Lyle Zimskind

A program note for "Twist: An American Musical," the new adaptation of Dickens's "Oliver Twist" set in 1920s New Orleans, suggests that audiences should "feel free to tap your toes to the music" and affirms that "it's okay if the [show's] book...moves you to tears or to laugh out loud." But these are unlikely responses to this show.

Now that the Hollywood Fringe is formally underway, after a week of preview performances, there are, of course, way too many productions up and running to catch more than a small fraction. So how to pick which ones to go see? Well, there's the random crapshoot method. Or you can find out which shows other people have already seen and what they think of them. So far, we've seen five shows selected by random crapshoot. And here's what we think of them, in a roughly descending order of preference.

Richard does a lot of nothing. Richard does so much of nothing that the walls of West Hollywood's Lee Strasberg Theatre are covered with almost 100 stenciled placards detailing all the nothing Richard does, including "Richard Chases A Tennis Ball," "Richard Says He Doesn't Know," "Richard Selects Light Mayo," "Richard Does Some Mental Math" and, of course, "Richard Wakes Up."

"There are more things in hell, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." This gleeful distortion of Hamlet's admonition could fairly be posted over the entrance to Zombie Joe's Underground itself as a tidy summary of the company's functional ethos. And it also well encapsulates playwright Richard Nathan's riotous new parody of the ubiquitous tragedy, now titled "Hamlet, Prince of Darkness," which ZJU is presenting at 11 p.m. every Friday night through the end of June.

On their way to winning the 1965 World Series, the Dodgers of Chavez Ravine clashed with the despised San Francisco Giants in Major League Baseball's most legendary bench-clearing brawl after Giants ace Juan Marichal brought his bat down on the bare head of Dodgers catcher John Roseboro.

Thirty-five years after he took his first shot at directing "Three Sisters" for LA's now-venerable Company of Angels, Pavel Cerny is tackling the classic again at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks. This time around, Cerny has shifted the action forward some eight or nine decades to take place in the Perestroika era of the mid- to late...

Early on in Fin Kennedy's play "How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found," a doctor diagnoses young London advertising account executive Charlie (Brad Culver) as suffering from depression. But "I don't think the problem lies with me," Charlie insists. "I think things might genuinely be shit."

If you love old Jews telling jokes, you'll like the first act of Goodbye, Louie...Hello, the late TV comedy writer Allan Manings's play about a pair of old-time comics. Back in the golden age of live television, Louie (Alan Freeman) was a big star and Benjy (an excellent Steve Franken) was his frequent sidekick. Now that they're...

Lamenting that we live in a “magic-less time,” quirky old Zak and his perky old wife Eva harness ancient spiritual powers to bring two lovers together and stave off environmental destruction in Anthony F. Cronin’s new play, Come Sundown, at the Ruskin Group Theatre.

Most boy-meets-girl comedies don't really explore the science that underlies the romantic chemistry between their two lead lovebirds. But since both the boy and the girl in Keith Huff's endearing new play, Pursued by Happiness, are Eli Lilly company biochemists, we do learn that according to one theory, at least, we're all neurologically hardwired to let happiness catch up with us at some point.

Ivana Milicevic and Amanda Detmer (Photo: Kurt Boetcher) What do you do if you get an e-mail from a stranger in distress who just came into a huge inheritance, but urgently needs your help secreting the money away from menacing political or family figures? Of course, you'll be rewarded with a generous cut of the proceeds yourself if you're willing to do the right thing and take part in the plan. Obviously you e-mail...

Benjamin Burdick's Jan takes those old records off the shelf (photo: Jordana Burn) Truth, love, and the potent spirit of Syd Barrett triumph over lies, hatred, and the dull memory of Gustav Husak in Rock'N'Roll, Tom Stoppard's great play about the long era of totalitarian torpor in Czechoslovakia between the Soviet invasion in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution over two decades later. Since its premiere in London in 2006 and on Broadway the following...