Areas We Cover
Categories
Los Angeles
-
Highly Recommended Concert: A CHANTICLEER CHRISTMAS (National Tour at Walt Disney Concert Hall)
LET ME MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CHANTICLEER I may be enamored by the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Messiah, I may be enthralled by Pasadena Symphony’s Holiday Candlelight, I may be excited by the Gay Men’s Chorus’s Holiday Spectacular, but A Chanticleer Christmas, which plays Disney Hall on Dec. 17, is always the best choral show of…
-
Theater Review: HOME ALONE-LY HEARTS CLUB BAND (The Troubies at the Colony in Burbank)
Accompanied by the rockin’ 4-piece Troubadorchestra led by music director Ryan Whyman, the always-entertaining, hip and sassy Troubadour Theater Company (The Troubies) is generating tons of fun with their latest mash-up, the world premiere of Home Alone-ly Hearts Club Band at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, areThe premise is familiar to fans of the group: The…
-
Review: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE (American Contemporary Ballet at the Bank of America Plaza in Downtown L.A.)
THE NUTCRACKER SUITE IS SWEETER THAN THE NUTCRACKER American Contemporary Ballet’s advertising for their annual production of The Nutcracker Suite, now playing Downtown in Bank of America Plaza, is misleading. Their scant imagery suggests that it would be an austere and intellectual outing for adults ̶ theatrical vegetables, if you will. However, it turned out…
-
Highly Recommended Cabaret: MEOW MEOW: FELINE FESTIVE HOLIDAY (The Wallis, Beverly Hills, & Stanford U)
SANTA’S FUR IS GONNA FLY WITH MEOW MEOW’S FELINE FESTIVE HOLIDAY When you hear the words “performance art,” do you envision a motionless Marina Abramović allowing a 10-foot boa constrictor to wrap itself around her head? And when you hear the term “cabaret,” do you think of tired patter, same-old showtunes, and folks who’re trying…
-
Highly Recommended Cabaret: MARVELOUS: AN EVENING WITH MARILYN MAYE (Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill, Palm Springs’ The Purple Room, NYC’s Birdland)
Adore, adore, adore her. You have to believe me — at 95, the great Marilyn Maye simply enchants, and holds the room in the palm of her hand. Very, very few cabaret performers have this ability (my top three are Eartha Kitt, Elaine Stritch and Ms. Maye). She recently had a sold-out show at Carnegie…
-
Theater Review: CAT KID COMIC CLUB (Tour at Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City)
EVERYONE BELONGS IN THIS CLUB Last year at this time, I saw the family-friendly and totally entertaining Dog Man: The Musical, in which comic book hero Dog Man, with the head of a dog and the body of a policeman, does his best to save the city from Flippy the cyborg fish. And now Flippy…
-
Highly Recommended Dance: TURING TESTS, APPLES AND QUEENS (Invertigo Dance Theatre at Caltech in Pasadena)
A FUSION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MATHEMATICAL GENIUS AND FAIRY TALES CaltechLive’s Opening Doors is a themed series of dance, music, and theater events on campus that showcase artists whose work engages with both the history of science and cutting-edge scientific research. In October, they presented the wonderful Tesla: A Radio Play for the Stage with…
-
Theater Review: HENRY IV, PARTS 1 and 2 (The Porters of Hellsgate in North Hollywood)
THE PORTERS SHARE WITH US IN GLORY HENRY IV There is a danger of critical indulgence when considering a company like the Porters of Hellsgate; their ambition to produce all of Shakespeare’s canon (which they’ve nearly accomplished – four plays remain) is laudable and exceptional, such that there is a temptation to simply approve each…
-
Theater Review: HEXEN: AN ANCESTRAL WITCH PLAY (Tour at El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood)
CONFRONTING THE CURSE It is a signal accomplishment to produce 70 minutes of solo theater which are all the things Hexen manages to be: solemn, playful, enchanting, insightful, and finally, deeply moving. I first encountered Dreya Weber, the sole performer of Hexen (“witches” in German) at the bar before the show. When an exceedingly quirky…
-
Music | Film Review: STAR WARS IN CONCERT (LA Phil)
THE STAR WARS COME OUT AT DISNEY HALL The force of the LA Phil is definitely with you. When Star Wars in Concert began last night, fittingly, with the iconic “Star Wars (Main Theme)”, it filled Disney Hall with a palpable excitement (so did the deep-note sound of the THX trailer). The crowd roared and…
-
Theater Review: LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K (Handspring Puppet Company and Baxter Theatre at The Wallis)
A LIVING PORTRAIT Regular patrons of the theatre are accustomed to passively sitting back, letting the story flow off the stage and course through them. Life & Times Of Michael K is not traditional theatre. It’s not really a play. This beautiful and spellbinding stage adaptation of the award-winning 1983 novel by South African-born writer…
-
Theater Review: THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills)
DEAD ON ARRIVAL The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, adapted for the stage by Mark Shanahan from Agatha Christie’s 1926 novel, premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas in 2023. It’s no surprise that the West Coast premiere at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills is only the second production, as Shanahan’s script draws out the…
-
Theater Reviews: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES; JOAN; FIRST DATE; CAROL COOKE DIED FOR MY SINS; BEING PIAF; RENT; A GOING AWAY PARTY PLAY (various theaters throughout L.A.)
