Los Angeles

REAL THING I hate it when people talk about the need to “support” a good cause. Guilt is simply bad salesmanship. It kills it for me. It killed Save-the-Whales, and it sure didn’t work in time for Cecil the Lion. I heard part of a KPFK pledge-drive recently that demanded a weep-track to underscore its…

UNWIELDY TRIAD The trifecta of performers at the Hollywood Bowl last night was given a strange reaction by the well-attended crowd. Whether it was during the sets of soulstress Lisa Fischer, funk/jazz trio Soulive, or big-band innovator Jaime Cullum, the inordinate amount of talking, moving, boisterous, and cell-phone playing patrons astounded me. I think that…

AND NOW, WITH FURTHER ADO: Not only is it one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but Much Ado About Nothing contains a favorite character: Dogberry. This bumbling constable arrives much later in the play than the famous sparring couple’”Beatrice and Benedick’”and adds an enormous amount of comic energy to a play that is already awash…

THE HOLY GRAIL OF SILLINESS It’s been 40 years since the release of the landmark comedy film  Monty Python and the Holy Grail and 33 years since the British sketch comedy troupe  recorded Live at the Hollywood Bowl. The two events collided last night when the 2005  Broadway musical Spamalot, which original Python member Eric Idle “lovingly ripped…

THE FUTURE LOOKS LIGHT For almost 40 years, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang. Performers showcase material that arises from improvisation workshops; their weekly shows range from all-improv to all-sketches and anywhere in-between. The current sketch comedy offering…

FEINSTEIN & FRANK: THE BEST IS YET TO COME Of all the Michael Feinstein Pasadena POPS concerts so far, my favorite was last year’s presentation of Gershwin songs’”and it wasn’t because of the selections or Feinstein’s history with George’s brother Ira as friend and archivist. It was because Feinstein set aside the conductor’s baton and…

GIRLFRIEND, PLEASE! While it’s being sold as a rock musical, Todd Almond’s gay two-hander is really a play; the  songs from Matthew Sweet’s 1991 breakout album Girlfriend  are indiscriminately tossed into the script as filler. Take away the music and you’re left with a very small coming-of-age tale ideal for a Fringe Festival, maybe, but certainly not…

SUCCESS You have had at least one dream in which the universe of potential joy is realized in a moment. The moment is ethereal and tangible, in the way of dreams. For me this dream is always of a kiss. In the dream I am young and the girl I am going to kiss is…

SYNTHETICS AND STRUCTURE Excelling at stage picture, Jaime Robledo sets a lot of toys in motion in Sacred Fools’ latest offering, recently extended into  August. Robledo’s direction of Natsu Onoda Power’s 2011 spectacle Astro Boy and the God of Comics features scrims and screens, puppets, projections, live actors and plain old pen and paper, all interacting…

RHYMES WITH SIEVE In her play Shiv, the third part of an immigrant-experience trilogy first workshopped in 2013, Aditi Brennan Kapil writes of a character (played by Monika Jolly) named after a Hindu god most widely known as an agent of destruction. The girl’s troubled relationship with her poet father, and her subsequent involvement with…

THE DROUGHT ENDS THIS WEEKEND You may know the term “Jukebox Musical” from the ridiculous amount of new Broadway musicals which take previously published songs’”most often popular hits that audiences will recognize’”and squeeze them into a new libretto. The sad truth is that even the dumbest of books is tolerated for rabid fans of the…

THE AMERICANS Tracy Letts wrote a bleak comedy in 2007 that sold a lot of tickets, won a bunch of prizes and ensured his writing career at least a footnote in the big books. August: Osage County is about three generations of a familiarly fucked-up American family – you got your moral weakness, your addiction,…

THE PYROTECHNICS AFTER THE FOURTH OF JULY As if the blazing heat wave last week wasn’t enough of an indication that summer is upon us, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is opening the first week of its classical season at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s still tough to beat the communal experience of sitting under the stars…