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Los Angeles
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Theater Review: A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena)
A LUMINOUS NIGHT MUSIC I’m a little dizzy, bubbly’”not from any reception champagne, mind you, but from seeing my very first production of A Little Night Music. It’s left me floating. (The music, I confess, is still coursing through me; I hope they don’t ask for it back.) With its 20 cast members and 22-piece…
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Music Review: PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN (Six Trio Sonatas of J.S. Bach at Disney Hall)
JACOBS’ LADDER TO HEAVEN Courtesy of the LA Phil, the awesome organist Paul Jacobs came to Disney Hall on April 16 to delight us with a most exquisite rendition of the famous Six Trio Sonatas of J.S. Bach, BWV525-530. With a charming sense of humor, he addressed the audience with his vast knowledge, peaking our…
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Theater Review: THE REALISTIC JONESES (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
NOTHING IS MORE REAL THAN NOTHING — Samuel Beckett Dramatist Will Eno doesn’t make it easy on the audience in his 2012 play The Realistic Joneses at the Laguna Playhouse. Viewers are asked to decide whether the play is primarily a comedy or a sober view of the human condition salted with bits of the…
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Theater Review: COLEMAN ’72 (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
A LOVE LETTER TO AN IMMIGRANT FATHER Coleman ’72 is getting a fantastic world premiere production from South Coast Repertory. It is a melodrama about nostalgia, the immigrant experience, cross-generational trauma, and familial love. Told through the unreliable accounts of three siblings, this trip down memory lane brings up complicated family dynamics between each sibling…
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Theater Review: SCINTILLA (Road Theatre Company)
SCINTILLATING Every generation has its gap. Currently millennials are annoyed that baby boomers wrecked the planet and baby boomers are annoyed that millennials are, well, annoying. Add to the mix the annoying offspring who see their role as having to be the boss of an aging parent and you have the ingredients for the new…
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Concert Review: INVOCATIONS (Serj Tankian at The Soraya, Cal State Northridge)
A SURGE OF SERJ Serj Tankian, a world-class musician, peace activist, and frontman of Grammy-winning nu-metal band System of Down, had the mixed crowd — metal T-shirts, ripped jeans, and dress-up — buzzing with excitement. Tankian is also an alumnus of Cal State University, Northridge, the home of The Soraya. The homecoming last Saturday April…
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Recommended Theater: A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD (Morgan-Wixson Theatre Youth Production)
HOP INTO SPRING Friendship is among the hardest subjects to parse, but this musical based on Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” stories, considers friendship warts and all. Frog and Toad worry about each other over big things and small. They argue. They become angry. At times they fail to hear what the other is saying,…
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Theater Recommendation: WHITTIER BOULEVARD (Latino Theater Company at Los Angeles Theatre Center)
WITTIER AND WHITTIER “Let’s take a trip down Whittier Boulevard! ¡Arriba, Arriba!” sang Chicano surf-guitar band Thee Midniters in 1965. Inspired by a classic film named for a different famous boulevard, Latino Theater Company kicks off its 2023 Spring Season with an original, satirical comedy that takes its title from the 14-mile heart of East L.A….
