Lyle Zimskind

Though only 11 years apart in age, the writer characters in Laura Eason's 2011 two-person play Sex with Strangers, which opened last week in the Geffen Playhouse's cozy 149-seat Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater space, reside on opposite sides of a sharp generational dividing line.

Two years after LA Opera first imported the Berlin Comic Opera company's astonishing production of The Magic Flute for a well-received run at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, this bravura take on the Mozart classic is back in town again for anyone who missed it (and even anyone who saw it) the first time around.

The Chromolume Theatre company is celebrating this Black History Month with the world premiere of Willard Manus's one-man play, 'Prez', about jazz great Lester Young, starring actor/musician Leslie A. Jones in the title role.

In recent years a small group of sopranos and mezzi have been reviving Bellini's bel canto masterpiece 'Norma' to considerable acclaim in houses around the United States. For the next couple weeks, two of these singers, Angela Meade and Jamie Barton, are leading an excellent cast in the work at LA Opera.

'Hopscotch' opera premiered on Saturday in 24 limousines driving segments of three discrete circuits along the streets of Boyle Heights, Chinatown and the downtown Arts District.

LA Opera's 'Moby-Dick' is a powerful rendering of the classic novel, enhanced by unusually strong visual effects.

Right now, the prime pick-a-play spot in town is the Atwater Village Theatre, where three companies in residence and one guest ensemble all have shows going on in the theater spaces situated at the four corners of the venue's central courtyard. These productions were not developed in tandem, and they have nothing in common. Still, when two or more of them are going on, the mingling of their discrete audiences creates a lively buzz in the outdoor "lobby" area and AVT feels like the Los Angeles theater universe's latest central hub.

It's certainly fitting that LA Opera has kicked off its 30th anniversary season with a double bill of the company's own historically successful one-act productions and that its legendary General Director Placido Domingo performs in both of them, albeit in different capacities.

The vitality and fun of Los Angeles’s theater scene should not be a well-kept secret. L.A. is home to dozens of excellent theater organizations offering great productions all the time in venues large and small.

Former PR executive and actors' personal manager Neil Koenigsberg's first full-length play is getting its west coast premiere as a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre after a stint in New York.