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Tony Frankel
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: PIPE DREAM (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
A DREAM TO SEE THIS MUSICAL As Musical Theatre West will no doubt prove on Sunday, March 12 at 7, even a flop Rodgers and Hammerstein musical has its surefire appeal. Get ready to discover a score that was lost on the American public because the show itself was a turkey. With a live 14-piece orchestra,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: IPHIGENIA IN AULIS (Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades)
AULIS WELL AT THE GETTY Check out the production of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis by Chicago’s Court Theatre, and you’ll see why I rave about theater in the Windy City. Guided by the scholarship of translator Nicholas Rudall (founding artistic director of Court Theatre from 1971 to 1994), director Charles Newell has crafted a powerful…
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Los Angeles Opera Preview: CARMEN (LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
AN EXTRA PERFORMANCE AND A SIMULCAST: SHE JUST KEEPS ON GIVING This isn’t the first time LA Opera has opened a season with Carmen, but it is the first time that ticket sales are so great that an extra performance has been added before performances began. The run remains as September 7 through October 1,…
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San Diego Theater Preview: LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS (North Coast Rep in Solana Beach)
HE WHO LAUGHS AT LAST LAUGHS BEST Barney Cashman is a neurotic, shlubby, well-intentioned if somewhat misguided seafood restaurateur who feels his life and marriage have become too predictable, and attempts to spice both up with some hot action on the side. He sets up a makeshift bachelor pad at his ma’s place while she’s…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ (La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts)
IN HARLEM’S WAY “One never knows, do one?” That’s the favorite catchphrase of Fats Waller (1904-1943), an irrepressible master of music. The 285-pound, cherubic-cheeked jokester genius is the powerhouse presence and driving dreamer behind Ain’t Misbehavin’, the still irresistible 1978 tribute revue from Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr. In this happy case, well, one do…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: CARMINA BURANA & CHICHESTER PSALMS (Los Angeles Master Chorale on September 23 & 24, 2017, at Disney Hall)
WHERE DO YOU GET ORFF..? There are some entertainments that bear repeating: Los Angeles Master Chorale has visited Carl Orff’s pagan-fest, Carmina Burana, under each of their music directors, but the splendid, massive, exultant and squeaky-clean rendering four years ago under Grant Gershon made me want to toss off my clothes and march triumphantly towards my smoke-filled sky of destiny,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: RHINOCEROS (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice)
LIFE IS AN ABSURD BUSINESS It’s an absurdist masterwork, yet it is rarely produced in the States. A disquieting parable which warns against herd mentality, Eugène Ionesco’s three-act play is a boiling-hot indictment of fascism, written in 1959 on the heels of WWII and the McCarthy hearings. The denizens of a French town transform one-by-one…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: PINK MARTINI WITH CHINA FORBES & STORM LARGE, AND CHARO (Hollywood Bowl)
PINK MARTINI—I SAY “YES”! The last time I saw Pink Martini play the Hollywood Bowl, I was already wired after hearing them brilliantly execute an extended song list covering at least a dozen styles of music sung in eight different languages. But then this everlasting gobstopper of music turned the Hollywood Bowl into a festive…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV & RACHMANINOFF’S THIRD CONCERTO (LA Phil, Krzysztof Urbański conductor, at the Hollywood Bowl)
DO NOT MISS BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL THIS WEEK Pianist Behzod Abduraimov is coming to the Hollywood Bowl this Tuesday August 15, 2017, so prepare yourself for one of the world’s greatest pianists. In fact, the in-demand, rightfully popular 26-year-old Uzbek pianist, who was born in Tashkent in 1990 just before the collapse of…
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CD Review: TULIP FEVER (Soundtrack by Danny Elfman on Sony Classical)
DIM BULB I’m a big Tom Stoppard fan, so I was thrilled to hear that he adapted Deborah Moggarch’s novel Tulip Fever, and that it was set to be filmed. But that was 2004. Then after plenty of stops and starts and recasting and studio changes, filming finally wrapped on the historical drama, directed by…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
