadena Playhouse has mounted a visually impressive evening, but by prioritizing style over the play's stark, moral spine, the warning inside the spectacle feels far too easy to ignore.

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GREEN CORRIDORS at City Garage

Few theatres in Southern California engage with global socio-political urgencies as relentlessly or uncompromisingly as City Garage. With their West Coast premiere of Natalka Vorozhbyt’s Green Corridors, artistic director Frédérique Michel brings a devastating and timely piece of Ukrainian drama to Santa Monica. Translated with razor-sharp precision and vibrant, darkly humorous immediacy by John Freedman with Nataliia Bratus, the script preserves the full and harrowing trauma of displacement during wartime without losing its biting absurdity. It offers an urgently vital text and is an inspired programming choice for City Garage.

Michel’s staging is characteristically dynamic, highly kinetic and visually stylized, drawing heavily from a hyper-present commedia-infused performance tradition—recalling the raw, intense "Style" pioneered right down the street by Tim Robbins and the Actors’ Gang. Characters often address the audience directly, projecting hyper-amplified emotional states across the proverbial footlights.

It’s a concept that fits Vorozhbyt’s writing beautifully, yet it poses an extraordinary technical trap. In the claustrophobic intimacy of City Garage, where the audience sits in immediate proximity to the performers, the dreaded middle ground simply doesn’t work. A script this wordy and powerful requires a strict choice: either the playing must strip back to a starkly grounded simplicity, trusting the inherent weight of the language, or it must throw itself headlong into radically extreme exaggeration.

Too often, much of the cast here hovers between those two poles, most looking slightly uncomfortable in a technique that demands absolute unyielding discipline. When actors work too hard to perform intensity rather than inhabiting the extreme, the artifice can undercut the tragedy.

Yet when the technique finds its footing, the production soars, most notably in the central performance of the Irene Pappas-voiced Angela Beyer. Playing the central role of a well-known displaced film actress from Kyiv, Beyer is commanding and powerful, possessing a rare fluid command of the playing style and seamlessly navigating its extreme demands while maintaining an undeniable core of emotional truth.

Beyer’s work reaches its zenith in a scene titled "Waiting for Water" opposite Cruz St. James, who plays a TV producer who has cast her in his new series. St. James, making a welcome return after his City Garage debut in Charles Mee’s Limonade Tous les Jours only a few months ago, turns in another exceptionally strong performance.

While his portrayal of two female roles in the production occasionally verge on the self-conscious, leaning a bit too heavily into physical signifiers like constant hair-twiddling and delivering his lines in the nosebleed ranges of his vocal instrument, St. James is far more simple in his choices playing the less stylized male role of the producer. The encounter between him and Beyer’s actress begins as a polished exchange of mutual professional niceties before fracturing along political and ideological faultlines. As their wildly divergent realities collide, the room detonates and this scene easily provides the most thrilling high-stakes moments in the play.

Adding to the otherwise somewhat uneven ensemble is return of former City Garage company member Ricky Lee Grove, who came out of acting retirement for this production. Stepping into multiple roles, including a customs officer, a film director, and a horny doctor visiting a vulnerable refugee, Grove’s grounded authority provides the exact benchmark of stylistic comfort the production needs.

Green Corridors remains a vital, essential piece of theatre even as its ambitious physical choices occasionally strain against the cast’s technical expertise and comfort. The sheer force of Vorozhbyt’s voice, amplified by Freedman and Bratus’ highly contemporary translation, as well as Beyer and St. James’ stand-out performances, makes this an exceptionally important story to tell and a production that demands to be seen.

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DRACULA: THE MUSICAL at the Nocturne Theatre

Ah! The children of the night! What music they make! And what a special treat the unstoppably daring and slightly off-kilter visionaries rapidly putting Glendale’s re-envisioned Nocturne Theatre on the LA theatrical map have decided to bring their delightfully edgy and boldly sexy production of the seldom produced Dracula: The Musical back home to their stage for a limited run after its sold-out debut last season.

I have loved the spooky and mysterious allure of the classic 1931 film version of Bram Stoker’s 1897 masterpiece ever since first compulsively tuning into the brand-setting late Saturday night old horror movie-airing, Marvin the Near-sighted Madman-hosted series Shock Theatre whenever I was back home in Chicago as kid—a time when my best buddy Randy and I made the revelation together of how seductive vampiresses and exotically-accented undead Eastern European counts could turn film into a conduit for… er… mutual personal discovery.

