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Tony Frankel

  • CD Review: BACK TO MY ROOTS (Kate Rockwell)

    By Tony Frankel | June 27, 2018
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    SCHOOL OF ROCKWELL So when was the last time you put on an album and found yourself regretting that it was over too fast? …found yourself in love with every track? …found it immediately accessible, entertaining, funny, smart, and professional? …found a CD that will please millennials, their parents AND their grandparents? Well, Kate Rockwell…

  • CD Review: MY FAIR LADY (2018 Broadway Cast)

    By Tony Frankel | June 24, 2018
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    BETTER THAN FAIR As musical revivals went from a few nostalgic productions in the 1970s to the ubiquity of resurrections we see today — both from the Golden Age (Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein) and later (Lloyd Weber, Sondheim) — it wasn’t enough to just present them as written.  Guys and Dolls (1992, with Nathan Lane),  How to…

  • Theater Review: SWEET CHARITY (Reprise 2.0)

    By Tony Frankel | June 23, 2018
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    SWEETER THE SECOND TIME AROUND It’s like kicking a puppy dog to dislike Charity Hope Valentine. Charity is the heroine of the 1966 musical Sweet Charity — a strange amalgam of high hopes and low blows. The show once made famous by Gwen Verdon’s slinkiness and Bob Fosse’s choreography is pocked with terrific tunes by…

  • Los Angeles Theater Review: THE HUMANS (National Tour at the Ahmanson Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | June 22, 2018
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    ALL TOO HUMAN Stephen Karam’s remarkable Tony-winning play  The Humans  — which is winding up its national tour at the Ahmanson with members of the Broadway production   — begins with Erik Blake (the excellent Reed Birney, reprising his Tony-winning performance) standing on the upper level of a shabby, half-dark basement/ground-floor tenement duplex, holding two bags of groceries,…

  • Los Angeles Theater Review: PARADE (3-D Theatricals)

    By Tony Frankel | June 21, 2018
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    DON’T LET THIS PARADE PASS YOU BY With no intentions of reviewing, I attended 3-D Theatricals’ astounding rendition of Parade,  bookwriter Alfred Uhry and composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown’s emotionally pile-driving musical that reprises an ugly tragedy. I have been begging folks to see this Broadway-caliber outing — it closes Sunday Jun 24 — but heard this…

  • Music Review: DIANA ROSS SINGS MEMORIES WITH THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL ORCHESTRA

    By Tony Frankel | June 20, 2018
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    MISS ROSS REVIVED MEMORIES, BUT DIDN’T BOWL US OVER Last Saturday was an unusually grey and chilly night for June. Unfortunately, the program for  the opening night of the Hollywood Bowl’s 2018 season was as mild as the weather. I suppose it’s enough that the event raised  more than $1.75 million for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s educational…

  • Theater Review: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)

    By Tony Frankel | June 20, 2018
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    ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH Eugene O’Neill twice turned his troubled youth into all-absorbing drama. His family first appeared as a happy tangle of eccentric loved ones in Ah, Wilderness!, a halcyon 1933 comedy that revealed no greater family rifts than a generation gap and a father’s worry about his son’s preference for “decadent” poets….

  • Theater Review: CULT OF LOVE (IAMA Theatre Company in Atwater Village)

    By Tony Frankel | June 18, 2018
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    ON CONFORMING AND CHRIST Ah, what better fodder for drama is there than the dysfunctional American family? You know the ingredients: accusations hurled back and forth by the walking wounded; recriminations for offenses committed years before; and — for good measure — a reunion with plenty of alcohol and mental illness. With her  Cult of Love,…

  • Music Review: CONSIDERING MATTHEW SHEPARD (Ford Amphitheatre)

    By Tony Frankel | June 16, 2018
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    BREAKING DOWN FENCES An American requiem, an oratorio, and a choral masterpiece elegantly and movingly performed, Considering Matthew Shepard, which closes tonight at the Ford Amphitheatre, is not to be missed. The full-length work — containing hymns, Western music, spirituals, and other Copeland-esque evocations of American compositions — certainly mourns and honors Shepard, the twenty-year-old…

  • Theater Review: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (After Hours Theatre Company in Burbank)

    By Tony Frankel | June 14, 2018
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    FLY TO THIS NEST Boy oh boy, if you like immersive theater, than check yourself into the madhouse over in Burbank. When the rebellious, charismatic and playful Randle McMurphy gets reassigned from penal labor on a prison farm to assessment as an asylum inmate, he gathers that the mental institution will be a more lenient…

