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Los Angeles
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Theater Review: FUN HOME (Chance Theater)
TAKE A CHANCE WITH FUN When a newly “out” lesbian learns her closeted father has taken his life mere months after revealing to him her sexuality, she has a lot to process. Being an artist, she attempts to make sense of her trauma through storytelling – that’s the power of art. More specifically, that’s the…
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Music Review: WEILL’S VIOLIN CONCERTO WITH SALONEN (The Weimar Republic: Germany 1918-1933)
ONCE IN A WEILL The Weimar Republic’s pyrotechnic explosion of the fine arts in the 1920s produced much “new” music before being deemed “decadent”, and dashed by the rising Nazi regime in the mid-1930s. Two programs by the LA Phil and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at Disney Hall — one last weekend and one upcoming —…
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Theater Review: I DECIDED I’M FINE: A ROACH PLAY (The Attic Collective at Studio/Stage in Hollywood)
PASS THIS ROACH After a convoluted build-up, there’s a late scene in I Decided I’m Fine: A Roach Play that actually works. In it, Ellen (Veronica Tjioie), a trauma-stricken hoarder, exposes her “dirty secret” by welcoming outsiders into her shockingly cluttered home. If one can get past the improbability of such a willing invitation, the…
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Theater Review: LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL (Ebony Rep)
AT DAY’S END Thanks to Lanie Robertson’s bedrock-basic script, Wren T. Brown’s dedicated staging, Karole Foreman’s extraordinarily vulnerable performance, and Stephan Terry’s elegant piano playing, Ebony Rep’s 90-minute revival of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill pays full homage to Billie Holiday’s heroism and heartbreak. Unlike her famous “God Bless the Child,” Lady Day…
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Theater Review: RED BIKE (Moxie Theatre Company)
WHERE WILL THIS RED BIKE TAKE YOU? Red Bike immediately presents a huge challenge to a director. Caridad Svich’s script contains no stage directions (and little punctuation, even) and reads like a lengthy poetry slam. This creates both a tremendous burden and glorious opportunity for a director to bring her verse-like prose to life. Moxie…
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Opera Review: EURYDICE (LA Opera)
MYTH INTERPRETATION MacArthur Genius Grant-winning composer Matthew Aucoin called up playwright Sarah Ruhl, the Pulitzer Prize finalist who had achieved said nomination with a play about vibrators. But it was in reference to another work of this other MacArthur Genius Grant-winner, a 2003 play called Eurydice. Did she want to make an opera about Orpheus,…
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Theater Review: THIS SIDE OF CRAZY (Zephyr Theatre)
HYMN-DINGER Sweet lovin’ Jesus, Del Shores is back, and he’s brought a band of gospel singers with him. In This Side of Crazy, writer/director/producer Shores introduces us to a Southern family comprised of the Christian singing trio, The Blaylock Sisters, and their gospel legend momma, Ditty Blaylock. These Christian ladies — well, one’s now an…
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Dance Review: ASTAIRE DANCES III (American Contemporary Ballet)
TOP HATS OFF TO ACB With Astaire Dances III, American Contemporary Ballet recreates several iconic routines evolved by the great Fred Astaire and his choreographer Hermes Pan, and executes them with charm and grace. But the evening is about so much more than presenting a few meticulously copied dance numbers; the audience is treated to…
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Theater Review: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (La Mirada)
THERE’S ARSENIC AND LACE; BUT IT DOESN’T FEEL OLD Serial murder, euthanasia, slasher psychopaths, bodies buried in a crawl space, face-lifts for people trying to change their images, the cyanide poisonings of innocent strangers — it’s a click-bait tabloid-rotten world we live in. Not like the good old days, when crime didn’t pay and virtue…
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Music Review: ALL-STRAUSS (Philippe Jordan, Gautier Capuçon, Teng Li, Los Angeles Philharmonic)
STRAUSS RELIEVER A few years ago, I saw Richard Strauss’s opera, Elektra. Let me just say that even with moments of beautiful, chilling music it veered into atonal territory, sounding like a disjointed, anticlimactic Danse Macabre, but without the dance. The vocal lines skewed towards the upper range which not only grated on the ear,…
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Theater Review: UNTIL THE FLOOD (Center Theatre Group at the Kirk Douglas Theatre)
