Los Angeles

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

EVERYTHING NEEDS A RETOUCH 30-year-old Jess is a mess. A New York-based dotcom genius, Jess is fraught with low self-esteem, making her an overweight, smelly, anti-social, stressed-out, aggressive, iconoclastic nerd who picks at her zits. She tells fellow nerd and co-worker Lewis during lunch at Chipotle that her mother, estranged for years, is dying back…

TITTY GARAGE Shows that are listed at two hours and fifteen minutes shouldn’t be forgiven for running three hours, unless they are written by a genius like Mikhail Bulgakov. One of that early Soviet dissident’s plays is in fact embedded in Charles A. Duncombe’s new play, sort of, but it’s a dream version that takes…

WHAT’S DE MATERIE? Of all the offerings during LA Phil’s Minimalist Jukebox Festival, the hard-core lovers might prefer Europe’s leading Minimalist, Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. His rarely performed, abstract, non-traditional, quasi-operatic work De Materie (“Matter”) will receive a huge production, the work’s first performance on the West Coast, on April 18 at Disney Hall. Written…

BACH TO BASICS If anything, Iranian pianist Ramin Bahrami’s American debut at the Wallis in Beverly Hills last Wednesday was just more evidence for soloists needing a director. The discussion need not be about his mastery of Bach (which he has in spades) or whether his playing is innovative or not (my vote is “not”…

IT’S ALL IN THE TIEMPO The excitement in Ana Maria Alvarez’s voice is contagious: “When we got the news it was like one of those Ed McMahon calls that everyone sees on television.” The Artistic Director and founder of CONTRA-TIEMPO Urban Latin Dance Theater is referring to her company’s upcoming dance tour supported by DanceMotion…

INVENTIVE MEMORY PLAY COULD USE JUST A BIT MORE MAGIC Inspired by the work of Johanna Cooper’”a broadcaster who was commonly drawn to Jewish tales’”Nicola Behrman, David Kersnar, Abbie Phillips, Heidi Stillman, and Andy White based The Last Act of Lilka Kadison on a story recounted for the NPR series “One People, Many Stories.” It…

COME BACK TO A NOISE WITHIN The current production of Come Back, Little Sheba at Pasadena’s A Noise Within proves that William Inge’s breakout 1950 Broadway hit is still relevant today. The Tony Award-winning play (for actors Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer), later made into an Oscar-winning film, follows a middle-aged couple, Lola and Doc,…