Los Angeles

MARRIED TO SONDHEIM When I first saw Marry Me A Little in the mid-1980s, it was a revelation. But not because of the story. This revue uses trunk songs of Stephen Sondheim, songs which–at that time–were relatively unknown (many have since been performed in the show they came from (Saturday Night) or at any given…

WHAT A DOG The term “Dog Days” refers to the hottest period of the year, the sultry part of summer when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises in unison with the sun. It’s a time marked by sluggishness. Opera is going through its own dog days in which the majority of new works I’ve seen are…

HITCHES IN EXECUTION In his latest one-hour act, Simon Coronel divides the world into three categories: people who want to know how a magic trick is done, people who don’t want to know, and people who don’t care. I’m in category two: I want the suspension of my disbelief to be total and continuous. I…

I WOULDN’T MOUSE IT FOR THE WORLD Saturday June 13 is one of those magic days for entertainment choices in Los Angeles. Along with theater, dance, opera, the L.A. Film Festival and the Hollywood Fringe Festival, classic film is represented across town in classic movie palaces. Chaplin’s masterpiece City Lights is showing at the beautiful…

HAROLD THE CONQUERING HERO Harold Pinter wasn’t an Ivory Tower practitioner who won a Nobel for writing twenty-nine shocking plays about morality and five or six books of rather precious poetry. He was a professional writer who also typed up (get my salts!) almost thirty movies, including some of the gold standard screenplays for literacy…

THE UNEXPECTED CUE Yasmina Reza is the most internationally popular playwright France has produced in a long time; certainly since Jean Genet, possibly since Molière. Her 1994 play Art, in which three friends debate the value of a white canvas, ran for eight years in London; when’s the last time Tartuffe did that? 2007’s adults-are-just-big-children…

THEATER OF WHAT THE FUCK As an impresario and creative force, the man who calls himself Zombie Joe is the envy of the North Hollywood arts scene. Largely on the remarkable popularity of Urban Death, its signature show now in the tenth incarnation since 2005, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group operates year-round out of an…

RULIER THAN THOU I came to this show in a bad mood and left in a better one, which is as much praise as I can heap on a one-woman show about identity issues. There’s no theatrical fauna I want more sincerely to see on the endangered list, and none that looks less likely to…

THE CRAGS OF DELIVERANCE If bad reviews are the flattest line my pen can draw, a steppe of the imagination that writes its unsurprising self, a good review is the Caucasus. To critique Impro Theatre requires ice boots spiked with inked nibs. Frankly I’ve become fearful of seeing this company scale the heights of artistry,…

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT It was one of those magical evenings in the theater that shall live with me forever. When Kulunka Teatro’s André & Dorine appeared at the Los Angeles Theatre Center for only three performances back in September, 2012, I considered myself among the lucky few privileged enough to have witnessed such…

AN ABUNDANCE OF DANZA In 1994, Tania Pérez-Salas founded Compaí±í­a de Danza in Mexico City. Since then, her company has become unrivaled in the arena of Mexican contemporary dance, and Pérez-Salas has not only proven herself to be Mexico’s premiere contemporary choreographer, but her troupe has made many global appearances. Thanks to Glorya Kaufman Presents…

MUSICALS LIKE THIS OCCUR  ONCE EVERY 100 YEARS In 1947, when Brigadoon confirmed the mutual genius of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, timing was everything: A second global conflict had just ended, leaving in its wake postwar angst and searing doubts that the millions of deaths had made no difference. Hoping that faith could move…

IN HARLEM’S WAY We never meet the titular Our Lady of 121st Street, a no-nonsense New York nun who had a profound effect on the characters in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2003 play. Nor do we meet, as it were, the plot. At rise, a middle-aged boxer shorts-wearing white man’”his suit is conspicuously missing the pants’”stands…

LUMBER Workshopped once onstage in 2000, Stephen Fechter’s The Woodsman had its play form set aside while Fechter and director Nicole Kassell turned it into a screenplay that won the 2001 Slamdance screenwriting competition. The 2004 film was about as good as most movies starring Kevin Bacon, whose luck cruelly runs out every time he…

THE SUM OF THESE Pí„RTS It really was a bit of a revelation. I was always interested in choral music, from Barbershop four-part harmonies to the more intricate passages of Tallis, but I distinctly remember the thrill when first I heard the work of the modern Estonian composer Arvo Pårt. A friend popped a cassette…

COMMERCIAL WITHOUT COMMERCIALS Imagine if the ‘70s sitcom Good Times did not hit TV until 2007. Now imagine a 3-episode arc about the coming out of a black man who brings his white boyfriend home for his brother’s wedding. Toss into the racial and gay humor some dysfunctional family drama revelations and old-fashioned sight gags,…