Los Angeles

ROCK AND ROLL DREAM (MAYBE, IF YOUR DREAM IS VERY SMALL) Becoming a rock star is a uniquely American dream.   And who wouldn’t want to live a life of rock and roll excess and decadence?   When you think about rock, and in particular about this fantasy of the rocker life, the mind drifts inescapably to…

OF KNOTS AND TANGLES Johnna Adams’ 2012 play Gidion’s Knot, now receiving its premiere Los Angeles staging by the Furious Theatre Company, lends itself to spoilers.   To know much about the fragile plot will reduce the thrill of watching it play out, so avoid reviews (except this one) and synopses (I don’t include one here)…

A DANCE PIECE THAT’S A KEEPER The frequency of site-specific events continues to grow exponentially in the City of Angels, but Heidi Duckler has been doing it for many years, creating unique dance performances in spaces as disparate as Laundromats, museums, churches, civic buildings and even a vintage 1961 Oasis trailer. Now she takes us…

HIT THE WALLIS A brand new theater has opened its doors in Beverly Hills, but nothing could have prepared me for its magnificence in contemporary construction and design. The 500-seat Bram Goldsmith Theater opens to the public this week with the Martha Graham Dance Company, but the state-of-the-art theater is just one part of The…

ZAPPED ZAPPA Any live performance of 200 Motels is bound to bear a degree of disappointment since its mastermind, Frank Zappa, is not alive to conduct the evening’s program, shred on guitar, or entertain audiences with his fiery passion. Musically more challenging, and arguably more ambitious than the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper or the Who’s Tommy…

DREADFUL AT ANY PRICE Back in the1800s, the Industrial revolution was in full swing in merry ole England. The working class was becoming more educated and printing was becoming more affordable. To quench the thirst of the masses for every day diversions, “penny dreadfuls” hit the scene. These serialized fictional publications, sold for a penny,…

ITZHAK PERLMAN PLAYS DUAL ROLE OF CONDUCTOR AND SOLOIST AT DISNEY HALL Surely it’s no mere coincidence: On a recent road trip, I played over and over the 1979 recording of Itzhak Perlman playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. I own several recordings of the piece, but this is my favorite. The Israeli-born violinist not only brings…

THE PHANTOM OF DISNEY HALL It’s positively spooky looking for something to do on Halloween. Are you tired of coming home from that noisy Halloween party with smeared make-up? Are you weary of competing with the crowds on Santa Monica Boulevard? Are the high-heel pumps you only wear once a year causing Godzilla-sized blisters? Are…

ROLE REVERSAL For its inaugural production at its new temporary home in Atwater Village, the Celebration Theatre has mounted The Homosexuals (pun intended). As one might glean from the title, Philip Dawkins’ play deals with the trials and tribulations of a group of gay friends and, of course, their self-proclaimed requisite “fag-hag.” In essence it’s…

HYDE IN PLAIN SIGHT Actors Co-op does it again! Last year’s re-imagining of The World Goes ‘Round  was musical perfection and this year’s Ah, Wilderness!  was a sentimental delight. Now Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde  crosses genres mastering the macabre and mysterious in an equally mesmerizing manner. Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the Robert Louis Stevenson novella Strange…

IS THIS A KEGGER I SEE BEFORE ME? The morning after the Thane has killed his king, and one of those epic, omen-riddled Shakespearean storms has ravaged the countryside, Macbeth snaps out my candidate for all-time champion literary understatement: “’Twas a rough night.”   But in a one-hour burlesque of Macbeth that brusquely acknowledges Shakespeare’s contribution,…

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF ACTING Last August, Time’s cover story, “A World Without Bees,” brought to light a frightening occurrence: In recent years, there have been mass deaths of honeybees around the globe, known as “Colony Collapse Disorder.” Scientists are surmising the reasons – agricultural pesticides, parasitic mites, bacterial and HIV-like diseases – but they’ve…

A CLOSED-MOUTH KISS There are so many sexual allusions and situations in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate that it is remarkable the musical came out in 1948. I surmise the reason that Porter got away with such startling and blatant innuendos was his ability to wrap them up in sophisticated, witty lyrics. The musical is…

SEEING WHAT’S INVISIBLE In describing Invisible Cities, allow me to paraphrase Gore Vidal’s critique of Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel of the same name on which this production is based: Of all tasks in reviewing director Yuval Sharon’s marvelously inventive theater event in Union Station, recounting Christopher Cerrone’s opera is the most difficult and perfectly irrelevant….

COMPRESSED CRUELTY IN A SMALL STRINDBERG SHOCKER August Strindberg, the “father of modern psychological drama,” told his publisher that Creditors, a drama that he prized as much as he did his masterpiece Miss Julie (also written in 1888) was “humorous, loveable, all of its characters sympathetic.” Nothing could be further from the truth – as…