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Tony Frankel
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Highly Recommended Dance: ANNA KARENINA (Joffrey Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler in L.A.)
LEO TOLSTOY TURNED TO LEAPS AND TWIRLS IN THIS NARRATIVE BALLET MILESTONE FROM JOFFREY BALLET, COMING TO L.A. JUNE 21–23, 2024 With a brand new score created by 39-year-old wunderkind Ukrainian-born composer Ilya Demutsky, who replenishes the rhapsodic romanticism of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and genius choreographer Yuri Possokhov, who finds new depths in dance, Anna…
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Jazz Concert: SAMARA JOY (McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs)
A JOY TO BEHOLD COMES TO MCCALLUM ONE NIGHT ONLY, SATURDAY JUNE 15 AT 8 The jazz world has been abuzz about the 24-year-old New Yorker Samara Joy since she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2019, and rightfully so. After releasing her eponymous debut album and then her first album with Verve…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret: WILL HE LIKE ME? (Phillip Chaffin at Coachella Valley Repertory in Palm Springs)
PHILLIP CHAFFIN’S 2018 ALBUM WILL HE LIKE ME? BECOMES A FULL-LENGTH STAGE SHOW Philip Chaffin, who has the perfect honeyed baritone for those swanky musicals of the 20s and 30s, embarked on an adventure that was rather trailblazing when his 2018 album Will He Like Me? came out (so to speak). (See my review.) It’s…
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Theater Announcement: SUGAR DADDY (Sam Morrison at The Wallis in Beverly Hills and Broadway)
Sugar Daddy, a new production of comedian and actor Sam Morrison’s hilariously funny, unexpectedly moving one-man show, will play the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills September 20-October 13, 2024 prior to Broadway in 2025. The production will be directed by Tony Award nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Stephen Brackett (Broadway: A Strange Loop). One…
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Highly Recommended Music: WORLD ORCHESTRA WEEK [WOW!] (Carnegie Hall)
HOT CLASSICAL AUGUST NIGHTS AT CARNEGIE HALL WITH YOUNG MUSICIANS FROM AROUND THE WORLD Sick of hearing nothing but bad news about our world? Wanna be inspired? Well, there is good news out there in the world, and it’s coming to Carnegie Hall when hundreds of teen instrumentalists from around the globe come together in…
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Theater Review: TURRET (A Red Orchid at Chopin Theatre)
MICHAEL SHANNON STARS IN A TANTALIZING TURRET If you had to define the word turret, what would an easy definition be? Well, I love castles, so I know a turret was often the corner where a guard could be positioned. But a turret is also that rotating structure you’ve seen in Star Wars on the…
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Theater Review: TWELFTH NIGHT (Actors Co-op)
A TWIN-TWIN PRODUCTION In Elizabethan England the entertainments that closed the Christmas season (the Twelfth day) completed the festivities with a topsy-turvy role reversal, peasants pretending to be princes, the sexes switching appearances. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with its disguised lovers and mistaken identities ’” and Actors Co-op’s color-blind, gender-fluid revival ’” honor this irreverence. Love, especially in…
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Music Review: VíKINGUR ÒLAFSSON: THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS (Colburn Recital at Disney Hall)
FINDING GOLD IN GOLDBERG VI once said in a review of pianist Víkingur í“lafsson that if you want to see a modern-day Glenn Gould-like master at the keys, here’s your chance. Well, the test really came the other night when í“lafsson returned to Disney Hall for his rendition of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which many claim…
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Recommended Theater: MY WHITE HUSBAND (Moving Arts)
World Premiere at Moving Arts Theatre The world-premiere of Leviticus Jelks’ debut play, My White Husband, directed by Melissa Coleman-Reed, opens May 18 in Los Angeles at the Moving Arts Theatre (previews May 16 and 17). Excitement turns to doubt ’” and modern reality blurs into retro fantasy ’” when young screenwriter, Omar, gets his pilot picked up…
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Film Restoration and Screening: TIME OF THE HEATHEN [1961] (directed by Peter Kass)
4K Restoration Nationwide Screenings Include May 10 in NY at Film at Lincoln Center (Opening) and May 12 in LA at the American Cinematheque Emerging from the void, mysterious drifter Gaunt (The Sting’s John Heffernan) wanders the upstate countryside in a daze with only his bible for company. But after happening upon the murder of…
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Highly Recommended Album: DEEP SEA VENTS (BrhyM [Bruce Hornsby and yMusic] via Zappo Productions/Thirty Tigers