My relationship with the dashing nighttime bedside bloodsucker has been a lifelong affair ever since. The original John L. Balderston and Hamilton Deane 1927 stage version on which the Bela Lugosi-Tod Browning film was based became one of the first productions I brought to my ambitious dinner theatre enterprise in the Lake Arrowhead Hilton near our weekend home in the early 80s, complete with an Edward Gorey designed set, gallons and gallons of stage blood, a dripping butcher-fresh cow’s heart ripped out of the count’s chest each night during the finale, and me in the director’s chair as well as chewing up the scenery (and my share of gummy spiders and flies) in the role of the Master's infamous deliciously deranged sidekick Renfield.

Over the decades, I’ve inhabited this story from the inside out, culminating with my returning a quarter-century later in 2009 and well into 2010 to take on the equally juicy and stylistically over-the-top role of Dr. Van Helsing in Ted Monte and Terry Duddy’s adaptation The House of Besarab, mounted in an environmental staging that took audiences following our cast from richly vintage-appointed room to room throughout the massive and historic American Legion Post 43 on Highland Avenue in Hollywood—the 1929 art deco Egyptian Revival landmark made famous by its legendary equally immersive nine-year run of Tamara. What was slated for a four-week run stretched into several months for us, reinforcing just how deeply this notorious and familiarly gloomy vampire narrative grips an audience when brought up close.

Some people prefer their musical theatre bright and sunny and filled with corn as high as an elephant’s eye and nuns worrying about the problem of Maria but personally, give me the strange, the seductive, and sinister and dangerous every time. Seeing Frank Wildhorn, Don Black, and Christopher Hampton’s Dracula: The Musical performed in the Nocturne’s imaginative and incredibly rare intimate in-the-round staging reminded me why this notorious tale never loses its—if you’ll excuse the expression—bite.

Beginning at La Jolla Playhouse in 2001 before heading to Broadway in 2004, this too-often overlooked Phantom of the Opera-emboldened incarnation of the Dracula legend is far more soaring operetta than traditional musical comedy. As such, Wildhorn’s lush, sweepingly dramatic score requires legit vocal power across the board and where Justin and Melissa Meyer, the enterprising couple who turned the long-shuttered former Glendale Center Theatre into this venue, find so many insanely gifted non-Equity performers is something of a minor miracle.

Under the seamlessly flowing direction of Justin Meyer himself, who also impressively assays the demanding title role, the entire ensemble delivers vocals that practically blast their audience right out onto Orange Street. Meyer commands the stage as Dracula, matching vocal stamina with an arrestingly brooding presence. Opposite him, Samantha Rose as the Count’s romantic obsession Mina Murray also delivers a standout vocal performance, with her Act II ballads “The Heart is Slow to Learn” and “If I Could Fly,” as well as her haunting follow-up duet with Meyer, “Mina’s Seduction / There’s Always a Tomorrow,” anchoring the emotional core of the second act.

AJ Castro as poor Jonathan Harker is also possessed of some purdy impressive pipes and is especially good when working alongside Christian Lees, Tyler Angier, and Truman Bjarke as the trio of suitors panting after Mina’s doomed friend Lucy (Kelly Krippendorf), together forming a dynamic vocal unit functioning as a sort of darkly Gothic barbershop quartet that rocks the theatre with tight harmonies and vocal firepower. J.D. Wallis makes the quintessential Van Helsing and whomever managed to come up with a crucifix that sets itself on fire in his hands when first confronting his arch-nemesis must also be commended.

Andrew Diego, who appeared to have his own personal fan club cheering him on opening night, gives a wonderfully unhinged performance as the asylum-bound Renfield, capturing both the manic complexity and the usually underplayed tragic nature of the character. Adding to the atmospheric terror, singer Abhaya Krishman-Jha and aerialists Lisa-Marie Burnside, Rachel Fictum, Kimberly Butler as the Count’s sensual and titillatingly underdressed Vamps, innovatively contribute overhead wire and silk work that bring a jaw-dropping extra layer of visual chills to the staging.

