Areas We Cover
Categories
Los Angeles
-
Theater Review: ANNA IN THE TROPICS (Open Fist Theatre Company in Los Angeles)
HAS TOLSTOY EVER BEEN SO HOT? In his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Anna in the Tropics, Nilo Cruz created the role of striking, velvet-voiced, Cuban Lothario Juan Julian, a lector who is hired to read books to the workers in a 1929 Tampa cigar factory — it alleviates tedium, inadvertently educates them, and, in this case, causes…
-
San Diego Theater Review: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (Cygnet Theatre in San Diego)
THERE’S HUMOR TO BE PROUD OF HERE, SO DON’T BE PREJUDICED For those who have read or seen Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, there are many nouns that come to mind such as “classic,” “drama,” “witty,” “depth,” and “struggle.” Until now, though, it would be rare to see “hilarity” on that list. In Kate Hamill’s…
-
Theater Preview: THE LAST FIVE YEARS (After Hours Theatre Company in West Hollywood)
A PERFECT FIT Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years is contextually brilliant: it is a two-character musical that starts at the end of a five-year relationship for the woman, Cathy, but at the beginning for the man, Jaime. Her songs go backward in time and his forward. They meet in the middle of the…
-
Theater Review: BRONCO BILLY – THE MUSICAL (World Premiere at Skylight Theatre)
BILLY BOY OH BOY Meet Billy, an ex-con sharpshooter who is living his American Dream in 1979. This optimistic showman, romantic, and visionary has encouraged a fraternity of castaways — a Native American and his wife, a car thief, an ex-nurse, an erstwhile bank teller — to join him as entertainers in a troupe about…
-
Theater Review: READY STEADY YETI GO (Rogue Machine Theatre at Electric Lodge in Venice)
GRAFFITI THAT ASKS PERMISSION Carly Uhlenbeek (Jasmine St. Clair), an African American suburban seventh grade girl, seeks answers in playwright David Jacobi’s Ready Steady Yeti Go, a Rogue Machine production that is part of the National New Play Network’s rolling world premiere program. She assembles her friends to reenact the events of a recent hate…
-
Theater Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles)
PLENTY TO DESIRE When I was thirteen I discovered Tennessee Williams when I picked up his play A Streetcar Named Desire at the New York Public Library. I don’t know if I fully understood it at that age, but there was one line that not only stayed with me my whole life, but is the…
-
Theater Review: SHOOTING STAR — A REVEALING NEW MUSICAL (Hudson Mainstage in Hollywood)
SHOOTING STAR AIMS, SHOOTS … AND BORES Shooting Star, billed as “A Revealing New Musical” — and getting its World Premiere at the Hudson Theatres in Los Angeles under the direction of Michael Bello — offers us a glimpse of one man’s journey through the world of gay porn. Written by Florian Klein (a.k.a. adult…
-
Theater Review: HAPPY DAYS (Mark Taper Forum)
HAPPY DAYS IS HERE AGAIN I had never read nor seen Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic Happy Days, now at the Mark Taper, but was excited at the prospect of seeing the great Dianne Weist in the flesh. Like many people, I’ve loved her ever since Hannah and Her Sisters, one of Woody Allen’s best films,…
-
Music Review: DUDAMEL & LANG LANG (LA Phil)
BACK TO BUSINESS Star pianist Lang Lang overcame his left-hand injury — the tendonitis that caused him to hand off four of five scheduled Beethoven Concertos with the LA Phil this month. His limited schedule has allowed for quicker recovery time, but it also allowed four other pianists from around the globe to show off…
-
Theater Review: M. BUTTERFLY (South Coast Rep)
MEH BUTTERFLY M. Butterfly asks the audience to accept a love story in which a French career diplomat takes a Chinese opera diva as his mistress for 20 years, unaware that the diva is actually a man. Truth being stranger than fiction, the story is based on a real life affair that David Henry Hwang…
-
Theater Review: YOGA PLAY (Moxie Theatre Company in San Diego)