IT WONDERS ME It’s uncanny that ever since Roger Bean wrote and directed this asinine jukebox musical in 1999, it’s lightweight nostalgia factor and updated arrangements of 50s and 60s tunes keeps packing them in from coast to coast. Since The Marvelous Wonderettes was clearly designed to appeal to an older crowd seeking sentimentalism (a…
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CD Review: IRVING BERLIN’S HOLIDAY INN (Original Broadway Cast on Ghostlight Records)
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE OK, let’s get the confusion out of the way. If you’re not at all familiar with the Paramount films Holiday Inn and White Christmas, listening to the just-released Original Broadway Cast album Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn (which had a short stint on Broadway in 2016) could be a pleasant enough experience first time…
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San Diego Theater Preview: KEN LUDWIG’S ROBIN HOOD! (The Old Globe)
THE GLOBE GOES BACK INTO THE WOODS Ken Ludwig is arguably the leading comic dramatist in the American theater, and with Robin Hood! he has fashioned an extraordinary new take on the legend, commissioned by The Old Globe in San Diesgo. The story remains popular because at its core its a moving tale of a young man’s…
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San Diego Theater Preview: PIPPIN (San Diego Junior Theatre at the Casa del Prado Theatre)
DON’T BE SKIPPIN’ PIPPIN Here’s a can’t-miss opportunity: San Diego Junior Theatre is presenting the perky but dark 1972 musical, Pippin. Don’t be fooled by the moniker “Junior Theatre,” for these shows are just as slick as one with adult performers. For a small ticket price, head over to the beautiful Casa del Prado Theatre…
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Theater Review: PARADE (Chance Theater)
SEE IT BEFORE THIS PARADE PASSES YOU BY The emotionally pile-driving Parade by bookwriter Alfred Uhry and composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown reprises an ugly and evergreen tragedy. Their driven musical chronicles the reflexive racism that, a century ago, doomed a suspect stranger, Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-born Jew in 1914 Atlanta. Here the bigotry is anti-Semitism, a xenophobia…
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Los Angeles Theater/Music Review: SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM (Hollywood Bowl)
A GOOD THING GOING; GOING, GOING… Sondheim on Sondheim, which had a short run on Broadway in 2010, offers both songs and personal musings from one of Broadway’s greatest composer/lyricists. Roundabout Theater Company’s inside look is rich with the stories behind the songs, new arrangements for old favorites, a few medleys, and some obscure tunes….
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Los Angeles Music Preview: THE BRIAN SETZER ORCHESTRA – 25th ANNIVERSARY SHOW! (Hollywood Bowl)
SWINGIN’ AND ROCKIN’ THE BLUES AWAY AT THE BOWL Wait a minute. Hold on. If the Brian Setzer Orchestra’”which pumps joy into the blood of both rabid fans and newcomers thirsty for a good time’”is celebrating its 25th anniversary at the Hollywood Bowl next week (August 2, 2017 at 8), then that means Setzer has…
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San Diego Theater Review: GUYS AND DOLLS (The Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage)
A FEW BLEMISHES CAN’T MAR THIS BEAUTIFUL DOLL It’s amazing. Were this masterpiece from Broadway’s golden age an actual guy or doll, he or she would be scoring Social Security. But make no mistake, this 1950 hoofer is no worse for the wear, thanks to Frank Loesser’s timeless score and Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows’…
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Los Angeles Music Review: ELLA AND DIZZY: 100 YEARS, 1,000 MEMORIES (Hollywood Bowl)
JAZZ SO HOT, IT MADE ME DIZZY The air was pure celebration at a crowded Hollywood Bowl Wednesday night as folks came from near and far to celebrate two of jazz’s greatest talents: Vocalist Ella Fitzgerald and trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, both of whom would be celebrating their 100th birthday this year. For the…
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London Theatre Preview: ANGELS IN AMERICA (National Theatre Live Screening)
ANGELS IN AMERICA APPROACHES In two sprawling works written in the 1980’s, Tony Kushner brought alive the American national scene of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, mixing raw naturalism with fantasy, dreams, visions, and hallucinations. It was, and remains today, a dazzling achievement that’s worth every minute of nearly eight hours of cumulative playing time….
Theater Review: ST. NICHOLAS (Black Button Eyes / City Lit / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | July 3, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterFAST PAYOUT CASINOS USA 2026 — 5 BEST INSTANT WITHDRAWAL CASINOS RANKED
by Michael Carr | July 3, 2026
in ExtrasTheater Review: MEN OF SOUL (Black Ensemble Theater / Chicago)
by Mitchell Oldham | July 1, 2026
in Chicago, Theater
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