Areas We Cover
Categories
Los Angeles
-
Theater Preview: DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! (Los Angeles Theatre Works at UCLA)
SHE’S BA-A-A-CK AND SHE’S FA-A-A-ABULOUS Charles Busch’s play Die, Mommie, Die! is equal parts Greek comic-tragedy and Hollywood kitsch — a melodramatic campy cult classic in the vein of 1960s gothic horror films such as Hush:Hush, Sweet Charlotte. I saw the very first production at the Coast Playhouse back in 1999 starring the cabaret and…
-
Music Preview: VíKINGUR ÒLAFSSON (Solo Piano at Disney Hall)
AS GOOD AS GOULD While my heart sank to hear that Murray Perahia had to pull out of his recital at Disney Hall this Sunday, April 21, 2019, nothing prepared me for the fantastic news that pianist Víkingur í“lafsson will replace him with a program of mostly Bach with some Glass (Perahia will return as…
-
Theater Review: SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (The Soraya in Northridge and The La Mirada Theatre)
LET THE GOOD TIMES POUR When people say a musical is old-fashioned they usually mean it in a negative way, which is silly. There are bad, good, and brilliant musicals, and Singin’ in the Rain is brilliant. The stage version of Singin’ in the Rain was adapted from the 1952 MGM movie written by Betty Comden…
-
Theater Review: FALSETTOS (National Tour)
NOT ONE FALSE NOTE The musical masterpiece Falsettos follows Marvin, an appealing, brainy, anxious, obsessive, wealthy Jewish gay man who struggles to create a tight-knit family out of his eclectic array of core relationships: an ex-wife, new boyfriend, adolescent son, psychiatrist, and “neighbors who are lesbians from next door.” Amidst a series of monumental life changes…
-
Theater Review: EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED (Ensemble Theatre Company in Santa Barbara)
SOME, NOT ALL, IS ILLUMINATED Sadly, not everything is illuminated in British playwright Simon Block’s fascinating but problematic adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-selling novel about a young American writer who hires a Ukrainian translator to take him to the town where a woman named Augustine saved his grandfather’s life in WWII. Or so Jonathan…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS (Pasadena Playhouse)
CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE THEATER Well, there certainly is nothing wrong with good advice. And there’s plenty of that in the structurally unconventional Tiny Beautiful Things, Nia Vardalos’s stage adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s epistolary best-selling book which, in the incarnation at Pasadena Playhouse starring Vardalos herself, feels like a warm little hug when it could…
-
Music Review: MIRGA LEADS TCHAIKOVSKY & DEBUSSY (LA Phil)
MIRGA DESERVES THE HEADLINE, BUT PATRICIA STEALS THE SHOW Here’s how it starts: Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja — born in Moldova, trained in Vienna — saunters onstage at Disney Hall as if she’s headed to the beach; she wears a comfy lived-in black outfit that says “flea market” more than “concert hall”; then, she slips off…
-
Theater Review: SOUTHERNMOST (Playwrights’ Arena)
VOLCANOES WITHIN AND WITHOUT When you walk into the theater for playwright Mary Lyon Kamitaki’s Southernmost, Justin Huen’s scenic design transports you immediately into another world: An indoor-outdoor ramshackle house in Naalehu, on the coast of a largely unpopulated area on the Big Island of Hawaii. It is the southernmost inhabited space in the United…
-
Theater Review: MY LIFE ON A DIET (Renée Taylor at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
TAYLOR MADE If timing is everything with comedy Renée Taylor in My Life on a Diet is proof positive. This revival of her one-woman show, based on her 1986 memoir of the same title, is a master class in getting laughs. She takes sentences that wouldn’t necessarily be funny on the page and makes them…
-
Theater Review: THE MEATBALL CHRONICLES (Hudson Guild Theatre in Hollywood)
HERE’S THE BEEF What happens when you’re brought up to feel invisible? Where do you go for solace? Where do you go to find your identity? For actress Debrianna Mansini it was in cooking; this was her joy, her salvation, her escape and most importantly it was the only way she was able to communicate…