PUTTING CAPITALISM ON THE MAT Which of the following defines yoga to you? A series of gentle exercises meant to relax and invigorate the body; A Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline using breath control and meditation; An 83 billion-dollar international industry of mats, equipment, clothing, and accessories. All three are true, but for Joan (Jo…
-
Theater Review: AT THE TABLE (Road Theatre at Lankershim Arts Center in North Hollywood)
THERE’S A LOT AT THIS TABLE At the Table takes place in Catskills, a resort area in the low mountains in E New York State that I hold dear to my heart since I spent many summers there — as many Jewish New Yorkers did. The setting is the house of Nate (Christian Prentice), who…
-
Review: THE SECRET GARDEN (3-D Theatricals)
A FLOWERING PRODUCTION The Secret Garden, the hauntingly romantic musical by Marsha Norman (book and lyrics) and Lucy Simon (music) opened on Broadway 1991 and ran 709 performances. The show starred Mandy Patinkin, Rebecca Luker, John Cameron Mitchell, and Robert Westenberg; 11-year old Daisy Egan became the youngest recipient of a Tony Award for Best…
-
Theater Review: JULIUS WEEZER (The Troubies at El Portal in North Hollywood)
CAESING THE MOMENT What do you get when you mix Shakespeare’s beloved tragedy Julius Caesar with the hard-driving rock band Weezer? Adapter, director and choreographer Matt Walker, who also plays Cassius, arrived at the mash-up known as Julius Weezer, and you should be prepared before attending that you will no doubt wind up laughing your…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: DANIEL’S HUSBAND (Fountain Theatre in Hollywood)
THE PLAY THAT GOT AWAY I don’t know the exact play Michael McKeever was writing prior to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in favor of federal marriage equality, but I suspect it worked much more than this now locked-in reconstruction that made its way to Off-Broadway by 2018, and is now getting its Southern California…
-
Music Review: GREAT OPERA & FILM CHORUSES (Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall)
RESOUNDING SOUNDTRACKS In 1770, Jean Jacques Rousseau employed music to accompany certain dramatic scenes in his play Pygmalion. A hundred years later, music to accompany theatrical melodrama was de rigueur. By natural progression, music became an essential part of silent cinema. Phonograph, piano, organ or a loosely assembled band played along with the earliest movies,…
-
Review: SISTER ACT (San Diego Musical Theatre)
WELL DONE HAVING FUN ON THE RUN AS A NUN Don’t you just hate it when your boyfriend turns out to be a mobster and murders someone right in front of you, forcing you to flee and hide — all when your Disco Diva career is ready to take off? Well, that’s what happens to…
-
Theater Review: BRIGHT STAR (Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater in Claremont)
OH MY STAR! Bright Star is a heartwarming musical written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell inspired by their 2013 bluegrass album Love Has Come for You. The show had a Broadway run in the spring of 2016 with direction by Walter Bobbie, choreography by Josh Rhodes and a set design by Eugene Lee. Now,…
-
Music Review: SALONEN’S STRAVINSKY: MYTHS (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
BORE-PHEUS AND EURYD-ENNUI When we think of Stravinsky’s music, contemplative, encompassing beauty isn’t what pops into mind. Yet that’s what we get in the very rarely performed ballets, Orpheus (1947) and Perséphone (1934). As part of LA Phil’s erstwhile Music Director’s series, Salonen’s Stravinsky, Esa-Pekka Salonen continues his salute of (mostly) lesser played works by…
-
Theater Review: TIME NO LINE (John Kelly)
TEMPUS FUGIT There are great performance artists and, rarer still, there are great artists who perform. John Kelly is both. His Time No Line is a quietly breathtaking meditation on his life and art culled from the journals he kept from 1976 to the present day. He can be mathematically precise poring over details in…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
