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Michael M. Landman-Karny
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Theater Review: EUREKA DAY (Pasadena Playhouse)
OUTBREAK OF MANNERS: WHEN POLITENESS TURNS CONTAGIOUS The play begins with a picture of composure. Five parents sit at a polished library table in a progressive private school in Berkeley. They lean forward, nodding with exquisite concern, and speak in the gentle cadences of inclusivity. Words like “shared narrative” and “holding space” float through the…
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Concert Review: CANDLELIGHT: THE BEST OF JOE HISAISHI (Richard Nixon Library & Museum, Yorba Linda)
THE MINIATURIZATION OF MAGIC At the Candlelight concert in The Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, devoted to Joe Hisaishi‘s Studio Ghibli scores, I found myself contemplating the curious alchemy by which music transforms, or fails to transform, when moved from one context to another. The evening, presented by Fever in a ballroom (replicating the…
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Theater Review: THE HEART (La Jolla Playhouse)
THEATRICAL ARRHYTHMIA La Jolla Playhouse has always been fairly adventurous in its programming, but its latest premiere chooses a subject that feels less like theatrical fodder than a medical case study. A human heart travels from the body of a dead teenager to a waiting recipient, and along the way the audience is asked to…
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Opera Review: PAGLIACCI (Pacific Opera Project)
OPERA WITHOUT WALLS: VERISMO IN THE PARK Pacific Opera Project opened Pagliacci into the open air of Heritage Square Park last night, and the result was a strangely festive collision of carnival and tragedy. The evening began like a neighborhood fair. Families spread blankets on the grass, food vendors served slices of pizza, and a…
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Film Review: WEAPONS (directed by Zach Cregger; streaming September 9, 2025)
A POST-COVID AMERICAN FABLE Children run through darkness with their arms spread wide, security cameras recording their strange exodus from suburban bedrooms. They move with purpose toward something unseen, almost like a game of make-believe that’s gotten out of hand. By morning, an entire classroom has vanished, leaving behind parents who scream at anyone within…
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Album Review: SONG OF THE BIRDS (Avi Avital with Between Worlds Ensemble)
Mediterranean Synthesis and the Mandolin’s New Territory The mandolin hovers at the edge of respectability in contemporary classical music, neither fish nor fowl, too folksy for Carnegie Hall, too precious for the village taverna. Avi Avital refuses the categorization. His Song of the Birds presents twenty tracks that work as musical archaeology, uncovering connections that…
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Concert Review: BOOK OF AYRES (Cécile McLorin Salvant and Sullivan Fortner at The Baker-Baum Concert Hall in La Jolla)
CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT AT THE CROSSROADS OF CENTURIES The stage offered only a microphone and harpsichord when Cécile McLorin Salvant began Purcell’s Music for a While. No fanfare, no program notes, just her voice leaning into a blues bend as Sullivan Fortner’s continuo pulsed beneath like a rhythm section. In an instant, Purcell’s London was…
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Theater Review: SHUCKED (National Tour in Hollywood)
A FIELD OF PUNS IN FULL BLOOM Corn puns are like tequila shots. A few will make you smile and loosen you up, but by the time you are ten or twelve deep you start to wonder how you got here and whether you should call a cab. The national tour of Shucked, now playing…
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Theater Review: & JULIET (National Tour in Los Angeles)
SHAKESPEARE, INTERRUPTED About five minutes into & Juliet, Juliet belts “…Baby One More Time” with such raw confusion you half-believe Britney’s lyrics might hold the secrets of the universe. It should collapse under its own absurdity, yet it lands. That is the show in miniature: ridiculous on purpose and, against the odds, brilliant. Rachel Simone…
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Highly Recommended Theater: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN YIDDISH (In Concert at The Soraya)
COMING HOME When Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway in 1964, it collected nine Tony Awards and captured the universality about families weathering change. But backstage, Zero Mostel and director Jerome Robbins were barely speaking. Their feud had roots in politics: Mostel had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, while Robbins had cooperated with the…
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Theater Review: AWAKENING THE SHOW (Wynn Las Vegas)
CRYSTAL PALACE: AWAKENING PERFECTS THE IMPERSONAL ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ It opens with darkness. Then light fractures across a sixty-foot glass stage that shouldn’t exist but does, spinning and splitting into impossible geometries while Anthony Hopkins‘ taped voice rolls through the theater like distant thunder. Awakening The Show arrives…
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Film Obituary: LALO SCHIFRIN (1932-2025)
COMPOSER OF COPS, CRIMINALS, AND COOLNESS Few musical phrases have achieved such cultural penetration as the opening bars of Mission: Impossible. The theme’s distinctive 5/4 rhythm, written by Lalo Schifrin in 1966, became sonic shorthand for covert operations, stylish danger and the promise that impossible missions might yet be accomplished. The composer, who died on…
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Theater Obituary: ROBERT WILSON (1941-2025)
VISIONARY OF STILLNESS AND LIGHT The line was always the thing. Before speech, before movement, there was line. Line as structure, line as breath, line as the actual measurement of time. In the theatre-world Wilson built and then rebuilt across five decades, a single raised eyebrow might require five full minutes to complete its journey….
