Areas We Cover
Categories
Los Angeles
-
Regional Theater Review: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS UNSCRIPTED (Impro Theatre at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
COMEDICAL, TRAGICAL, IMPROVISATORICAL Impro Theatre’s long-form improvisational theater is among the most impressive of the performing arts. At South Coast Rep, the group proffered a full-length Tennessee Williams play which is made up on the spot. For every Tennessee Williams UnScripted during the short run, the performers show up with nothing but dramaturgic know-how and…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: 50 SHADES! THE MUSICAL (Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City)
FLESH MADE TEDIOUS In my day job as a public librarian, I can tell you with certainty there is nothing more dreaded than finding E. L. James’ turgid lust romancer  Fifty Shades of Grey in the book drop  after some woman’s book group has read it.  The condition those books are returned in!   The limp, slightly damp pages.   The…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: GENE KELLY: THE LEGACY (Pasadena Playhouse)
THE LEGACY WILL HAVE YOU GEEKING OUT FOR GENE KELLY Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, is touring with her retrospective multi-media presentation of Gene Kelly’s life and work, Gene Kelly: The Legacy, which plays through Sunday at the Pasadena Playhouse. Since meeting Kelly in the mid-1980s, Patricia has concurrently been his biographer, historian, and…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: A NICE INDIAN BOY (East West Players)
GAY BOYS AND INDIANS A Nice Indian Boy, currently enjoying its world premiere production at East West Players, is a charming little comedy about love, marriage, culture clash and the shifting tides of public acceptance of gays. It would be a much stronger piece if the stakes for the protagonists were ratcheted up and if…
-
Los Angeles/Regional Music Preview: THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC (Segerstrom Concert Hall)
CHOOSING TO SEE THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC IS A WALTZ It may be the easiest decision you’ll make in a long time. If you want to hear one of the greatest orchestras in the world, the illustrious and rightly celebrated Vienna Philharmonic will be performing at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall this Monday, March…
-
Los Angeles Music Review: EMANUEL AX’S BRAHMS PROJECT: EMANUEL AX AND YO-YO MA (Disney Hall)
AN INCOMPARABLE DISPLAY OF THE MASTER PLAYED BY THE MASTERS Pianist Emanuel Ax’s Brahms Project continued last Tuesday night at a recital with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Perhaps the most relaxing engagement I have ever experienced at Disney Hall, three cello/piano sonatas and a new solo piano work by Brett Dean resulted in a calming experience,…
-
Los Angeles Music Preview: TCHAIKOVSKYFEST: GUSTAVO DUDAMEL & ALISA WEILERSTEIN (Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall)
WEILERSTEIN TO WOW AT TCHAIKOVSKYFEST I had been following cellist Alisa Weilerstein for years, but until last March it was only on recordings and YouTube. Just before seeing her perform Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, I wrote, “The phenomenal American cellist Alisa Weilerstein has attracted attention worldwide for playing that…
-
Los Angeles / Regional Theater Review: LYSISTRATA JONES (Chance Theater)
BASKETBALL MUSICAL IS ONE BIG PENALTY You wanna know how great the Chance Theater is? They actually made it a palatable experience to sit through one of the most half-baked and frivolous new musical comedies I could imagine. With only a dribble of sophisticated wit and attractive songs, book-writer Douglas Carter Beane (Xanadu) and his…
-
Los Angeles Music Review: MID-CENTURY MODERN (Jacaranda Music: Adam Tendler & Cage / Christopher Taylor & Messiaen)
A GLORIOUS EVENT NEITHER MESSY NOR CAGEY Jacaranda’s understated but superb concert series continued last Saturday with a marathon solo piano event featuring John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946-48) and Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus (1944), played by Adam Tendler and Christopher Taylor respectively. The Messiaen is objectively longer and arguably more difficult than the Cage, but…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: DISASSEMBLY (Theatre of NOTE in Hollywood)
LOVE GONE NUTS Here’s a twisted little response to the maudlin sappiness of Valentine’s Day: Steve Yockey’s sprightly romantic farce is about love, all right, but it’s love as pathological damager, destroyer of lives, and self-sabotager of well-being. Indeed, it’s the perfect post-Valentine’s Day sorbet palate cleanser. Is that Cupid you see in the distance…