WHAT’S YOUR STORY? In the “It’s Not the Story, It’s in How You Tell It” Department, an incredible number of shows I saw in the last month have incredible tales to tell, but falter in their context. Listen, storytelling is in our genes ever since cavemen told their friends how they caught a mammoth. From…
-
Theater Review: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (Pasadena Playhouse)
LA CAGE: STRIPPED OF ITS FEATHERS In Sam Pinkleton‘s well-intentioned but ultimately discordant revival of La Cage aux Folles at the Pasadena Playhouse, that old showbiz maxim about the show must going on feels less like a triumph than a duty. This production of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s landmark 1983 musical about love, family,…
-
Theater Interview: SANDRA TSING LOH (“I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Come to It” Work-in-Progress at The Odyssey Theatre)
BURNING BRIDGES It takes a brave soul to speak out about getting back at those who got you cancelled, especially when the names that are blamed can theoretically destroy any chance of continuing in your chosen profession. But that is exactly what Sandra Tsing Loh is doing in her latest work-in-progress, I’ll Burn That Bridge…
-
Theater Review: ARMS AROUND AMERICA (Dan Froot & Company; World Premiere at The Nimoy Prior to Tour)
VOICES INSTEAD OF BULLETS Although Arms Around America, which opened last night at The Nimoy in Westwood, is about guns and their people (or “ammo-sexuality,” to steal a wonderful phrase from the show), it is also a feast of sounds, a display of musical bravura and an all-around fabulous evening of unconventional live theatre. Serving…
-
Theater Review: WAITING FOR GODOT (Geffen Playhouse)
70 YEARS ON, AND WE’RE STILL WAITING You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. — Albert Camus, playwright and novelist Aasif Mandvi and Rainn Wilson Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has generated volumes of…
-
Cabaret Review: EMILY GOGLIA PRESENTS THE LIMELIGHT CLUB (The Moon Room on Melrose)
TOO DARN HOT, EMILY! Hello, all you cabaret junkies. Have I got a surprise for you. And in Los Angeles of all places. I happened upon a true cabaret, the kind I go to New York for — ya know, Birdland, Green Room 42, The Duplex — but I found a lovely locale called The Moon…
-
Theater Review: PACIFIC OVERTURES (East West Players)
EAST WEST PLAYERS PULLS OUT ALL THE SHOGUNS FOR A RARELY SEEN SONDHEIM MUSICAL On Sunday, East West Players opened their new production of Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and John Weidman (book). From 1976, this is one of Sondheim’s more overlooked shows. If you’ve never seen this unusual musical, this will…
-
Concert Review: VENETIAN SPLENDOR: Vivaldi Four Seasons & Gondola Songs (Avi Avital and SF’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, SoCal Tour: Soka, Granada Theatre, The Soraya)
BRAVO, AVI! As part of a SoCal tour, Israeli Mandolinist Avi Avital and San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra stopped at at Soka University Concert Hall on Sunday, Nove 10, 2024. The concert’s main feature was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with the solo violin part transcribed to Mandolin by Avital himself. The program repeats tomorrow night Nov…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