BrhyM, a portmanteau of Bruce Hornsby and the experimental chamber ensemble yMusic, have released their debut album, Deep Sea Vents. released March, 2024. Distinctive, harmonic, inventive, playful, and wholly accessible with astounding orchestrations and fun vocals, the album contains 10 songs about water and the ways we live with, in, or against it, Deep Sea…
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Theater Review: HITLER’S TASTERS (Rogue Machine)
MEAN GIRLS MEETS THE THIRD REICH Three teenage girls sit at a table in a bunker of some kind bored out of their minds tasting food three times a day before it is sent off to Hitler. They have clearly been convinced that this job is a privilege, for if one should die of poisoning…
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Theater Review: GUN & POWDER (Paper Mill Playhouse)
ONCE ON THIS PRAIRIE Developed at Signature Theatre in Virginia, the new musical Gun & Powder has stormed into Paper Mill Playhouse with enough energy to light the Manhattan skyline. The book and lyrics by Angelica Chéri are based upon truth and legend that have been passed down like the telephone game since 1893: Mary…
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Extras: A BIG BROTHER STYLE CHALLENGE, BUT FOR ONLINE POKER
Kevin Martin, a professional poker player and former Big Brother Canada contestant embarked on an ambitious challenge. He seems to be going back to his TV roots, but throwing his current career into the mix. What he did captured the attention of the poker world and anyone with a bit of curiosity about the game….
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Off-Broadway Review: TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE (Sea Dog Theater at St. George’s Episcopal Church)
A COLOSSAL LEN CARIOU MAKES ANY DAY A GOOD DAY FOR TUESDAYS I have seen many a famous performer hit the stage in their senior years with a cabaret or theater performance, something I usually regret as my memories of the youthful vigorous actor is now replaced with a sad remembrance of a once-cherished star…
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Highly Recommended Album: MY FAVORITE THINGS: THE RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN 80TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT (Concord Theatricals)
The 42-track live recording of My Favorite Things: The Rodgers & Hammerstein 80th Anniversary Concert will be released on double CD and digital platforms worldwide on Friday, May 31. The star-studded new album is now available to preorder on CD HERE. Audra McDonald Celebrating the historic partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the album features iconic…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret Theater: TIERGARTEN (Death of Classical at the Great Hall under St. Mary’s Church)
WEIMAR, YOU ASK? HERE’S THE ANSWER Cabaret the musical, opening on Broadway in a transformed theater, may sound exciting, but here’s a highly recommended event for those who crave complete immersion in a 1920s Berlin Speakeasy with period-themed food and drinks, vintage dress, and more. In partnership with Carnegie Hall as part of their Weimar…
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Highly Recommended Album: HERE WE ARE (Original Cast Recording from Concord Theatricals)
HERE IT IS The Original Cast Recording of Here We Are, the new musical from David Ives and Stephen Sondheim, will be released on CD and digital platforms worldwide on Friday, May 17, 2024. The album will be available on 2-LP, 180g baby blue vinyl on Friday, September 6 on Concord Theatricals Recordings. And I couldn’t be happier because, if for…
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Music Review: CAMERATA PACIFICA (March 2024 Program)
STRING THEORY Arnold Schoenberg‘s Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement composed in 1899. Love him or hate him (some of his challenging later music is impenetrably inaccessible given his twelve-tone technique), there are times when Schoenberg’s system of composition can reach through your soul, creating an otherworldly sound….
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Music Concert Review: MAGIC HOUR IN LOS ANGELES: AMERICA’S CULTURAL RENAISSANCE OF 1974 (MUSE/IQUE at the Mark Taper Forum)
1974: THE YEAR THAT WAS Still haven’t heard of MUSE/IQUE, Los Angeles? I first discovered this prestigious outfit in 2012 on stage at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in a program called Ebony Meets Ivory, a celebration of the piano. Since then, I have thrilled at dozens of MUSE/IQUE events, and they just get more and…
Off-Broadway Review: THE MAIDS (St. Ann’s Warehouse / Brooklyn)
by Gregory Fletcher | May 27, 2026
in New York, TheaterTheater Review: AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (TimeLine Theatre / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | May 27, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterTheater Review: LE BAL (Trap Door Theatre / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | May 26, 2026
in Chicago, Theater
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