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Los Angeles
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Theater Review: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (Wallis Annenberg Center / 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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HENRY V (Porters of Hellsgate in North Hollywood)
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,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE UGLY ONE (EST/LA at the Atwater Village Theatre in Glendale)
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…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: THE MUSIC MAN (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
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 &…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: JAMES BROWN: GET ON THE GOOD FOOT, A CELEBRATION IN DANCE (Ahmanson Theatre)
FUNK ME Director and choreographer Otis Sallid wants to illuminate how James Brown’s funky music and original dance styling has influenced contemporary culture. He engaged PHILADANCO (Philadelphia Dance Company) and then chose choreographers from around the world, letting each one choose from 33 of Brown’s songs and cultivate original works. The result is James Brown:…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE (Mark Taper Forum)
LASAGNA AND GROANERS AND KASHA AND TRIPE The comical but frothy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike arrives at the Taper this week, but instead of a delectable meal, Christopher Durang’s play takes dollops of ingredients from Chekhov’s plays and wheels out a dessert cart consisting of flavorful characters and funny dialogue with no…
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