Lyle Zimskind

If The Moth's storytellers performed their first-person narratives as extended musical monologues, the result would probably be something like Center Theatre Group's new show, "Los Otros," in which two apparently unrelated, and unnamed, characters each get a 40-something-minute turn to sing us the stories of their lives.

Set designer Keith Mitchell's inspired creation of an Indiana truck stop establishes a perfect atmosphere, but "Where the Great Ones Run" is just a maudlin family tale of pushovers pouting in the face of fate.

When the call is issued for Americans of good conscience to join with the Autobots in defending our planet against the evil forces of Megatron ...where will you be? If you have any idea what we're talking about here, there's a good chance you're already standing in line to enter Universal Studios' new 3D Transformers ride.

More "Eraserhead" than "Ernani" in its visceral impact, the world premiere of composer Anne LeBaron's challenging, discordant "Crescent City" introduces Los Angeles to its brand new opera company The Industry this month in Atwater Village.

Though its celebrated original Broadway production was a bit before our time, this is clearly the definitive "Follies" production of our age, and with a 41-member cast and 28-piece orchestra, we may question whether we'll ever see it replicated on a comparable scale again. Perfectly cast from top to bottom, the show offers an ongoing stream of one high point after another.

Danai Gurira's "The Convert," which opened last week at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, is old-fashioned high drama for a very contemporary audience. Set in late 19th century colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the play depicts a cultural and ultimately violent tension between traditional and assimilationist African communities.

Laboratories of Our Youth" is an ambitious attempt to craft a sophisticatedly silly contemporary farce with period trappings, but the final product ends up rather less than the sum of its parts.

If you can see how this pathetic little human condition of ours is also pretty funny (at least while you watch it happening to someone else), then Samuel Beckett's mid-century modernist classic play "Waiting for Godot," now getting a richly satisfying production at the Mark Taper Forum, should be right up your alley.

"He can still sing!" we overheard one distinguished patron of the opera asserting to his wife as they filed out of their seats for intermission at the Wednesday performance of the first-ever LA Opera production of Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra." "And he moves around the stage, too!" the wife observed with comparable enthusiasm. "He," of course, is Placido Domingo, arguably the world's greatest opera singer—and star—of the last four or five decades.

Bekah Brunstetter's slight but largely charming play "Mine" about a thirtysomething romantic triangle is getting a good production right now at the Elephant Stages Performance Lab in Hollywood.