-
Los Angeles / Regional Opera Review: LA TRAVIATA (Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa)
ORANGE COUNTY GOES GREEN, I.E. VERDI Opera is alive and well in Orange County! Since the demise of Opera Pacific (1985-2008), Pacific Symphony, aided by Pacific Chorale, has emerged as the company’s most likely heir. Its current production of Verdi’s La Traviata is the final production of a successful three-year experiment initiated in 2010 by…
-
Los Angeles Music Review: TCHAIKOVSKYFEST (Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 2; Gustavo Dudamel, Alina Pogostkina & Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra)
THE SIMí“N BOLíVAR SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: A SONIC BOOM The 1812 Overture may be well-known for booming cannons, but conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela really pulled out the big guns when delivering Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 last Friday night. After Alina Pogostkina’s different spin on the oft-played Violin Concerto, the…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
STILLED LIFE In 2007, Noël Coward and David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, a somewhat maudlin expansion of the 1936 Coward one-act Still Life, was turned into a stage spectacle by Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre (a production commissioned by Cineworld, David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers). In it, two happily married, middle-class British strangers fall for each other…
-
Los Angeles Dance Review: 3 EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCES (L.A. Dance Project at The Theatre at Ace Hotel)
REFLECTIONS ON L.A. DANCE PROJECT The uneven and uninspiring effort presented by L.A. Dance Project last night isn’t bad news; it just means that this nascent company needs to hone its vision if it ever wants to be a world-class company. The perplexing title 3 Exceptional Performances may speak to the company’s ambitions, but the…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: VILLON (Odyssey Theatre)
A VILE VILLON MAKES FOR VILLAINOUS VIEWING Art isn’t pretty – and neither is Murray Mednick’s sharp, cynical comedy about the life of the great artistic poet François Villon, who, in 15th century France, wrote some of history’s great romantic poetry, all the while living the life of a boozing, whoring, murderous scoundrel. In the production’s…
-
Los Angeles Opera Preview: BILLY BUDD (LA Opera)
THE BLOOMING OF A BUDD IN L.A. Based on Herman Melville’s classic American tale, adapted into a libretto by English novelist E.M. Forster and writer Eric Crozier, Billy Budd tells the story of the persecution and destruction of a pure-hearted sailor by a predatory master-at-arms. It’s a tragedy of “sexual discharge gone evil,” as Forster described it,…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: LOVE, NOí‹L: THE LETTERS AND SONGS OF NOí‹L COWARD (The Wallis)
LOVE WITHOUT THE TRIMMINGS My darling, dearest Noël: It only just occurred to me that I haven’t written you since I saw your play Peace in our Time. Do forgive me, lamb chop. Let me cut to the quick as I write from sun-drenched Beverly Hills and the pool is waiting, even in the middle…
-
Dallas Opera Review: DEATH AND THE POWERS (The Dallas Opera, screened at the Hammer Museum in L.A.)
THERE’S NOT AN APP FOR THAT Enough already. First, I applaud The Dallas Opera for taking a chance on Tod Machover’s new experimental opera Death and the Powers, as well as the diligent cast and crew. I also commend Los Angeles’ cool new opera company, The Industry, for presenting the “world’s first live interactive opera,” and…
-
San Diego Opera Review: THE ELIXIR OF LOVE (San Diego Opera at the Civic Theatre)
THIS ELIXIR IS A TONIC FOR WHAT AILS YOU Some artistic works are such a product of their time that it is difficult for later generations to understand them without spending a considerable amount of time studying the work’s context. Others are immediately recognizable because they resonate easily with contemporary audiences. Gaetano Donizetti’s The Elixir…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: GOING TO ST. IVES (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
A BLESSING FROM BLESSING Playwright Lee Blessing has done a gutsy thing. He puts himself in the head and heart of the mother of a ruthless African dictator who murders and tortures his compatriots with horrifying abandon. Though supremely talented, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Blessing is, after all, a white American far from the horrors that…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
