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Los Angeles
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Concert Review: SHEENA EASTON (Pepperdine Malibu)
THE SHEEN IS OFF Grammy Award-winning Pop and Broadway musical star Sheena Easton gave a disarrayed performance at the Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts on the Pepperdine University Campus in Malibu last night, Thursday, October 26. Wearing a form-fitting short sparkling teal dress, she shared the stage with four musicians and a male…
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Dance Review: JUNGLE BOOK REIMAGINED (BroadStage, Santa Monica; U.S. opening of Global Tour)
MOWGLI, GET YOUR GUN Brilliant dancing gets waylaid by a chaotic and illegible narrative in this multimedia eco-morality play. Two words are redefining the medium of dance: Video Projection. In lieu of expensive and unwieldy portable sets, a new generation of traveling productions requires only a theater’s built-in scrim and cyclorama – and an animator…
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Theater Review: DEATHTRAP (International City Theatre in Long Beach)
CAUGHT IN A TRAP Without spoiling, there’s only so much I can say about Deathtrap. Written by Ira Levin, this 1978 Tony-nominated play is an imperfect, though relatively delightful thriller now getting an even more imperfect, though relatively delightful production at International City Theatre in Long Beach. Best known for Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford…
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Highly Recommended Theater: TACOS LA BROOKLYN (Los Angeles Theatre Center)
Extended through Nov. 5: Multilingual comic dramaTacos La Brooklyn is quintessential L.A. at The LATC Appropriation: or appreciation? Latino Theater Company has extended its world premiere, multilingual production of Joel Ulloa‘s Tacos La Brooklyn for three additional performances through Nov. 5, 2023 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Sayaka Miyatani and Paul Dateh Esperanza America Chino, a young and ambitious Korean…
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Theater Review: BLOOD AT THE ROOT (Open Fist)
THE ROOT OF THE MATTER Hooray and hallelujah, for Open Fist‘s taut 80-minute production of Dominque Morisseau‘s Blood at the Root, dynamically directed by Michael A. Shepperd, and choreographed by Yusuf Nasir, has been extended until November 6, 2023 at Atwater Village Theatre. Easily the most powerful play on any L.A. stage right now, Blood…
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Highly Recommended Concert: AN ALPINE SYMPHONY WITH SALONEN (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
A WORLD PREMIERE AND ONE OF THE GREATEST TONE POEMS EVER WRITTEN I never knew this until researching the upcoming LA Phil program this weekend, but the connection between Nico Muhly and Philip Glass became established in the mid-2000s, when Glass employed Muhly as an assistant! Muhly certainly soaked up minimalism but he has never…
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Highly Recommended Concert: 40! (The Verdi Chorus Fall 2023 Concert in Santa Monica)
The Verdi Chorus’ 40th Anniversary season continues with its landmark Fall 2023 Concert, 40! Led by Anne Marie Ketchum, who is celebrating forty consecutive years as Artistic Director of the organization (now THAT deserves an exclamation point!), the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music…
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Recommended Dance: THE NUTCRACKER (Inland Pacific Ballet, December 2-23, 2023)
Inland Pacific Ballet’s The Nutcracker comes to life this season with beautiful sets, dazzling costumes, Tchaikovsky’s classic score, and more than 80 dancers on stage. This annual holiday favorite tells the story of a young girl named Clara who receives a magical nutcracker doll on Christmas Eve and sets out on a wondrous journey to the…
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Opera Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE (LA Opera)
LA OPERA’S THE BARBER OF SEVILLE MORE THAN MAKES THE CUT In the world of opera, few works shine as brightly and endure as enduringly as Gioachino Rossini’s comic 1816 masterpiece, The Barber of Seville. The Barbiere di Siviglia score is a marvel of musical composition. Its lively and effervescent melodies, intricate vocal lines, and…
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Music Review: SIBELIUS AND SWAN LAKE (LA Phil; Hilary Hahn, violinist; Alpesh Chauhan, conductor)
Yesterday at Walt Disney Concert Hall conductor Alpesh Chauhan, making his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut, began with Saad Haddad’s new piece, Aysheen (عايشين), or “living” in Arabic, an LA Phil commission which received its first performances over the weekend. Aysheen begins with the bass drum thumping a soft heartbeat, soon joined by droning cellos and basses,…
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Theater and Dance Review: HEART OF BRICK (International Tour)
