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Los Angeles
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San Diego Theater Review: TIME AND THE CONWAYS (The Old Globe)
TIME IS RELATIVE FOR THE RELATIVES IN TIME J. B. Priestley’s Time and the Conways is in some ways a creaky play, yet the production at The Old Globe is so lovingly directed, thrillingly acted, and stunningly designed that I can declare with confidence it is one of the most luminous productions you may ever…
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Commentary and Regional Theater Review: THE PURPLE LIGHTS OF JOPPA ILLINOIS (World Premiere by Adam Rapp at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
DIM LIGHTS As part of its 17th Annual Pacific Playwrights Festival, South Coast Repertory presented a play by Adam Rapp. Unlike Theresa Rebeck’s Zealot and Rajiv Joseph’s Mr. Wolf, which received staged readings last weekend, Mr. Rapp’s The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois, read once at SCR’s NewSCRipts series last December, was given a fully staged…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: TASTE (Sacred Fools)
WHAT DO YOU HAVE A TASTE FOR? Six weeks before the opening of Sacred Fools’ cannibal play, one of Stage and Cinema’s writers (to whom I will assign the alias “Ethel”) asked if she could review Taste. I had not received a press release and knew nothing about it, so I let her have the…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: BACH’S CLAVIER-ÜBUNG III (Paul Jacobs at Disney Hall)
AN ORGAN-IC CONCLUSION Disney Hall’s 2013/2014 Organ Recital Series comes to a rousing conclusion on Sunday, May 4th with Johann Sebastian Bach’s most complex and demanding organ composition Clavier-Übung III (German Organ Mass). Taking command of the keys and putting the multitudinous pedals to the metal will be world renowned organist Paul Jacobs. Adding to…
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San Diego Theater Review: WATER BY THE SPOONFUL (The Old Globe)
WATER IS THE GIFT OF LIFE Water by the Spoonful is the second play in Quiara Alegria Hudes’ “Elliot Cycle,” three stand-alone plays written over an eight-year period. Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, the first in the trilogy and a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, follows the title character, a perky but troubled Puerto Rican…
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Los Angeles Music Review: LE SALON DE MUSIQUES: LA BELLE ÉPOQUE (Season Four, Concert Seven)
A BEAUTIFUL ERA IN ONE AFTERNOON There were two revelations at Le Salon de Musiques’ “La Belle Époque,” the seventh concert of its fourth season: Pianist Steven Vanhauwaert and Ernest Chausson’s Piano Trio in G minor Op. 3. First, you must understand that I have been thoroughly spoiled by this premier organization. Helmed by François…
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San Diego Theater Review: PASSION (ion theatre)
DON’T PASS ON PASSION When first I saw Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Passion on Broadway in 1994, it was clear that this shattering new work was like nothing that had come before. Simultaneously dark, refreshing, provocative, troubling, and profound, the creative team behind Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods managed to…
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Tour / Los Angeles Theater Review: THE GERSHWINS’ PORGY AND BESS (National Tour at the Ahmanson)
I LOVES YOU, STORY I grew up with Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday singing “Summertime” outside a context of which I was ignorant; I never cared much for the late Romantic tradition of which composer George Gershwin usually reminds me, and what I’d read of Porgy and Bess frightened…
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Tour / Los Angeles Theater Review: MAN IN A CASE (National Tour at the Broad in Santa Monica)
RURALITY AS A METAPHORICAL STRATEGY IN CHEKHOV: CHECK Deconstructing two Anton Chekhov short stories with a series of post-hip Director’s Theater flourishes, Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson are presently touring the 75 incredibly long minutes of Man in a Case. Familiar Chekhovian themes are investigated: of backwoods stultification, of falling to the level of one’s…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: THE DROWSY CHAPERONE (Norris Center in Palos Verdes Peninsula)
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE OPENS AT THE NORRIS Before American Musical Theater was reinvented by Oklahoma! in 1943, musical comedies were constructed piecemeal’”a comic star here, a songwriting team there, whoever was available, really. The plot was most often something to endure until the next great tune. Along with the boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl syndrome, librettos included a…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview and Interviews: AN AMERICAN SOLDIER’S TALE / A FIDDLER’S TALE (Long Beach Opera)
