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Los Angeles
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Theater Preview: ANDRÉ & DORINE (Los Angeles Theatre Center)
THERE ARE NO WORDS It was one of those magical evenings in the theater that shall live with me forever. When Kulunka Teatro’s André & Dorine appeared at the Los Angeles Theatre Center back in 2012, I considered myself among the lucky few privileged enough to have witnessed such grace and simplicity. The show which left…
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Opera Preview: GIUSTINO (Long Beach Opera)
A QUEST FOR JUSTICE IN HANDEL’S GIUSTINO Opera fans, take note! The ever-adventurous Long Beach Opera launches its 2022 spring and summer season with a genuine rarity: a new version of Handel’s Giustino, performed at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAAA) in Long Beach (May 21, 22, 28, 2022 at 7:30pm) in what appears…
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Music Preview: HÉLAS MON COEUR (The Verdi Chorus Spring 2022 Concert in Santa Monica)
EERIE WITCHES AND VOICES OF COURAGE For two performances only this weekend, May 14-15, 2022, The Verdi Chorus is presenting its Spring 2022 Concert at Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church. This thoroughly professional outfit always sounds amazing. It’s such a treat to hear up-close opera choruses, as the voices can sometimes be lost when an…
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Theater Review: AFTERGLOW (Hudson Theatre in Hollywood)
SKIN DEEP As I made my way through a gaggle of gay-listers to see “Los Angeles’s steamiest show” at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles, that’s when I saw it – yet missed it completely – right there on the play’s poster. The advert for Afterglow features three beautiful, bare-chested men holding each other in…
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Music Review: NAS WITH THE LA PHIL (Disney Hall)
THE WIZARD OF NAS While the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, are no strangers to fronting pop and hip hop stars at the Hollywood Bowl, these genre-melding collaborations are not a typical programming staple in the Phil’s school-year digs on Grand Avenue in Downtown L.A. But on the first night of…
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Music Review: DUDAMEL LEADS ADÈS’S “DANTE” (Disney Hall)
DO NOT ABANDON HOPE; THIS GENERATION’S STRAVINSKY HAS ARRIVED I have great tidings, for English composer Thomas Adès has bestowed on us what is easily one of the greatest works of the twenty-first century. Under the aegis of its Gen X festival, LA Phil premiered his huge symphonic fantasia, Dante, last weekend at Disney Hall,…
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Music Preview: WILD UP (Los Angeles New Music)
WILD UP’S NEW HOME-BASED SERIES, LOS ANGELES NEW MUSIC, PLAYS MAY 15 – JULY 10, 2022 “For a decade, we’ve been exporting LA culture. Now, we’re beginning a home series here in LA.” – Christopher Rountree, Artistic Director of Wild Up Wild Up, LA’s ruling new music collective, greets the season of renewal with Los Angeles New…
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Theater Review: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles)
A BIG BAD-ASS WOOLF When Covid hit, I curled up one night, script in hand, poring over Edward Albee’s 60-year-old play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Perhaps the daily death toll had me in need of comfort, and I knew good ol’ George and Martha could hold me in a doting embrace. If you’re familiar with…
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Tour Preview: DAVID SEDARIS (Royce Hall at UCLA)
A CARNIVAL OF SEDARIS AT UCLA For those unfamiliar with David Sedaris’s work, he is a prolific writer, mostly of satire and non-fiction. Many of his stories revolve around his personal life and family, though — as with any great writer, and by his own admission — he does tend to embellish. His latest book,…
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Theater Review: HADESTOWN (North American Tour)
PRAISE THE GODS! As soon as the plunger-muted trombone began to wail, and ache, and wail again; as trickled sweat watered ivories being tickled on an upright piano; as the hmmm’s of the chorus overlayed the chugga-chug sounds in this gin-soaked speakeasy where the train to hell was roarin’, I knew Hadestown was touched by…
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Music Review: JEFF GOLDBLUM & THE MILDRED SCHNITZER ORCHESTRA (Disney Hall)