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Theater Opening: A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena)
After the roaring success of Pasadena Playhouse’s wonderful production of Sunday in the Park with George, now comes A Little Night Music, which officially opens May 1, 2023. This is the second mainstage production of the theater’s six-month-long celebration of the works and impact of Stephen Sondheim, the first major festival honoring his legacy since his passing in…
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Theater Review: 1776 (National Tour)
2023 COMES TO 1776 The founding of the United States of America has always been largely misunderstood, even by its own citizens. Fifty landowners got together in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and debated for two years on the efficacy of declaring a rationale for Independence; they needed sensible reasons for breaking away from the mother country, Great…
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Music Review: SIBELIUS AND BRAHMS (LA Phil: Osmo Vånskå, conductor; Inon Barnatan, piano)
STORMS, ROLLERCOASTERS, AND TURBULENCE It was a wild night with the LA Phil at Disney Hall last weekend. For Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, guest conductor Osmo Vänskä successfully immersed us in the young Brahms’s ominous soundscape. He let the music breathe naturally, holding out long rests unapologetically and often got down to the floor…
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Theater Review: COLONIALISM IS TERRIBLE, BUT PHỞ IS DELICIOUS (Chance Theater in Anaheim)
MANY PARTS ARE EDIBLE It’s fascinating to watch a new generation of Asian playwrights — Mike Lew, Qui Nguyen, Lauren Yee, Dipika Guha, Christopher Chen — writing about the quest for identity as it pertains to traditional upbringing, here or abroad, and current frustrations as modern Asians in America, often addressing race within a meta,…
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Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (Theatre 40)
IT’S ONLY A FLOP There’s a glaring contradiction in It’s Only a Play: Written by the usually crafty Terrence McNally, a 20-time Broadway playwright, this two-act love letter to Broadway theater and its “plays of fools” ’” depicted in full fratricidal frenzy at an opening night party ’” utterly mocks its message. The joke is on…
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Theater Review: MENSTRUATION: A PERIOD PIECE (Big Little Theatre Company at the L.A. LGBT Center)
I CAN’T GET THAT TASTE OUT OF MY MOUTH Get ready for a show that is all vagina and no vulva. This bloody awful musical by Big Little Theater Company is of the women, by the women and for the women, especially lesbians — there are lesbians on stage, in the audience, and behind the…
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Theater Review: GRIEF: A ONE MAN SHITSHOW (Theatre Row’s Studio Theatre, Off-Broadway)
WHERE’S THE GRIEF? A LOT OF GOOD SHIT, BUT WE NEED MORE SHOW Grief. It almost seems to come on a daily basis. You hear people grieve over politics, a lost job, a breakup, the weather — grieving which, in many ways, manifests itself in complaining (misery loves company, yes?). As Colin Campbell tells us…
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Music Review: TCHAIKOVSKY AND SIBELIUS (LA Phil; Conductor Dalia Stasevska, Violinist Randall Goosby)
STASEVSKA, STASEVSKA, STASEVSKA There is much good news about this morning’s program with the LA Phil. Let me start with the most important. Dalia Stasevska, a 38-year-old Kyiv-born musician who lives in Finland, was the Guest Conductor (she is now the Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic). Say that Ukrainian last name over and…
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Cabaret Recommendation: MUSIC AT THE ODYSSEY (Celebrating Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter)
IT’S DE-LOVELY As I suspected, this Friday’s Music at the Odyssey show celebrating Rodgers and Hammerstein, George Gershwin and Cole Porter has sold out. And with good reason. The previous show, all Sondheim, was one of the most delightful cabarets I’ve ever seen. The bounteous talent was top-notch, the musicians breezy, and the space intimate. And…
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Music Review: Mí„LKKI LEADS DVOŘíK (LA Phil)
DONE WELL INDIVIDUALLY, BUT A CURIOUS AND UNNECESSARY PAIRING Conductor Susanna Målkki returned to Disney Hall with a contrasting program of Antonin Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, Op. 46 and a U.S. premiere of an LA Phil commissioned Double Concerto by Felipe Lara written for Claire Chase, flute and esperanza spalding, bass and voice. The Slavonic Dances…
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Theater Review: THE HUMAN COMEDY (Actors Co-op)
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN There is a world premiere now playing at Actors Co-op in Hollywood that is both ambitious and successful. The Human Comedy, set in the fictional California town of Ithaca in the San Joaquin Valley (think Fresno area), was first written as an MGM screenplay by Armenian-American William Saroyan, who was also…
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Theater Review: LET ME IN (Theatre 68 Arts Complex)
LET ME IN, OR GET ME OUT? In writer/director Brynn Thayer‘s Let Me In, now running at the newly and spiffily remodeled Theatre 68 Arts Complex in North Hollywood, actor Jorge Garcia of Lost fame gives a moving, funny, and incredibly nuanced performance as a New York cop on the day of his retirement. Mr….
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