Los Angeles

A RAUCHNY REUNION FOR THE PEANUTS GANG Set at Charlie Brown’s funeral in modern-day Los Angeles, Brendan Hunt’s raunchy parody, Absolutely Filthy, is an admirably smutty comedy which imagines a dysfunctional reunion of the Peanuts gang, now all grown-up, cocksure, and full of middle-age disgruntlement. Under the fluid comedic direction of Jeremy Aldridge at Sacred…

OPEN THIS SNAKE CAN AND ALL THAT POPS OUT IS WHINE AND CHEESE Three BFFs get together to commiserate over their fates in the world premiere of The Snake Can, Kathryn Grant’s (Hermetically Sealed) shallow and unfulfilling salute to middle age angst. Devoid of subtext and any semblance of substance the show struggles unsuccessfully to…

A UNIQUELY ENTERTAINING MISSED OPPORTUNITY The concept of Happy Face Sad Face is an intriguing one that consists of two one act plays; the first a drama, the second a comedy. Now before you go all “been there, seen that” on me, consider this twist. The program teases that both one acts are “:the same…

THE SLIPPERY SIGNIFICANCE OF GREAT AND GOOD A person’s true character is revealed in crisis. The road to triumph is filled with battles lost and sacrifices made, but overall it is worth the pain and perseverance. Tracey Scott Wilson’s The Good Negro follows Reverend James Lawrence, who leads the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama…

AVOIDABLE MADNESS There’s a show running right now at a smaller venue of a state-of-the-art West Side arts complex.   It’s a foreign import, a one-woman show that, in a different format as Ruby Wax: Losing It, has spent years touring asylums with its garbled message of exculpatory hope for those suffering mental illness.   Because the…

A LOT OF HOLES IN THIS CONCERT, AND A LOT OF PROBLEMS ARE BURIED IN THOSE HOLES Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Hugo. This list of iconic movies…

DOSTOEVSKY’S NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in North Hollywood ought not to surface. This willfully banal production of the Russian classic refrains from connecting with the audience and instead, serves only their self-absorbed conceits. More concerned with making a joke about Lankershim Boulevardland than it is with both  relating…

A REQUIEM IN FLOWER The Los Angeles Master Chorale captures the shared human experience with a pairing of Brahms’ sublime Ein Deutsches Requiem and the West Coast premiere of The World in Flower, Peter Lieberson’s lyrical and moving message of tolerance written in memory of his wife and muse, famed mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, with…

TALKING HEADS Mark St. Germain’s commercially successful two-hander Freud’s Last Session, suggested by The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicoli, Jr., is about a speculative meeting between the titular founder of Psychoanalysis and Christian author/Oxford professor C. S. Lewis.   Having cut its teeth at The Barrington Stage Company followed by a long run…

IN PRAISE OF MOZART’S REQUIEM I’ll never forget the first time I heard Mozart’s Requiem. I was wandering through the streets of Paris on a warm summer evening and I happened to stop at the magnificent Madeleine Church on the Place de la Concorde. Inside was a full orchestra with choir and soloists rehearsing the…

EXOTICISM INCARNATE Renée Fleming and Susan Graham, two of the ecosphere’s leading superstars of opera, have crisscrossed the globe accumulating legions of fans. While they have on occasion appeared in the same opera together, rare is the opportunity to see these two songstresses sing for you in a salon-styled concert. Well, pop the cork on…

‘TIS PITY IT’S A SHORT RUN Cheek by Jowl’s touring production of John Ford’s revenge tragedy, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, landed at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse for a brief run. The true pity would be to miss this extraordinary production. John Ford’s play is a Jacobean hot mess. Giovanni (a charismatic Orlando James) is in…

A SECRET NO MORE Have you ever been to a Chamber Concert in a grand venue such as Walt Disney Hall or Carnegie Hall but wished you could experience the program in the intimacy of a hostess’ living room? Many is the time after a concert that I have craved to mingle with the virtuosic…

CRACK YOUR CHEEKS By placing himself in the charge of his fickle children, old King Lear abandons the security of his own reason to wander an inhospitable wilderness. Â  It’s a fitting metaphor for a venerable script at the mercy of a production lacking the chops to do it justice, and for an audience perched for…