Melissa Meyer’s choreography, along with the aerial moves designed by Burnside, smoothly handle the spatial demands of staging in-the-round with an uncanny precision, while musical director Chris Wade brings out the full weight of Wildhorn’s crashingly brilliant score. Sound engineers Matt Merline and Julia Vollstedt master the difficult acoustic environment of the all-enveloping four-sided theatre experience where sightlines and sound balance can easily betray a production, complimenting Meyer’s staging with total fluidity.

Once again, Tanya Cyr’s worldclass costume design, such an integral component of the tremendous success of the company’s splashy The Little Mermaid this Spring, is both visually stunning and tremendously creepy, marking yet another triumph for the Nocturne’s wardrobe department. Her designs especially excel in tracking Dracula’s various stages of physical transformation, giving his evolving visage a menacing visceral impact. Meyer’s lighting plot, which must share cues with the theatre’s production of The Full Monty, also now in performance in the same space, is surely testament to this guy’s many gifts.

Speaking of that, I love that this boldly erotic vision of Dracula: The Musical is being performed in rep right now with the equally adult-oriented The Full Monty; whichever kind of human anatomy you prefer to witness—or perhaps both?—the Nocturne is a great destination and perfectly over-cooled to beat our current heatwave. Nobody in this town is accomplishing this musical theatre-meets-Paris’ Crazy Horse hybrid quite as successfully as Justin and Melissa Meyer this long hot summer and their ambitious Quixote-like mission to transform this landmark Glendale space into a powerhouse venue for Los Angeles theatre is nothing short of astounding.

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THE ARSONISTS at the Skylight Theatre

When Swiss dramatist Max Frisch wrote his 1953 radio play Biedermann und die Brandstifter in the wake of the Second World War, the frayed nerves of global disaster were still settling over the world. The play was born from his need to make sense of how ordinary, educated, seemingly sensible citizens could watch catastrophic forces approach in plain sight and still construct countless small excuses to accommodate them—eventually handing over their house keys and the very matches used to burn down their own homes.

Its first of several English translations for the stage was presented in America at San Francisco’s Actors’ Workshop in 1964 as The Firebugs, later reappearing again in 2007 at London’s Royal Court as The Arsonists translated by acclaimed Scottish playwright Alistair Beaton and starring a young unknown Benedict Cumberbatch. Three-quarters of a century since its inception, Frisch’s subtle/not-so subtle warning of the dangers of complacency has only grown more severe.

In the director’s notes for the current revival of Beaton’s version of The Arsonists now still playing with fire at the Skylight Theatre, Luke Harlan highlights Frisch’s famous description of the piece as a “morality play without a moral.” The narrative avoids heavy-handed lecturing or simplistic sermonizing, instead forcing theatergoers to sit watching the agonizing absurdity of passive human compliance. Yet even without a neat lesson wrapped up at the end, the core point becomes unmistakably clear to anyone in attendance: looking away while damage is being done is its own form of active participation.

This dynamic was given a fresh energy through this vibrant translation by Beaton, who made a career revitalizing classic satirical works by writers such as Frisch, Gogol, and Brecht. It delivers an adaptation that feels completely accessible and punchy for modern audiences without losing any of the script's original bite.

That central conflict demands an unvarnished comparison to our current political climate. As our increasingly more unhinged Apprenticadent Donald Trump and his political movement push forward with extreme claims, unprecedented structural and environmental renamings, plans for monumental golden statues of our monster-in-charge, and beyond it all the dismantling of long-standing democratic norms, those within his administration and the broader Republican Party consistently look the other way. They normalize his bizarre and dangerous behavior, negotiating away their own presumably once lofty principles, and treat obvious alarm bells and flashing red lights as if they were just standard political operating procedures.

In Frisch’s allegory, when a pair of random homeless traveling pyromaniacs unceremoniously move themselves into the home of Gottlieb Biedermann, they basically make no effort to hide their true identities. Instead, they state exactly what they are doing, yet Biedermann and his household rationalize every single warning sign, convincing themselves that if they show enough courtesy and hospitality, they will personally remain safe. In an absurd display of self-delusion, Biedermann proudly declares he is a modern man who does not care about class distinctions—a statement meant to project open-mindedness even as it seals his own fate.

Harlan’s direction is slick and sharply focused, driving the escalating nonsense at a brisk clip so that the comedic beats land right before the chilling reality settles in, while a massive portion of that dramatic impact comes from Stephen Gifford