Areas We Cover
Categories
Los Angeles
-
Theater Review: THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX (The Old Globe in San Diego)
DESPEREAUX TIMES CALL FOR DESPEREAUX MEASURES More precious than profound, this new family musical is pure children’s theater with multilayered storytelling and plenty of songs that aid in exposition. The world premiere at The Old Globe is delightful, even if there are some flaws in the arc that keep the show from building in suspense….
-
Theater Feature: DEATH OF A SALESMAN (Ruskin Theatre Group in Santa Monica)
MORE LIFE FOR DEATH Rob Morrow’s completely compelling interpretation of Willie Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman has made the show so popular that an extension has been announced. Slated to close on August 4, 2019, the exciting event will play until August 25 (dark August 12 -15). The miracle of Death of…
-
Theater Review: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG (National Tour)
THE PLAY ABOUT THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG GOES WRONG The title of this play is brutally honest ’” and you can’t say you weren’t warned. In the style of Monty Python and Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off (an infinitely cleverer romp), The Play That Goes Wrong, a 2015 London hit written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and…
-
Dance Preview: THE ROYAL BALLET & COMPANY WAYNE MCGREGOR (World Premieres in Los Angeles)
ROYAL DANCE PREMIERES Do you hear the buzz? One of the biggest events of the year with some of the biggest arts organizations in the world involved, The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will host the dance world premiere of the 45-minute Inferno which will be a part of the full-length evening The Dante Project…
-
Music Review: CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS (Sean Hayes, Katia and Marielle Labí¨que & The LA Phil)
BEAUTY AND HUMOR I wonder what French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) would have thought had he known his Carnival of the Animals (Le Carnaval des Animaux) would become one of his most well-known and perhaps best-loved works. Written in 1886, it was meant to be a divertissement for his pupils to play, so the…
-
Theater Review: ROCK OF AGES (Cygnet Theatre Company in San Diego)
SOLID AS AN 80s ROCK Big hair, short shorts, and tons of Madonnawannabees. It’s hard not to love the spirit of the 80s. A huge part of that was the high-spirited music of the decade. Moving past the 70s folk ballad/disco era but not yet into the angst-y 90s, the 80s were loaded with feel…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: WE SHOULD HANG OUT SOMETIME (Santa Monica Playhouse)
A GUY WITH ONE LEG WALKS INTO A THEATER: This show-in-residence at the Santa Monica Playhouse (it plays most Friday nights) is a funny, exhilarating dive into comedian, best-selling author, Paralympic champion, and YouTube star Josh Sundquist’s sometimes bizarre, always engrossing experiences as a guy who, although he had plenty of friends and a great…
-
Dance Review: MAYERLING (The Royal Ballet)
THE ROYAL BALLET TAKES ON ROYAL INTRIGUE Considering we couldn’t tell most characters from each other at last night’s opening of Royal Opera Ballet’s Mayerling, a good time was had by all. With Kenneth McMillan’s inventive and daring 1978 choreography, Koen Kessels’ live orchestra’s thrilling rendition of Liszt’s exquisite music (arranged and orchestrated by John…
-
Theater Review: MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES (Geffen Playhouse in Westwood)
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK As with Good Boys playing across town, Mysterious Circumstances doesn’t quite give us an ending the material deserves, but hoo-boy what a ride this is. Directed by Matt Shakman with a magical meta-theatrical flourish that makes life worth living, our fever dream is based on the still-unsolved true-life death of a Sir…
-
Theater Review: DEATH OF A SALESMAN (Ruskin Theatre Group in Santa Monica)
DEATH LIVES Arthur Miller makes Willie Loman, the tragic figure in his Death of a Salesman, 63 years old. So I was more than a little skeptical as to whether or not Rob Morrow (of Northern Exposure fame) could pull it off. At Ruskin Theatre Group, Morrow, with his boyish good looks, appears much younger…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: DAMES AT SEA (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAMES When Dames at Sea opened in 1966 at the Caffe Cino, a small coffee house and performance space in New York City’s Greenwich Village that was at the heart of the early off-off Broadway movement, the show was a trifle — a campy lark into the backstage musicals of…
-
Theater Review: GOOD BOYS (Pasadena Playhouse)
A GOOD GOOD BOYS COULD’VE BEEN GREAT Gay playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (contributor to Glee and Big Love) gets a revival of his drama Good Boys and True that premiered at Steppenwolf ten years ago. There is some solid stagecraft in his story about a privileged prep-school teen caught up in a sex scandal, but it’s shocking that while…
-
Theater Review: THE PRODUCERS (Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles)
I WANNA SEE THE PRODUCERS Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. The Celebration production of The Producers is as far away from the Borscht Belt as a New York musical comedy — whose central characters are named Bialystock and Bloom — can get. On the other hand, this is the kind…
-
Theater Preview: HEDDA GABLER (Los Angeles Theatre Works at UCLA)
A JEALOUS WIFE WITH BAD GUN CONTROL You can’t keep a bad/mad woman down. Not to be confused with A Doll’s House, where Henrik Ibsen offers an almost feminist defense of a vastly underestimated wife, his poisonous 1891 domestic drama Hedda Gabler depicts a very different “helpmate.” Here a bored and bitter housewife transforms her contempt for her…
-
Theater Feature: THE PRODUCERS (Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles)
KEEP IT GAY It’s always springtime for Mel Brooks, who really does write musicals the way they used to. Even before Young Frankenstein, his 2001 triumph The Producers (based on the sidesplitting 1968 film with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder) reverts to the anything-for-a-laugh, neo-vaudevillian, politically incorrect musicals of its 1959 setting. Giving a new meaning…
-
Theater Review: PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER (La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego)
HOUSE IS IN ORDER, BUT IS THAT ENOUGH? There is so much that is right about Ike Holter’s clever script of Put Your House in Order. Because of that, it is unfortunate that, in the end, it is just a bit unfulfilling — and challenging to explain why without giving away much of what certainly…
-
Theater Review: DANA H (Center Theatre Group at the Kirk Douglas Theatre)
A ROLLER COASTER RIDE TO THE HEART OF DARKNESS I will always love good theater but, even so, every so often there comes along a play that actually restores one’s faith in the possibilities of theater. Dana H by the brilliant Lucas Hnath is just such a play. And Les Waters’ direction couldn’t be more…
-
Theater Review: LOOT (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble)
LOOT CONDUCT At a time when drawing room comedies ruled West End theatre, and even the shock of the raw emotions depicted in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger had faded, a complacent London audience enjoyed such safe, heartwarming fare as Hello, Dolly!, and the water-thin comedy There’s a Girl in my Soup. Then in 1966…
-
Theater Review: SUCKER PUNCH (Coeurage Theatre at Tiger Boxing Gym in West Hollywood)
A PUNCH IN THE GUT Raw as realism requires, good plays about boxing are more than just Rocky slugfests. Like Clifford Odets’ seminal Golden Boy, they transform an atavistic popular distraction into a metaphor for sweet success, the reward of pluck and nerve — or, as the title of Sucker Punch implies, a parable on selling your…
-
Theater Review: HARVEY (Laguna Playhouse)
YOU’RE GETTING TO BE A RABBIT WITH ME Whatever happened to all the imaginary friends we had as kids? Did they all end up in some limbo where they started making friends with each other, or, like Peter Pan, did they transfer their affections to a new generation of make-believers? Anyway, they’re no longer there…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