  • Theater Review: AS WE BABBLE ON (East West Players)

    By Tony Frankel | June 12, 2018
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    SORRY TO BURST YOUR BABBLE In this unfortunate world premiere, the winsome cast begins with angry pessimistic post-millennial Benji (Will Choi), an Asian-American comic book artist whose boss — not seeing a need for the twentysomething’s Asian Superhero — has given a well-deserved promotion to a white dude instead. Benji wants to self-publish his character…

  • Dance Preview: LULA WASHINGTON DANCE THEATRE (Ford Amphitheatre)

    By Tony Frankel | June 7, 2018
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    LULA’S BACK IN TOWN The Ford Theatres presents Lula Washington Dance Theatre (LWDT) on Friday, June 8 at 8:30pm, as part of its IGNITE @ the FORD! series. For this joyous evening of dance, three renowned choreographers — Kyle Abraham (“Hallowed”), Rennie Harris (“Reign”) and David Roussève (“Enough”) — will have their work performed by…

  • Dance Preview: SPECTACULAR BALANCHINE! (American Contemporary Ballet in Los Angeles)

    By Tony Frankel | June 6, 2018
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    HAVING A BALL WITH BALANCHINE By the time of his death on April 30, 1983, George Balanchine had created over 400 works and was recognized as a 20th-century master alongside Picasso and Stravinsky. American Contemporary Ballet’s Artistic Director Lincoln Jones has already shown a profound ken for all things Balanchine with his original works that…

  • Los Angeles Theater Review: CABARET (Celebration Theatre in Hollywood)

    By Tony Frankel | June 5, 2018
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    COME TO THIS CABARET Aside from the fact that it will sell out quickly, there are a number of reasons to rush out and get tickets for Celebration Theatre’s revival of  Cabaret. First of all, this is 2018, and a better time to see  Cabaret  could not be imagined. That may be 1929 Berlin at the dawn of…

  • Music Preview: 2018 PLAYBOY JAZZ FESTIVAL (The Hollywood Bowl)

    By Tony Frankel | June 2, 2018
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    THIS FESTIVAL IS ALL ABOUT PLAY, BOY OK, you’ve heard about it for years. But now you’re ready to take the plunge (and you should be) to attend the world famous Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. These two marathon days, June 9 & 10, 2018, can seem a bit intimidating, so let me…

  • Theater Review: THE COLOR PURPLE (National Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | May 30, 2018
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    WHILE HARDLY REVELATIONAL, A REVVED-UP REVIVAL BECOMES RELATABLE It’s a miracle. After seeing the original 2005 musical adaption, it seemed that nothing could fix this show.  But then  The Color Purple  met director John Doyle, who made a name for himself by reinventing musicals by eliminating choruses and having actors often playing instruments in lieu of an orchestra,…

  • CD Review: THE PRINCE OF BROADWAY (Original Broadway Cast Recording)

    By Tony Frankel | May 22, 2018
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    CELEBRATING BROADWAY ROYALTY When I tell you that the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the revue covering Harold Prince’s oeuvre mostly works, it’s an enormous compliment. For here you have seven decades of the most voluminous career in the American Musical Theater crammed into one evening’s entertainment. Taking into account that Prince has produced or…

  • Theater Review: VIOLET (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)

    By Tony Frankel | May 21, 2018
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    NO SHY VIOLET Based on The Ugliest Pilgrim, a short story by Doris Betts, Violet — with book and lyrics by Brian Crawley and music by Jeanine Tesori — takes place in 1964 and follows the 25-year-old Violet (Claire Adams) as she travels by bus from her home in the hills of North Carolina all…

  • CD Review: OSCAR, WITH LOVE (Various Artists)

    By Tony Frankel | May 20, 2018
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    OSCAR, WITH LOVE AND BEAUTY AND RESPECT AND… It’s a simple idea that could easily have caused higgledy-piggledy results. In fact, many tribute albums involving various artists contain tracks that are jarringly inconsistent and smack of commercialism. Not so here. Kelly Peterson, the widow of Oscar Peterson (1925-2007), personally produced this extraordinary three-disc set which…

  • Theater Review: THE GIANT VOID IN MY SOUL (Ammunition Theatre Company at Pico Playhouse)

    By Tony Frankel | May 20, 2018
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    FILLING THE VOID IN L.A. THEATER Neither my friend nor I were looking forward to this play — I mean, good grief, when I heard that it was about a couple of “fools” going on a journey to fill the void in one of the best friend’s soul… Well, frankly, it just sounded like forgettable,…

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