AFTER THE FLOOD Until the Flood lasts only 70 minutes. But its concentrated running time delivers a devastating drama. A ton of truth-telling now on tour at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, this 2016 one-act is the creation of actor, poet and oral historian Dael Orlandersmith. She becomes the partisans, witnesses, survivors and, above all, inhabitants…
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Theater Reviews: RED INK (Playwrights’ Arena) and EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON (Rogue Machine)
YELLOW JOURNALISM, BLUE PLANET — UNCERTAIN FUTURES Propaganda has always existed. It’s when people promote and publicize their agenda utilizing biased or misleading information, a perfect tool for predomination, profit, and/or political power. With the advent of the internet, propaganda such as yellow journalism — which uses scandal-mongering, sensationalism and exaggeration of news events to…
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Theater Review: KILLER’S HEAD & THE UNSEEN HAND (Sam Shepard One-Acts at the Odyssey)
SHEP IN TIME When I think of the late Sam Shepard, his plays Fool for Love, True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class usually come to mind. I was totally unfamiliar with Killer’s Head and The Unseen Hand now playing as a double bill at the Odyssey in celebration of the theater’s 50th…
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Theater Review: FOR THE LOVE OF A GLOVE (Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan Theater in Los Angeles)
IF THE GLOVE FITS… On the heels of Leaving Neverland — the jaw-dropping 2019 documentary that explores the sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson — comes the world premiere of a musical that posits a bizarre, untold story of the King of Pop. For the Love of a Glove is a ribald, lampooning satire that…
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Opera Review: GIANNI SCHICCHI & L’ENFANT ET LES SORTILÈGES (Pacific Opera Project)
A DAZZLING DOUBLE BILL The laudable Pacific Opera Project gave us two sparkling gems of operatic joy this week: a double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortilèges. Director Josh Shaw has updated both operas to the mid-1950s, a period which suits both pieces well — old enough for temporal distance…
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Theater Review: THE LAST SHIP (National Tour)
A SHIP THAT REMAINS DOCKED Sting’s musical The Last Ship has been in a shakedown cruise since it opened in Chicago six years ago. Based on last night’s star-studded opening night at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles, this retooled version sadly remains docked. Sure, it’s got a decent new book that jettisons jetsam from the…
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Concert Review: LEA DELARIA (The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles)
DELIGHTFULLY DELIRIOUS DELARIA She’s butch, bold, brazen and brash. She’s riotous, raucous, ribald and rebellious. She scats with style and scurrilously scours political cads. And above all, she’s enormously entertaining. Since the mid-eighties, I’ve seen her on Broadway as well as her solo shows, some mostly singing and some mostly stand-up. Last Saturday night, January…
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Theater Review: VOLTA (Cirque du Soleil)
PLENTY OF WATTAGE, EVEN WITH AN OBSCURE STORY Cirque du Soleil is back with its latest touring show, which opened last night, January 21, at Dodger Stadium. At its best, Volta provides all the pleasures of a Cirque production — knockout acts of grace, athleticism, skill, creativity, and danger. The show does have difficulties associated…
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Theater Review: NOWHERE ON THE BORDER (Road Theatre Company in North Hollywood)
BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CANTEEN In an effort to spark dialogue on Trump-era immigration, The Road Theatre Company has mounted a revised version of Carlos Lacámara’s Nowhere on the Border, a play that premiered at The Hayworth Theatre in 2006 during the presidency of George W. Bush. While this partially-rewritten work is a testament to…
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Theater Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME (Mark Taper Forum)
WHAT WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME MEANS TO ME Given the barrage of nasty nightly news, I don’t doubt that Americans are champing at the bit for a large slice of patriotism as they watch America seemingly evolving and devolving at once. And there isn’t a document that represents our constantly changing America more…
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