Lyle Zimskind

We've been trying to catch as many of the Pacific Standard Time exhibitions as our schedule and gas budget will allow. Our most recent drop-in was at LACMA, where three distinctive installations (all still on view for another few weeks) each stopped us in our tracks in a total of less than two hours.

At the very beginning of Laura Yee's riotous farce "Ching Chong Chinaman," as the uber-assimilated Wong family poses for its annual Christmas card photo, the father instructs his wife and children to open their eyes "nice and wide." In the next scene, each parent enters the kitchen without recognizing that the teenage boy at the table is someone other than their own son. Turns out his name is Jinqiang or, as best as the Wongs can figure out how to pronounce it, "Ching Chong."

"Romeo et Juliette" is not one of the masterworks of the repertory, but, performed well, it does offer a compelling French interpretation of this most classic of all love stories. And with five impassioned duets between the pair of star-cross'd lovers, any performance of the opera rises or falls primarily on the qualities of the two lead singers. Both of them here are knockouts.

By the time a B-list Shakespearean actor in a soiled and sweat-stained suit peers out from backstage to start Stephen Wyatt's play "The Standard Bearer," any vestiges of British cultural hegemony have long since collapsed.

John Leguizamo's latest autobiographical one-man show, "Ghetto Klown," the fifth in a series that started with "Mambo Mouth" in 1991, captures the hyperbolically charismatic performer in a reflective, almost analytic, mode. Of course even a reflective and analytical Leguizamo on his own operates at a more frenetic pace than a pack of hounds picking up the scent of their prey.

LA Opera kicked off its new season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this weekend with a pair of classics. Saturday night delivered a visually odd but musically solid presentation of "Eugene Onegin," Tchaikovsky's take on the romantic tragedy by Pushkin. Sunday's matinee presented a fantastically entertaining performance of Mozart's "Così Fan Tutte," a sophisticated, slightly unsettling comedy of sexual manners.

Using songs he wrote for the score of Ramzi Abed's 2007 indie film "The Devil's Muse," about the infamous Black Dahlia murder case, iconic early goth rocker David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) has now created his own brief theatrical collage on the same perpetually intriguing LA tragedy.

These six actors in these six roles are very engaging company, and even though the evening is not short, it's never boring for a moment. Indeed, we were even a little disappointed when it ended, as we really were hoping for some more revelatory insight that would fill in all the narrative ellipses that Britt's play had repeatedly teased us with to sustain our interest.

Not only is every one of the five bank tellers featured in "Next Window, Please," competent enough to keep her job, but they're also all really fine women who don't deserve to become unemployed. Unfortunately three of them are about to get laid off. Which three is it going to be, who's going to decide, and how is the decision going to be made? If you're already hooked, you should definitely go see Doug Haverty's new play at the Lonny Chapman Theatre in North Hollywood.

Theatricum Botanicum's outdoor theater space and its surrounding grounds are a grand place to spend a summer evening. And while venerable classics make up most of the repertory staged there, the company also sometimes presents more contemporary works. Right nowBill Bozzone's amusing comedy "Rose Cottages," which premiered at New York's Ensemble Studio Theater a quarter century ago, is getting its west coast premiere under the stars in Topanga Canyon.

Five young, emotionally wrecked New Yorkers baring their hearts in a pair of free group therapy sessions are the endearingly odd subjects of Ryan Scott Oliver's oddly endearing new chamber musical, "Out of My Head," now running at the Pico Playhouse in West L.A.

July is National Parks & Recreation Month, and all month long LAist will be featuring a hand-selected park a day to showcase just a few of the wonderful recreation spaces--big or small--in the Los Angeles area.