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Obituary: CLEO LAINE (Jazz Singer and Theatre Actress)
A VOICE THAT SPANNED CONTINENTS AND CENTURIES The trouble with singers who insist on being versatile is that they make everyone else look lazy. Dame Cleo Laine, who died on July 24th at her home in Wavendon, England, aged 97, was particularly guilty of this sort of thing. Her nearly four-octave voice wandered from gravelly…
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London Theatre Review: STEREOPHONIC (Duke of York’s)
THEATRE TURNED ALL THE WAY UP There are moments in the theatre when everything converges: writing, performance, design, direction, and something indefinable that transforms craft into revelation. David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, now blazing through the Duke of York’s Theatre, is precisely such a moment. This isn’t simply 2024’s finest American play; it’s a seismic shift in…
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Theater Obituary: RICHARD GREENBERG (1958-2025)
A CHRONICLER OF PRIVILEGED ANXIETY In the peculiar ecosystem of American theatre—where earnestness often trumps elegance and message supersedes craft—Richard Greenberg, who passed on July 4, 2025 at 67, occupied a singular niche. His characters were the sort of people who attended the right universities, read the correct books, and still found themselves paralyzed by…
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London Theatre Review: OLIVER! (Gielgud Theatre)
BOURNE AGAIN: A MUSICAL RECLAMATION IN GLORIOUS MINOR KEY After a long absence from the West End, Oliver! has returned with the force of a Victorian street gang bursting through fog-shrouded London alleys. Matthew Bourne‘s revival of Lionel Bart‘s beloved musical at the Gielgud Theatre is nothing short of theatrical gold, a production that honors…
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London Opera Review: SEMELE (Royal Opera House)
THE SERVANT PROBLEM: OLIVER MEARS STRIPS HANDEL’S SEMELE TO ITS DISEASED CORE There’s something deeply unsettling about watching gods behave badly in a conference hotel. Oliver Mears‘ production of Handel’s Semele at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, which conquered Paris earlier this year, doesn’t just update the myth; it performs surgery on it,…
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Music Obituary: SIR ROGER NORRINGTON
THE METRONOME REVOLUTIONARY Sir Roger Norrington, who died on July 15th at the age of 90, spent his career making enemies of the right sort. Traditionalists loathed his brisk Beethoven. Period purists found his scholarship insufficiently dogmatic. Modern orchestras discovered, to their dismay, that he expected them to actually read what composers had written in…
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London Review: MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (Gillian Lynne)
WHAT THE FOREST KNOWS: TOTORO AND THE RADICAL ACT OF WONDER There’s something profoundly radical about a piece of theatre that trusts its audience to believe in wonder. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of My Neighbour Totoro, now enchanting audiences in its West End transfer at the Gillian Lynne Theatre after breaking box office records…
Theater Review: SANCTUARY CITY (Chance Theater / Anaheim)
by Michael Landman-Karney | May 11, 2026
in Los Angeles, Regional, TheaterTheater Review: SWEPT AWAY (SpeakEasy Stage at Boston Center for the Arts)
by Lynne Weiss | May 10, 2026
in Boston, TheaterTheater Review: ‘NIGHT, MOTHER (Redtwist Theatre / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | May 9, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterOff-Broadway Review: BIKE SHOP: THE MUSICAL (Theater for the New City)
by Rob Lester | May 7, 2026
in New York, TheaterTheater Review: SOMETHING ROTTEN! (Lyric Stage Company of Boston)
by Emily Brenner | May 7, 2026
in Boston, TheaterTheater Review: MJ THE MUSICAL (National Tour / San Diego)
by Dan Zeff | May 7, 2026
in Dance, Theater, Theater-San Diego, ToursTheater Review: FAULT (Chicago Shakespeare)
by Croydon Fernandes | May 7, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterTheater Review: I HATE HAMLET (Saint Sebastian Players / Chicago)
by Mitchell Oldham | May 6, 2026
in Chicago, Theater
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