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDBLUM CHARM Well, it’s my first time with Jeff Goldblum and his Mildred Schnitzer Orchestra, which played last night at Disney Hall. Here’s how it goes: Actor extraordinaire Goldblum plays kind of a compère, loosely introducing his friends in the house, or playing trivia between numbers. His incredible band evokes a…
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Theater Review: TOOTSIE (North American Tour)
SURRENDER (TO) DOROTHY Forty years ago, Dustin Hoffman lit up the silver screen as struggling actor Michael Dorsey in the gender-swapping, smash-hit comedy, Tootsie. Really, who can forget the VHS box art featuring Hoffman’s Michael Dorsey-turned “Dorothy Michaels” donning that iconic red sequin dress in front of an American flag? Obviously, a lot has changed…
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Theater Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (La Mirada Theatre)
YOUR HEART WILL BE BLESSED Maria, an Austrian novice nun in the late 1930s, has difficulty in dealing with the rigid lifestyle of her monastery in Salzburg. Her loving Mother Abbess sends her off to be a nanny to seven children of widower and celebrated navy captain Georg von Trapp, a tough military man. Through…
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Opera / Theater Review: FIDELIO (LA Phil, Deaf West Theatre, and LA Master Chorale)
FAIR FIDELIO Fidelio is the sole opera written by Ludwig Van Beethoven. Inspired by an apocryphal story from the French revolution, it concerns Leonore, whose husband Florestan has been secretly imprisoned by an evil politician named Don Pizzarro. In order to rescue him, Leonore dresses up in male garb and gets a job in the…
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Music Review: PEKKA KUUSISTO + ELLEN REID (LA Phil Green Umbrella Series at Disney Hall)
TYMPANIST JOSEPH PEREIRA SURE KNOWS HIS KRAFT Sometimes concerts in the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella new music series are programmed around a singular thematic element. Sometimes they offer a range of works representing a particular school or mode of composition. Some showcase distinctive performance styles. If last Tuesday night’s long Green Umbrella program, curated by…
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First Look: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (Geffen)
ALBEE DAMNED Previews begin tonight at The Geffen Playhouse for Edward Albee’s most famous and most vicious masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George and Martha, the American theater’s most notoriously dysfunctional couple, have invited the young and naïve Nick and Honey over for drinks. What begins as harmless patter escalates to outright marital warfare, with the…
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Music Review: FOCUS ON ANDRIESSEN (LA Phil)
A TRIUMPHANT ANDRIESSEN Dutch-born composer Louis Andriessen worked in numerous styles of musical modernism over the course of a prolific career that began in the 1950s and continued until shortly before his death last summer. In recent years the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned and premiered several Andriessen pieces and even issued recordings conducted by orchestra…
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Theater Review: BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY (Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles)
DOWN IN HARLEM Following the quirky, audacious Slave Play (see review) — the first show of Center Theatre Group’s season at The Taper — the company has done a complete 180 with their production of Pearl Cleage’s 1995 Blues for an Alabama Sky, which opened last night. While Slave Play attempted to turn the conversation…
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Film Screening: SLEEPING BEAUTY (El Capitan and The Academy Museum in Hollywood)
EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL ON THE BIG SCREEN Disney animators Andreas Deja and Floyd Norman will participate in a live Q&A at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood before their Sleeping Beauty screening on April 15, 2022 at 7pm; Ted Thomas, the son of legendary Disney animator Frank Thomas will moderate the session. The film’s original prop…
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Dance Review: LAZARUS & REVELATIONS (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at The Chandler)
AILEY IS ALWAYS A REVELATION(S) Bringing with them three complete programs of dazzling dance, this 2022 edition showcases Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s (AAADT) vital verve, reminding audiences why they retain a love affair with this American institution. An unprecedented two-week, three-program showcase plays through April 10, 2022. Never, and I mean never, in all the…
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