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Los Angeles
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Dance Review: CONCERTO BAROCCO: A BALANCHINE BALLET (American Contemporary Ballet)
BALLET IS WOMAN What is the true nature of beauty? Do objects we find beautiful contain beauty, or, as Plato theorized, do they merely reflect its true heavenly form? These are the questions posed by American Contemporary Ballet’s evening, Concerto Barocco: A Balanchine Ballet. And when I say these are the questions posed, I am…
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Recommended Theater: MONKEYS (905 Cole Theatre; 2023 Hollywood Fringe Festival)
The Hollywood Fringe Festival is presenting the world premiere of Monkeys, a 2023 Hollywood Fringe Scholarship winner, written and directed by Bernard Badion. Monkeys is a workplace comedy set in one of the worst workplaces to ever exist, following a group of Filipino farm laborer bunkmates who go on strike to protest their abysmally low…
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Theater Review: TAKE ME AS I AM: A JONI MITCHELL TRIBUTE (Rainee Blake at Three Clubs in Hollywood)
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO YOU TO SEE RAINEE BLAKE AS JONI MITCHELL LIVE During the 2018 Music Center concert, Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live, Peter Gabriel sent a prescient message to the artists interpreting Joni Mitchell’s complex lyrics and melodies: “I pity the people who have to sing them tonight.” Instead of showing…
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Dance Review: DEEP RIVER (Alonzo King LINES Ballet)
THIN LOVE We go to the ballet for bodies. Don’t we? If the dance audience at The Wallis in Beverly Hills, where I saw Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Deep River yesterday (there is one more performance tonight, June 10), were presented with a version of the AMC Theater’s Nicole Kidman promotional trailer, what would she…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret: MOONLIGHTING (Norm Lewis at Catalina Bar & Grill)
NEXT TO NORM Here’s a way to spend a Monday evening: Broadway, television, and film actor Norm Lewis is taking his night off from starring in the national tour of A Soldier’s Play at the Ahmanson Theater (which is a must-see) and will be crooning for you this Monday, June 12 at 8:30 (doors open…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret: JESSIE MUELLER and SETH RUDETSKY (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
MUELLER IS COOLER IN UP-CLOSE CABARET The Wallis in Beverly Hills lays claim to being the place to see and be seen on Friday June 16 at The Wallis in Beverly Hills, as one of Broadway’s brightest stars, Jessie Mueller, headlines a one-night-only special concert event. This superstar-sized evening of incredible music and intimate, hilarious, behind-the-scenes…
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Opera Review: STRANGER LOVE (LA Phil Commission at Walt Disney Concert Hall)
STRANGER LOVE, OR MINIMALIST MELATONIN Composer Dylan Mattingly calls his six-hour Stranger Love an opera in three acts, but it’s more like a set of three distinct pieces: an opera (Act I, 230 minutes), a ballet (Act II, 80 minutes), and an orchestral piece (Act III, 25 minutes). It premiered Saturday May 20, 2023, at…
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Theater Review: A SOLDIER’S PLAY (National Tour)
THIS WAR WITHIN A WAR IS COMMANDING AND COMPELLING The North American tour of A Soldier’s Play — Roundabout’s 2020 Tony Award-winning Best Revival of a Play — opened last Wednesday at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theater and plays through June 25, the end of this tour. Don’t miss it. Broadway star Norm Lewis leads the cast…
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Theater Review: BLUE (Rogue Machine at the Matrix)
A NEOPHYTE BROWNSHIRT UNDER A BLUE WALL OF DEFENCE Written by June Carryl and directed by Michael Matthews, Blue is a 60-minute nailbiter which has been extended to July 3. Rogue Machine Theatre Company has inaugurated The Henry Murray Stage upstairs at the Matrix on Melrose. This erstwhile rehearsal room has been transformed in this production…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret: GREATEST SONGS. GREATEST VOICES. (Aaron Lazar at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood)
Big Broadway, A Little Pop, A Lot of Passion. Music Direction: John Boswell Guests: Paul Freeman and Darrell Morris Jr Los Angeles audiences were treated to Aaron Lazar in both Dear Evan Hansen and The Secret Garden at The Ahmanson, and now this Broadway Heartthrob, singer, and actor from Cherry Hill, NJ, is coming back…