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S CHIC CLUB ODYSSEY Choreographer Raja Feather Kelly elevates backing dancers to high art in serpentwithfeet’s musical tour In Heart of Brick, presented yesterday at the Ford Theater, the musical artist serpentwithfeet (Josiah Wise) begins the evening by gliding onstage in an enormous red-orange snuggie. He speaks to us about his desire to…
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Theater Review: OLIVER! (5-Star Theatricals)
WHO WILL BUY IT? Endearing and sometimes exhilarating in its zest to please, 5-Star Theatricals‘ heartfelt but uneven revival of Oliver!, staged like community theater on steroids by Kari Hayter, only occasionally earns its exclamation point. The good news is that even with all-over-the-map dialects, so-so choreography, milquetoast drama, and mixed performance styles from Broadway…
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Recommended Event: GRAND AVE ARTS: ALL ACCESS (Downtown Los Angeles Sat. Oct. 21, 2023, 11am – 4pm)
FREE DAY OF ARTS EXPERIENCES FOR ANGELENOS It’s just a couple of days away from Grand Ave Arts: All Access, a day like no other where Downtown Los Angeles’s cultural corridor becomes a giant open house for Angelenos of all ages to experience free art opportunities with 14 of LA’s most iconic institutions on Saturday…
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Theater Review: THE ENGAGEMENT PARTY (The Geffen Playhouse)
A MOST ENGAGING PARTY Going into the west coast premiere production of Samuel Baum’s The Engagement Party, currently running at the Geffen Playhouse, I was aware of two things. First, a spilled glass of wine is the instigating action that causes everything to collapse. Two, the poster bore a striking resemblance to imagery used in…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: THE MISSING MOUNTAIN (L.A. Dance Project)
MURDER MYSTERY THEATER, WITHOUT THE MURDER PART Performers romp through a mist-filled space, trying to be mountains in this continuous dance performance. At the start of L.A. Dance Project’s The Missing Mountain by L.A. Dance Project choreographic Artists-in-Residence Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, is the sound. As the audience enters the theater, we are…
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Theater Review: LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (El Portal)
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS Hearing the vintage recordings of Judy Garland and male crooners singing with society pop orchestras from the post-depression era, coupled with seeing black and white etchings of London skylines projected onto a scrim framed in an elegant art deco-inspired false proscenium, one would expect to see a romantic love story. However,…
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Opera Review: STAR CHOIR (World Premiere by The Industry at Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles)
WHAT’S NEXT, TURANDOT AT THE SPHINX? Space pageantry reaches new heights inside Mt. Wilson Observatory’s 100-inch telescope. The experimental opera company The Industry is known for their innovative productions, held in unconventional locations. There was Hopscotch — a “mobile opera” that ferried audience members between the LA River, Bradbury building, an Airstream, and in…
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Theater Review: THE SORCERER (Ventura County Gilbert & Sullivan Repertoire Company)
THE SORCERER TAKEN FROM THE SOURCE This weekend, the Ventura County Gilbert & Sullivan Repertoire Company began its three-weekend run of The Sorcerer, a revival of their 2016 production. It is Gilbert and Sullivan’s first full-length opera and infrequently performed today. Subject to revisions since the opera’s 1877 premiere, this version reinstates the original Act…
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Music Review: STRAVINSKY AND SHOSTAKOVICH WITH DUDAMEL (Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason; Conductor Gustavo Dudamel; LA Phil at Disney Hall)
AN UNEQUIVACABLE TRIUMPH FOR LA PHIL… AND MY MOTHER The strains of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 have forever held a special place in my heart. It is a sentimentality rooted in a rather extraordinary moment of my own origin, an occurrence forever entwined with the ethereal melodies of this masterpiece. On that fateful December…
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Dance Review: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO (Ahmanson Theatre)
SHOTA MYOSHI THRILLS WITH STREET PERFORMANCE The Chicago veteran contemporary dance company, one of America’s finest, doesn’t disappoint in a dancey triple bill at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Triple Bill last Friday consisted of a variety of styles. The first piece, Aszure Barton’s Busk (2009) is a genre-bending contemporary piece,…
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