Los Angeles

SCHOOLED BY CALLAS If you’ve ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally’s Tony Award-winning play Master Class (1995) will seem very familiar. If you haven’t, then you’re in for a real eye-opener. A master class, as its name suggests, is a class given by an expert (or master) to students in a particular…

FOOD FIGHT Using Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children (1939) as a template, writer Peter Howard has created a wartime tale about the need to survive in challenging times. But the war isn’t an overseas conflict. It is one that takes place in a school cafeteria, where Ana, a.k.a. Lunch Lady Courage, has arrived to…

MYTH UNDERSTOOD Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is classical in its mythological origins but forges a modern path with  a point of view modification and feministic flair. The original Greek myth of Orpheus is centered on the incomparable, eponymous musician who loses his wife to the netherworld too soon. He is then motivated to do whatever it takes…

EVERYBODY HAS A BALL AT THIS CINDERELLA Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) was written in 1817 during the bel canto era when operas were written to showcase beautiful singing, but LA Opera’s delightful production, which opened on Saturday, actually showcased the talents of Spanish Director Joan Font. The spirited and humorous production skittered around a…

NETHER NOR Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, right? Not anymore. It’s fascinating that the World English Dictionary defines reality as “the state of things as they are or appear to be, rather than as one might wish them to be.” As they appear to be. Are we to take that…

APPARENTLY CAT FIGHTING IN TRASH ISN’T AS FUN AS WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE Jami Brandli’s ambiguous whodunit, S.O.E., strands three disillusioned and combative rivals together during a state of emergency Boston snow storm. Set in a filthy post-party kitchen amid a sea of upturned plastic cups and cigarette butts, S.O.E. revolves around novelist Josh,…

NOT YOUR RANK-AND-FILE PRODUCTION No getting around it: Robert Massey’s Rank is talky and familiar.   Without a top-flight cast and director, this show could easily be lost in the vast amount of Los Angeles theater that gets staged as if it would rather be filmed for cable television.   But in its American premiere at the…

HAVING ISSUES WITH ISSUES Ken LaZebnik’s On the Spectrum, which opened last week at the Fountain Theatre, belongs to a genre known as Theatre of Identity, aka Social Issues Theatre; the idea is to promote a particular cultural identity – in this case, autism. Plays like the currently running Tribes (which deals with deafness) were…

HOW TO SURVIVE CHAUVINISTIC INHUMANITY WITHOUT REALLY TRYING We live in a nation where people celebrate socialite Kim Kardashian, who bore a child with a man who’s not her husband. Sexual indiscretion can be summed up as “Hey, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” And whether it’s a running joke or understood truth, the…

A MATCH MADE IN HOLLYWOOD Last year, the Pacific Opera Project (POP) put on a show about a serial killer who also happened to be a barber: Sweeney Todd. This year, they have staged a production about a much different kind of barber. Figaro, the titular Barber of Seville, is a matchmaker who’s trying to…

A TRIUMPHANT TRAINWRECK If you’ve never applauded a trainwreck, be prepared to do so when you see Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow. I am not talking about the gossip-driven, hardly revelatory play about Judy Garland’s last days; I am talking about Tracie Bennett’s devastating portrait of a Ritalin-addled, vodka-soaked, emotionally greedy and equally needy,…

THE WILDE ACCORDING TO BURBANK By Los Angeles standards, Theatre Banshee’s The Importance of Being Earnest is pretty good.   It’s a time-tested script; the actors know their lines, the director knows where to find the laughs, and one efficient, mostly lovely set by Arthur MacBride serves as three.   But two of those three settings feature…

WHEN ‘TOMORROW’ ISN’T ANOTHER DAY Anyone who cares about acting or classical theater or Shakespeare (particularly Macbeth) must see Donald Freed’s new play Tomorrow. It has moments of spot-on, sublime specificity that make you gasp out loud. Without fuss, without preening, it explores the art of acting as a means of exploring the art of…

THE PRIDE OF JAZZ PURITANS Wynton Marsalis has received a plethora of awards from numerous countries, committees and academies for his talents and contributions to the world as a musician, arranger, composer, and cultural ambassador. In 2009, he received the Insignia Chevalier  of the Legion of Honor from France; it’s the equivalent of attaining knighthood in…

TRAINSPOTTING IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK Whether L.A. theatergoers are ready or not, seat of your pants Productions has resurrected it’s much ballyhooed 2002 mounting of Henry Gibson’s Trainspotting at the Elephant Theatre in Hollywood and while much of its power remains intact, it is definitely not for the squeamish. All matter of human excrement…

SOUL MASSAGE It’s easy to walk into a salon and pamper your body with a facial, pedicure, or rubdown, but there is a different salon in town where once a month there is an opportunity to have your soul massaged: a Chamber Music Concert Series called Le Salon de Musiques, a compendium of LA’s most…