-
Music Preview: MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL ON TOUR (Disney Hall)
GET YOUR JAZZ ON Hooray and hallelujah! Long before her third Grammy win, I have always been a fan of jazz vocalist and song interpreter extraordinaire Cécile McLorin Salvant. But seeing her live three times now has not only cemented my opinion that this is the most exciting thing in all music ’” not just…
-
Theater Review: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (National Tour)
THE CANDY MAN CAN’T The stage musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl’s beloved children-of-all-ages’ story — has spun into town just, it seems, to make your teeth ache. Directed by Jack O’Brien, this already extended national tour arrives to a city near you even though it flopped on Broadway (27…
-
Theater Review: CHAPS (Lamb’s Players in San Diego)
CHAPSCHTICK It’s 1944. The war is raging across the English Channel and the Germans could invade at any moment. Britain needs levity to get through these tough days. Miles (Charles Evans, Jr.) is the station manager for a BBC program and he’s got the solution. BBC has announced that a famous, beloved American country band…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL (5-Star Theatricals in Thousand Oaks)
A VAULTING MATILDA Imagine Annie with psychokinetic powers, Nancy Drew as a mind-reader, or Cinderella acting as her own fairy godmother. Self-empowerment fuels this upbeat, knock-down, pell-mell 2011 musical. A multi-Tony and Olivier award winner, Matilda the Musical is now being given a piping-hot presentation by 5-Star Theatricals at Kavli Theatre. The much motivated heroine…
-
Review: FREAKY FRIDAY (San Diego Musical Theatre)
THANK GOD IT’S FREAKY FRIDAY On the weekend of her mother’s everything-must-be-perfect second wedding, teenager Ellie (Rivers Harris) is in a funk: little brother Fletcher (John Perry Wishchuk), who talks through puppets, is driving her crazy; mother Katherine (Cassie Bleher) is bossing everyone around; her fiancé Mike (CJ Ravine) is trying too hard to get…
-
Theater Review: FAITH HEALER (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles)
THE BUSINESS OF FAITH The late Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Faith Healer premiered some 40 years ago and is now considered one of his greatest works. It is a memory play with three characters, told in a series of monologues. Frank is an Irish faith healer who takes his one-man show to isolated villages and…
-
Theater Preview: MOMENTOS MORI (Manual Cinema)
THIS IS THE MOMENTOS I have seen the Chicago-based performance collective Manual Cinema on their home turf twice, and the theatricality is awesome. This endlessly inventive group of artists uses disarmingly simple tools — live music, paper puppets, overhead projectors — to tell transformative stories. Their enchanting works unsettle the boundaries between cinema and theater….
-
Theater Review: INCOGNITO (Son of Semele)
BRAIN CRAMPS One of the brainiest plays since, well, British playwright Nick Payne’s other brainy play, Constellations, Incognito (2014) contains Payne’s usual assortment of short scenes and quantum physics-like, obfuscating construction. But I don’t buy it this time. And not because I don’t get it. (Although I don’t get it.) This is Payne showing off…
-
Theater Review: THE WOLVES (Echo Theater Company)
TEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA I’m not really sure if director Alana Dietze could have done anything more with The Wolves, a dramatically inert slice-of-life one act that follows an all-female indoor soccer team over a succession of pre-game warm-ups. Playwright Sarah DeLappe’s Pulitzer-finalist (?!?!?!?!) is awash in the perfect patois of…
-
Theater Review: ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST (The Actors’ Gang in Los Angeles)
ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A PLAY Anarchy is not chaos. The former means “without law” and the latter means “without form.” This is an important distinction to consider in a play that intends to make an argument for anarchy. After a government scandal, a schizoid anarchist poses as certain government officials at a police station in…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
