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Los Angeles Theater Review: FRANKENSTEIN (A Noise Within in Pasadena)
ENDURING THE MONSTER Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) wrote her famous “ghost story,” Frankenstein, in 1818, while on a vacation on Lake Geneva with her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, the explorer Lord Byron, and Dr. John Polidon. It was a gloomy summer and these Romantic poets each wrote a Gothic story of some kind to…
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Theater Review: EARLY BIRDS (Moving Arts)
EARLY BIRDS GETS THE BIRD The phrase “early bird” generally denotes someone who is an early-morning riser or who shows up anywhere early, words usually attributed to the elderly. In Dana Schwartz’s light comedy, two senior women — one rich, one middle-class poor — find themselves on the first day of an ocean voyage beating…
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Theater Review: 33 1/3 – HOUSE OF DREAMS (San Diego Repertory Theatre)
TRIBUTE TO THE HITS FROM GOLD STAR Gold Star Recording Studio might not be a household name, but the musicians they recorded for certainly are: Tina Turner, Sonny and Cher, and the Beach Boys are just hint at the long list. Gold Star turned out over 120 Top-40 songs in their thirty year history. With…
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Theater Review: SHREK (3-D Theatricals in Cerritos)
SHREK IS A SHRUG OF A MUSICAL; BUT THIS PRODUCTION IS SURE AND SHARP Shrek The Musical is a mystifying experience. The whole thing is rather inane, versus the sophisticated silliness of Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The first time I saw the show was the final performance of the National…
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Review: ALL SHOOK UP (San Diego Musical Theatre)
A HUNK-A HUNK-A BURNING FUN On the heels of Cygnet’s Rock of Ages, in which every tune is an 80s hit, comes San Diego Musical Theatre’s staging of All Shook Up, in which every musical moment is an Elvis Presley song. (It played Broadway in 2005 with 213 performances.) It’s an interesting trend, fitting in…
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Interview: VINCE MELOCCHI (writer of world premiere ANDY WARHOL’S TOMATO at Pacific Resident Theatre)
PEELING A TOMATO If you’ve ever wondered what Andy Warhol was like as a kid, perhaps writer Vince Melocchi’s new play will give you a better understanding of the iconic artist, far beyond his eccentric persona. This curiosity became the biggest challenge for the playwright, finding the voice of a teenage Andy Warhola who was…
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Theater Review: SCRAPS (Matrix Theatre Company)
GIVE US A SECOND ACT WE DESERVE; ALL WE END UP WITH IS SCRAPS The angry young man syndrome is nothing new — think Protestant reformer Martin Luther! — but it sure found a home in the theater when British playwright John Osborne wrote the seminal Look Back in Anger in 1956. Jimmy, the uptight,…
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Theater Review: WEST SIDE STORY (5-Star Theatricals in Thousand Oaks)
A RESONATING STORY It rarely happens. “The Broadway Chill” I call it. That moment when an already amazing show is given the perfect and unexpected staging which heightens emotion, inducing moist eyes and gooseflesh as only can happen in the theater. Having seen West Side Story staged many times, I can say that rare is…
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Theater Review: STRAIGHT (Loud Fridge Theatre Group in San Diego)
WALKING THE STRAIGHT LINE 1982’s groundbreaking film Making Love gave us our first cinematic look at a man torn between the woman he loves and the man who fulfills his needs. Since then, we have been many such stories in the arts about one who genuinely cares about an opposite-gender partner while feeling incomplete because…
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Theater Review: INTO THE WOODS (Hollywood Bowl)
THRIVING WOODS Somewhere between “Once Upon a Time” and “Happily Ever After” there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agency; or as a baker’s wife sings in Into the Woods, “If you know what you want, then you go and you find it, and you get…
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Theater Review: ANOTHER ROLL OF THE DICE (North Coast Rep in San Diego)
LESSER LOESSER Well, here’s a jukebox musical just bursting at the seams with promise. And North Coast Rep’s production of Another Roll of the Dice is definitely kinda cute, a far cry from the overblown, disappointing jukeboxers we’re forced to endure. It may get a life at regional theaters with subscription audiences who thrive on…
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Theater Preview: RAGTIME (Chance Theater)
CHANCE THEATER’S RAGTIME EXTENDS TO AUGUST 11 This critically-acclaimed intimate reimagining of the epic musical will be adding ten performances over the course of a two-week extension. Chance Theater, Orange County’s best small theater oufit, will be extending its sold-out run of Ragtime: The Musical. Based on the novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow, the…
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Theater Review: MISS SAIGON (National Tour)
IT USED TO BE A MISS; NOW, THE HEAT IS ON IN SAIGON Infinitely stronger than the original Broadway outing, this national tour of Miss Saigon overcomes a still strangely muddled plot, some awkward sophomoric lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Alain Boublil, and a few scenes and songs that could be cut with no…
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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….
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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