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Theater Review: EVOLUTION OF A SONERO (Los Angeles Theatre Center)
THE SONERO, THE BETTER Here’s what tipped me off that we were about to see something special: Pianist Carlos Ordiano enters with four band members (“The Razor Blades”) at Los Angeles Theatre Center, and plays a gorgeous — and I mean GORGEOUS — piano solo, molto melodic and introspective. Then the quintet broke into a…
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Theater Review: THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE (Pacific Opera Project at Forest Lawn, Glendale)
PIFFLING PIRATES OF PENZANCE POPS WITH POP The plot of The Pirates of Penzance, a satire so cutting in Victorian days, will likely come off as inane to today’s spectators. Still, Arthur Sullivan’s music is superb and the lyrics delicious, though it takes a sharp ear to follow W.S. Gilbert’s rapid-fire libretto. The score almost…
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Theater Review: THE BOTTOMING PROCESS (IAMA Theatre Company and the Los Angeles LGBT Center)
PILAPIL POPS HIS CHERRY IN HIS PLAYWRITING PREMIERE “Why won’t you let me top you? Is it because I am Asian?!” This ear-catching line is decried robustly by the very passionate protagonist Milo (the expressive George Salazar), a Filipino neurotic social media account manager to his lover, young adult book writer and celebrity, John (Rick…
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Theater Review: A NEW BRAIN (Celebration Theatre)
CELEBRATION THEATRE GOT IT RIGHT! (BUT THEY DIDN’T) When William Finn‘s autobiographical musical A New Brain opened at Lincoln Center in 1998, I couldn’t understand why the reviews were so higgledy-piggledy. True, I hadn’t actually seen the production, but the original cast recording had me hooked. I was champing at the bit to see why his…
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Highly Recommended Event: IMMERSIVE DISNEY ANIMATION (Lighthouse Immersive Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios in Hollywood
[Editor’s Note: The opening of the Los Angeles venue for Immersive Disney Animation has been delayed until further notice. There is no further comment at this time apart to say that guests have been notified, and tickets holders are being issued refunds. Lighthouse Immersive Studios apologizes for any inconvenience or disappointment.] IMMERSIVE DISNEY ANIMATIONPREMIERING IN…
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Music Review: SCHUMANN AND SCHEHERAZADE (LA Phil with Guest Conductor Tianyi Lu; Pianist Sunwook Kim at Disney Hall)
BIG, MAGICAL & CLIMACTIC For the first Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of British composer Anna Klein’s This Midnight Hour, guest conductor Chinese-born New Zealander Tianyi Lu in a sparkly blouse conducted precisely and clearly but with incredible elegance, oftentimes pulling notes out of the instrumentalists like a single thread; her gestures reminded me like those…
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Opera Review: OTELLO (LA Opera)
EXQUISITE MUSIC BROUGHT TO LIFE BY LA OPERA Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Otello is a timeless masterpiece that showcases the composer’s genius in capturing the dramatic intensity and emotional complexity of William Shakespeare’s tragic play. The opera, which premiered in 1887, has become one of Verdi’s most powerful and musically captivating works, blending intricate vocal lines,…
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Theater Review: AVAAZ (South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
A TRAILBLAZING VOICE EMERGES It is tough to capture what Avaaz is in writing. On the surface, it is a one-person play in which author Michael Shayan plays his mother, Roya, a Jewish-Iranian woman who is quite a character. The narrative journey can be traced back to Roya’s father, Shayan’s grandfather, who was jailed for…
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Theater Recommendation: GREAT BROADWAY LINE-UP (Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa)
2023–24 Broadway SeasonSUBSCRIBE
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Theater Review: ASSASSINS (Long Beach Landmark Theatre, First Congregational Church of Long Beach)
ASSASSINS SINGS! BUT THE COMPEXITY OF ITS THEMES GO MISSING ALONG WITH THE GUNS Assassins, with music and lyrics by the late Stephen Sondheim and a book by John Weidman, opened Off-Broadway at the Playwrights Horizon in the winter of 1990 and played seventy-three performances. Reviews were mixed to poor, applauding the music but questioning…
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