Los Angeles

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…

KILLER PUSSY Suicide! Euthanasia! Incest! Health Care! Racism! Old age! Corporate America! Spirits! The afterlife! Prison! Duplicity! Playwright Josefina López (Real Women Have Curves) is tackling so many issues in her new play A Cat Named Mercy that it suffocates what could have been a most compelling story. As if living with her death-wishing, diabetic,…

HALLS OFFERS SOOTHING RELIEF A concert of good old-fashioned Classical music can be such a joy. If presented with respect, classical music’s stigma can easily disappear. In a concert of chestnut favorites (Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven), the L.A. Chamber Orchestra accomplished this precisely at UCLA last Sunday. The ballet music from Mozart’s Idomeneo combined with…

MAKE IT ANOTHER OLD-FASHIONED PLEASE It’s something of a shocker, really. I had a great time watching Let’s Misbehave, a jukebox musical slim on both premise and reality. It’s actually more of a cabaret in which three super-talented and likeable performers knock off 34 Cole Porter ditties with style and elegance, and that’s the part…

A SCRUMPTIOUS SCANDINAVIAN FEAST Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko arrives at Disney Hall this weekend for a contemplative and vivid Nordic program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The returning conductor will be united with the phenomenal Hilary Hahn, who consistently offers a captivating combination of classiness, élan, ferocity, concentration and shading. She will be playing Danish…

AN OCEAN OF TIME If you ever climb to the top of the Granite Park Chalet trail in Montana, you will find at the end of the hugely winding, desperately steep pathway a log book containing entries by fellow hikers.   One of the entries reads something like, “I have come up here every year for…

NO COMPRENDO CRISTINA I’m throwing in the towel, giving up the ghost, packin’ up my mules and headin’ West. Lord knows I tried. I watched attentively, I took notes, I came home and read the script on my iPad. I printed it out, read it again with pen in hand, filling the margins with asterisks…