GET SOME TALE In 1918, Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer Ferdinand Ramuz wrote L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) a short theatrical work meant to be “read, played, and danced” while accompanied by a septet. Based on a Russian folk tale, the libretto relates the parable of a soldier who trades his fiddle to the…
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Los Angeles Opera Review: A COFFIN IN EGYPT (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
A NAIL IN OPERA’S COFFIN As the opera’s West Coast premiere, A Coffin in Egypt is frankly disappointing. As the first opera production at the new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (co-produced with Houston Grand Opera and Opera Philadelphia), A Coffin in Egypt is doubly disappointing. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Horton Foote’s similarly…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE LION IN WINTER (The Colony Theatre in Burbank)
A TOOTHLESS LION James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter is a brilliant study in castle intrigue laced with deceit and deception, alliances and allegiances, backstabbing and double dealing. The power of the 1966 drama emanates from its uncompromising wit and biting humor. Unfortunately, under the direction of Stephanie Vlahos, The Colony Theater’s production, a muted…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BE A GOOD LITTLE WIDOW (NoHo Arts Center in North Hollywood)
UNBEREAVABLE Bekah Brunstetter’s Be a Good Little Widow is awash with structural issues (ambiguous timeline, disconnected scenes), trite themes and relationships, and a refusal to penetrate into the characters. Why, then, have prominent companies Collaboraction in Chicago, Ars Nova in New York, Old Globe in San Diego, and now NoHo Arts Center decided to produce…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: FATHERS AT A GAME (Moving Arts Hyperion Station)
WHICH GAME IS ON? With the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival set to begin in June, I decided to check out Fathers at a Game. I was curious to see why this 50-minute three-hander was being billed as “The Best of Fringe – 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival.” After seeing it, I was bemused that this play…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: DOVER QUARTET (The Da Camera Society at Artemesia Estate)
HISTORY: CHECK. BEAUTY: CHECK. MUSIC: CZECH. The concerts organized by the Da Camera Society are as notable for their historic venues as they are for the quality of their performers and the beauty of their repertoire. The society’s April 27 concerts at 2:00 and 4:00 pm will feature the Dover Quartet playing an all-Czech program…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE YELLOW BOAT (Coeurage Theatre Company in Burbank)
ON A SEA OF TEARS It’s a play that deals with AIDS, and the central character is a little boy. Okay? So while Coeurage Theatre Company (like many who have produced David Saar’s The Yellow Boat since it was first published in 1997) says that it’s appropriate for ages 8 and up, you’ll have to…
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Theater Review: TOP GIRLS (Antaeus Theatre Company in North Hollywood)
YOU’RE THE TOP, GIRLS For the most part, Joyce, a working class Englishwoman in Ipswich is not a sympathetic or likeable person: She is annoyed by her 16-year-old daughter Angie (who admittedly is belligerent and daft), and begrudging toward her sister, Marlene, whom she views as a ball-busting, career-driven, selfish, soulless abandoner (not that there…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
TAYLOR-MADE When a visiting dance company plays Los Angeles, it usually offers pieces which cover both the old and the new. And so it is with Paul Taylor, who presented last weekend at the Chandler three works created between 1978 and 2011. The triptych certainly speaks to the inventiveness of Taylor, who has created 139…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: RUTH DRAPER’S MONOLOGUES (Geffen Playhouse)
IS THERE A DIRECTOR IN THE HOUSE? There is nothing inherently humdrum about the Geffen Playhouse’s production of Ruth Draper’s Monologues but there is nothing particularly exhilarating about it either. With Annette Bening, one of America’s most celebrated actresses, letting loose performing selections by Ruth Draper, one of America’s most celebrated monologists, what could possible…
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