Los Angeles

MUSICAL THEATRE GUILD GOES TO TOWN “Charming” doesn’t begin to describe Musical Theatre Guild’s offering of the 1953 musical Wonderful Town. Even with a recent 2003 Broadway outing starring Donna Murphy, this breezy and buoyant musical comedy is rarely produced, making it perfect for a company whose mission it is to present concert staged readings…

EXPERIMENT SANS CONTROL GROUP In 2012, Tokyo-based company Faifai decided to bring its 2009 movement-and-language assembly Anton, Neko, Kuri to international audiences.   In a move she revealingly describes as “marketing,” director Chiharu Shinoda (with the help of stage designer Ayami Sasaki) imposed a huge projection screen dwarfing the four performers, upon which to project animated…

TWEE OF KNOWLEDGE New York downtowner Young Jean Lee’s 2011 rock concert-with-monologues We’re Gonna Die begins very well – at Wednesday’s Los Angeles premiere, a horrifyingly sad story had the audience breathless within a couple of minutes.   The show ends with a thoughtful flourish, choreographed with disarming physicality by Faye Driscoll and enthusiastically directed by…

THE WORDS BEHIND THE MUSIC Just like anyone else, I occasionally turn to critics when choosing to attend a particular concert. The reports about German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann playing Antonín Dvořák’s seldom-heard Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last year were so stellar that I have no choice but to see him perform…

CHEAPENED BY THIS DOZEN Words such a “tolerance” and “acceptance” are bandied about as America continues a national dialogue on race, oversimplifying the subject of prejudice. Sadly, political correctness has tainted our conversation, and I believe as a white man that the freedom to express my honest feelings on the subject has been restricted, even…

MUSICAL NATURE It isn’t so uncommon when an up-and-coming piano player has all the right moves but has yet to incorporate personality into their work. Making his Los Angeles premiere with the L.A. Chamber Orchestra last night, Italian pianist Alessio Bax demonstrated a youthful command of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, but lacked the oomph…

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, SKID You want to hear some of the freshest, funniest dialogue in town? Head over to Cornerstone’s world premiere of Love on San Pedro. James McManus’s script was developed via personal interviews he had with Skid Row denizens, so the stories in the play take place in this one square mile…

TOVEY SLAMS DOWN THE FIFTH A funny thing happened on the way to witty raconteur and conductor Bramwell Tovey’s presentation of his Songs of the Paradise Saloon featuring trumpet soloist Alison Balsom at Disney Hall last Sunday: I came for this newer concerto but ended up being blown away by his ecstatic interpretation of Shostakovich’s…

EUROPEAN ELEGANCE IN LOS ANGELES Once while in Salzburg, I happened upon a chamber concert in a private home (well, they called it a home, I called it a tiny palace). Our host explained that piano trios’”compositions for two stringed instruments and a piano’”were designed for intimate spaces such as the luxuriant parlor we sat…

LIKING THIS LIKENESS Writer/producer/director Daniel Rover Singer’s A Perfect Likeness imagines a meeting between Charles Dickens and Charles Dodgson–better known by the alias, Lewis Carroll. Had Dickens taken up amateur photographer Mr. Dodgson’s request to meet him and have his portrait taken, this would be the scenario. The ninety-minute two-person drawing-room play is set somewhere…

THE HAM IN WINTER Here’s a show that means well, but which somehow falls a little short of expectations.   It’s actually somewhat difficult to put one’s finger on why:   By rights, the play should astound.   It’s written by William Luce, considered one of the great writers of solo biographical shows, whose works include the transcendent…

AN EXPERIENCE NOT TO BE MISSED On  a website which attempts to list every Anton Bruckner orchestral recording offered to the public (abruckner.com), the discography collector and annotator John F. Berky states that the Austrian composer “expanded the concept of the symphonic form in ways that have never been witnessed before or since. When listening to…

BLOATED SCORE OR A BIG FAT MUSICAL TRIUMPH? LA Opera’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff, his last opera which premiered in 1893, fascinatingly elucidates why his one successful comic romp has both detractors and ardent admirers. Those who crave memorable arias will be disappointed, but those who appreciate evocative orchestral music which expresses character and blazes…

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE INTENT BEHIND PROJECTILE MILK? ONE CAN ONLY GUESS. Highways Performance Space is a venue that is both historic and very intimate. For the past 24 years, it has served as a Los Angeles cultural center in Santa Monica where artists of all genres come to create and perform. It also prides…

SIRRAH, NO Cyrano de Bergerac is the story of a fearless, witty, charismatic romantic whose grotesque nose prevents him from pursuing Roxanne, the woman he loves. Roxanne is smitten by Christian, a handsome man whose only fault is not being equipped with Cyrano’s wit. When Cyrano decides to write missives to Roxanne as Christian, the…

WAITING FOR GODYSSEUS Consider the last four suitors of Odysseus’s grass widow, Queen Penelope of Ithaca.   Clad in Speedos, the men have gathered their dwindling numbers for the last twenty years at the Trojan War hero’s palace to feast themselves pudgy while their rival performs Homeric feats on his way home to kill them all.  …

ROGUE MACHINE’S PRODUCTION KEEPS SCRIPT FROM FALLING In Deanna Jent’s Falling, a mom is reaching burnout: Her 18-year-old autistic son is consuming her time, her marriage is shaky, her mother-in-law is visiting, and she has a resentful daughter. With so much tension in the house, all it takes is an unseen barking dog to heighten…

THIS SHOULD BE A YEARLY INSTITUTION It seems a shame to fawn over Los Angeles Master Chorale’s splendid rendering of Carl Orff’s pagan-fest, Carmina Burana, because I can’t tell you to mark your calendar now for the next time. Even though LAMC has visited it before under all four of their music directors, who knows…