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Los Angeles
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Theater Review: HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (Musical Theatre Guild)
MUSICAL THEATRE GUILD KNOWS HOW TO SUCCEED Reams can and have been written about the glories of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. With music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock & Willie Gilbert, the 1961 musical satire that landed virtually unanimous raves would go on to run…
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Theater Review: OUR TOWN (South Coast Rep)
OUR CELEBRATION This year marks the 125th anniversary of Thornton Wilder’s birth. As part of the Wilder125 celebration, about 150 productions of the esteemed writer’s plays are being staged worldwide, including a revival of The Skin of Our Teeth on Broadway. This week, I had the privilege of seeing what’s arguably Wilder’s most famous work – Our Town – at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California. It was…
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Commentary and Los Angeles Theater Review: TAMBO & BONES (Kirk Douglas Theatre)
N-WORD, PLEASE! In six words, Samuel Beckett devours the human experience: “Birth was the death of him.” This line permeates not just A Piece of Monologue (1979), but all of the master’s works. In a world teeming with greed, terrorism, and unrest, Beckett knew that tragedy is common to all of us. We are born….
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Theater Review: TIGER STYLE! (South Coast Rep)
THIS TIGER IS KING Tiger Style! at South Coast Rep is refreshing for many reasons. First, it’s really funny. Playwright Mike Lew crafts his script like a super-smart teenager, mixing insights about the Asian community with cutting humor, f-bombs, “dude,” “bro” and some other words one would only find on Urban Dictionary. It’s a style…
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Recommended Music Event: JOURNEY OUT OF DARKNESS (Numi Opera at The Broad Stage)
JOURNEY OUT OF DARKNESS Breathing new life into works by composers who suffered oppression Numi Opera Theatre is back live after the Covid shutdown and will present Journey Out of Darkness, on Sunday May 29, 2022, at 7:00pm at the Broad Stage 1310 11th Street in Santa Monica. The concert features a collection of works by…
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Theater Review: KING LEAR (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
DID EVERYONE AT THE WALLIS NOT REALIZE THAT THE PLAY’S THE THING? One of the greatest travesties in L.A. theater history arrived at The Wallis last weekend, and I still have the emotional scars to prove it. A showcase for Joe Morton, who starred as Dick Gregory in The Wallis’s production of Turn Me Loose,…
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Theater Review: METAMORPHOSES (A Noise Within)
I NEVER MET A METAMORPHOSES I DIDN’T LIKE, BUT THIS ONE IS GREAT Critics often speak of “universal themes” — these are topics to which people in any place and at any time can relate. One of the main reasons that Greek literature, Aesop’s Fables, Shakespeare, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, to name a few, retain…
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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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