Neal Weaver

This musical thriller, with book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and music by Frank Wildhorn, never rises above the level of melodrama, but it's thumping good melodrama. The tale of the good Dr. Jekyll and his monstrous alter ego (which appeared in the late '90s on Broadway, where this production......

In this provocative comedy-drama, Australian writer Joanna Murray-Smith tells a tale of two married couples who meet at an upscale tropical resort. Sadie (Kathy Baker) and Ed (Chris Mulkey) are rich, square Angelenos: He's a smugly successful tool manufacturer, but they are childless, and she's feeling disenchanted about their marriage......

Cathy Rigby may be a grandmother, but you'd never know it from watching her. Her Peter Pan is brash, butch and vigorously athletic — and, like everything else in this production, kinetic and exuberant. With its tangoing pirates, leap-frogging Lost Boys, war-dancing Indians, aerialists, sword fights, slapstick and pratfalls, the......

In Charles Marowitz's comedy-thriller, Dr. Watson (Bert Emmett), fed up with Sherlock Holmes' condescension and superiority, launches a diabolical plot to take revenge. He invents Damian, fictitious son of Holmes' former nemesis, the late Dr. Moriarty, and uses this imaginary figure as a decoy to lure Holmes (Chris Winfield, who......

Donald Margulies' sweetly goofy Coney Island Christmas, based on Grace Paley's short story The Loudest Voice, is an unmitigated delight. The tale begins in Los Angeles, where young Clara (Grace Kaufman) is sick in bed. Her grandmother, Shirley Abramowitz (feisty Angela Paton), takes her on a visit to Shirley's childhood......

Lynne Nottage's lyrical drama tells the tale of the naive-but-indomitable black seamstress, Esther (Vanessa Williams), in 1905 New York. Esther makes her living creating fine lingerie, and she's worked 18 years to save enough money to launch her dream -- a beauty salon for black women. She's accepted the fact......

This irreverent rock musical, with book, lyrics and music by Michael Shaw Fisher and direction by Chris Raymond, was inspired by the Mayan calendar, which seems to predict the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012. The setting is a symposium at the San Bernardino Community Center on Dec......

Jenelle Riley's lighthearted comedy is seriously funny and endearingly sweet. Mark (Michael Lanahan) and Ally (Carrie Wiita) were indoctrinated, while growing up, by fairy tales, Disney movies, romantic comedies and Hollywood endings. Each is convinced that the perfect mate is out there somewhere, if they could only find him/her. Meanwhile,......

This crowd-pleasing musical, with book by Terrence McNally and music and lyrics by David Yazbek, and the 1997 movie on which it's based, pull off a seemingly impossible feat — making a sweet, heartwarming, nonthreatening show about a band of male strippers. In Buffalo, N.Y., steel worker Jerry (Will Collyer)......