Los Angeles

A HAPPY FEW, A HAPPY MANY Just about every Shakespeare production runs the risk of getting a packed house of high school students at least one performance in the run.   This situation is always touch-and-go.   On a bare black stage with a few chairs, as the Porters of Hellsgate often serve up their war stories,…

RICH AND BEAUTIFUL I like a play that vacuums the audience in the wake of its rocket so that we tumble after, happy travelers grateful for the bruises.   We bounce and roll along, too ecstatic to imagine stopping as the play flashes and bangs in our guts, in our faces.   But we can’t keep up…

THE MUSIC MAN BEHIND THE MUSIC MAN When Musical Theatre West announced their production of The Music Man, which opens tonight at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach, I actually got excited. I never tire of seeing this charming musical, and it occurred to me that I haven’t seen it since 2001, when Will &…

RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES It was the shot heard round the countercultural world – the Big Bang of the Beats, as it were. At a party one night in Mexico City in 1951, writer William Burroughs drunkenly talked his wife Joan Vollmer into standing against the wall with a water glass on her head while…

MTG DEFIBRILLATES DOA MUSICAL Sheaths can be written about how deadly the musical Death Takes a Holiday is, and where the creators went wrong. What’s more important is that director Calvin Remsberg, musical director Jim May, and a wholly flawless cast have pulled a Frankenstein: They electrified dead tissue and created a vivid being. It…

DAISEY: I LOVE HIM, I LOVE HIM NOT I’m jealous of Mike Daisey. In American Utopias at Royce Hall, the infamous monologist fulminated and commentated about three interpolated subjects near and dear to my heart: Disney, Activism, and Community Gatherings. The corpulent and energetic Daisey, who sat at a table mopping himself, was by-and-large riveting…

FIVE-ALARM ACTING SETS THE STAGE ABLAZE IN FIREMEN After sixteen years of a nomadic existence, Echo Theater Company has finally found a permanent home at the Atwater Village Theater. If their world premiere production of Firemen is any indication, they’ll be burning up the boards in these new digs for a long time to come….

 ¡VIVA, VIVER! Perhaps the vibrancy of the Afro-Brazilian dance culture lures you in with the strong beats of the drum. Maybe it’s the sensuality and seductiveness of its movement. Whatever the case, Viver Brasil did not fail to deliver on its presentation of Intersections/Ajê at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center. Rest assured that even…

BELOW THE FOLD Above the Fold, a new play making its debut at the Pasadena Playhouse, has two major flaws that result in an evening of uninspired theater: both a lack of credibility and compelling dramatic action. Written by former The New York Times reporter-turned-playwright Bernard Weinraub, Above the Fold follows a journalist from a…

NO NEED TO HOP ON OVER TO THE FALCON There’s an old European superstition: In order to ward off evil spirits and bad luck the first words you utter on the first day of every month must be ”rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.” As a child frightened of monsters lurking in her bedroom, comedienne and actress Gilda…

ROMANTIC RENDEZVOUS Lionel Bringuier touches down at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Valentine’s Day weekend serving up a buffet of romantic music from Brahms, Berg, and Beethoven. Following his final year as Resident Conductor with the LA Phil, Bringuier returns with the exceptional Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling, whose voice carries the combination…

A PERFECT BALANCE OF BITE AND BEAUTY Krzystof Urbański’s star shines a bit brighter these days. Not yet 35, he has taken hold as the conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony, and on Jan. 25 he wowed with an LA Phil command performance. The power bursting forth from the philharmonic, along with Urbański’s exuberance and lively…

SNAPSHOTS OF PARIS What do composers Léon Boëllmann, Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc, and Bohuslav MartinŠ¯ have in common? According to François Chouchan and Julius Reder Carlson, the answer is Paris. The programmer/artistic director and resident musicologist of Le Salon de Musiques, the best Chamber Music outfit in Los Angeles, contextualized three sonatas written for cello…

SHANGHAIED A musical featuring three performers and 5,000 years of Chinese history in just 90 minutes sure sounded promising, but the production of China: The Whole Enchilada currently serving up won-ton laced humor at the Sacred Fools Theater leaves the theatrical diner longing for a more satisfying meal. Upon viewing, it’s easy to see why…