Los Angeles

SO MANY ATROCITIES IN ONE EVENING When stories appear which elucidate the carnage during WWII, many look to heaven and ask, “Why?” But the script and execution of Our Class, about a true-life European massacre, are so rife with problems that you now have other reasons to clench a fist to the sky with the…

L.A. Contemporary Dance Company (LACDC) presented their spring program last weekend and what began in the first half as inaccessible artiness became a thrilling showcase for co-founder and Artistic Director Kate Hutter, both as choreographer and dancer. The second half of Then. Now. Onward!, which played in the Diavolo Dance Space, began with Hutter’s Unravel,…

NOT MUCH UNDERGROUND Author Neil Gaiman writes for the anime and graphic novel era – rollicking adventures that are tonally glib, suffused with whimsy and wit, and full of puns, extraordinary concepts, and vivid characters.   Attempting to adapt these novels for the theater is an audacious idea – and so much more so to stage…

LADIES IN THEIR GOLDEN YEARS REAWAKEN BROADWAY’S  GOLDEN AGE The Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (best known by its acronym S.T.A.G.E.) presented its 29th cavalcade of stars this year at the snazzy Art Deco-styled 1930 Saban Theatre (originally the Fox Wilshire). This annual fundraiser (created by Michael Kearns and James Carroll Pickett in 1984) raised more…

THE MISCHEVIOUS INDEMNITY OF NOIR You can bring a blanc sensibility to noir, but noir finds a way of seeping in’”its luxurious, sweet poison stealing focus when you’re not looking. In Billy & Ray, playwright Mike Bencivenga and director Garry Marshall set out to tell the undeniably funny story of how Billy Wilder and Raymond…

BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE A soldier named Mario returns from Iraq just in time for the 2005 New Year’s celebration with his East Los Angeles family, friends and novia – but he also returns traumatized by war. Fueled by guilt and sorrow, he has nightmares and begins drinking more and more, spinning out…

MAX RAABE & PALAST ORCHESTER MAKE VENUE DEBUT AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL The public’s fondness for songs has an extensive and nearly unbroken history, and one of the acmes of this history took place in America from the 1910s into the 1950s. During this time, songsmiths created ditties that were so well constructed in…

TALLIS SOME MORE With their presentation of the Broadway Festival last week, the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College not only validated the extraordinary rebirth of downtown Los Angeles but offered as the festival centerpiece a chamber concert by the Tallis Scholars inside the revitalized 1893 Bradbury Building. Seated on multiple levels around…

A BUTTERFLY THAT’S STILL IN THE COCOON Katherine Noon’s latest ensemble workshop-developed hydra creation, The Bargain and the Butterfly, takes its inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Artist of the Beautiful. In Hawthorne’s tale, Owen Warland works at a watchmaker’s shop; he is a brilliant fool with a heart of gold who is more caught up…

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…