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Los Angeles Theater Review: FINKS (Rogue Machine Theatre at Electric Lodge in Venice)
SAVING YOURSELF At the opening performance of Rogue Machine’s presentation of the Los Angeles premiere of playwright Joe Gilford’s Finks, artistic director John Flynn welcomed the audience and drew comparisons between Finks and Rogue Machine’s other current offering, Oppenheimer. The two plays do complement one another. It could be said that the creation of the…
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Theater Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Geffen Playhouse in Westwood)
A GHOSTLY CAROL TO REMEMBER A Christmas Carol keeps the lights on at theaters across the country, filling their coffers every year and helping underwrite their other productions. It usually is done as a rather jolly affair, along the lines of British panto, where nothing bad ever seems to happen. Sometimes the ghosts are funny…
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Theater Review: DEATH AND COCKROACHES (Chalk Repertory Theatre at Atwater Village Theatre)
LOVING THE COCKROACH WITHIN Playwright Eric Reyes Loo wisely observes that the messiness of love and grief does not easily coexist within the binary world of Facebook. In his new play, Death and Cockroaches, a Chalk Repertory Theatre presentation at the Atwater Village Theatre, he explores the tectonic changes his family experienced in real life…
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Theater Review: A BRONX TALE (North American Tour)
CULTURE CLASH Narratively, there are two cultural clashes at the center of A Bronx Tale, now at the Pantages as part of its North American Tour. Italians and African-Americans are on opposite sides, as are the mafia and law-abiding citizens. There is also a third clash, though, and it’s the one that matters most: The clash…
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Music Review: JONI 75: A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION LIVE (Various Artists at the Chandler in Los Angeles)
SOMETHING SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE FOR THIS BORDERLINE CONCERT A blindingly colossal line-up of some of music’s greatest stars offered their interpretation of Joni Mitchell songs last night in Los Angeles. With names including James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, Seal, Chaka Khan, and Joni’s fellow Canadians Diana Krall and Rufus Wainwright, the excitement was palpable from the sold-out crowd…
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Opera Review: SATYAGRAHA (LA Opera)
A NONVIOLENT REVIEW What is it about Philip Glass’s operas that have completely captivated me? You would think that all of that minimalism — the spellbinding reiterating arpeggios, unhurried modulations and almost uniform orchestrations — would bore me to tears. Perhaps there’s something mathematical or perfectly in harmony with nature (or in nature with the…
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Theater Preview: ZORBA (Musical Theatre Guild)
GREEK ACTIVE It only seemed natural that Michael Cacoyannis’s 1964 film, Zorba the Greek, about a happy-go-lucky fisherman on the isle of Crete, should one day become a musical. It took John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss Of The Spider Woman and many more) to make this a reality, with Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof,…
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Theater Review: BABY EYES (Playwrights Arena)
IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME In 2011, Playwrights Horizon Artistic Director Jon Lawrence Rivera staged Donald Jolly’s bonded, which explored the restrictiveness of gays based on their situation, namely slavery in 1820s’ Virginia. That work-in-progress was made more than palatable with witty, poetic dialogue and a tantalizing tale. Now comes a tale of repressed homosexuality,…
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Theatre Preview: CAL IN CAMO (VS. Theatre and Red Dog Squadron)
CAL IN CAMO EXTENDS ITS RUN AT VS. THEATRE William Francis Hoffman’s multilayered play attempts to lay bare, (literally in the case of the character “Cal”) the issues surrounding postpartum depression, and people’s abilities to connect with one another. The production of this powerful work at VS. Theatre, directed by Amy K. Harmon, has just…
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Theater Review: QUACK (Kirk Douglas in Culver City)
WALKS LIKE A DUCK, QUACKS LIKE A HIT Playwright Eliza Clark, in notes about Quack, her new play now in its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, writes that she has been thinking a lot about privilege and entitlement, and the scary forces coming out of the woodwork in America. As…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (The Actors’ Gang in Culver City)
LOCKED IN Dalton Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun was published in September 1939, the same month Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. It was not an immediate hit, but it was perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist of the time. In those first months of the war, Americans saw the conflict as…
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Theater Review: SEôOR PLUMMER’S FINAL FIESTA (Rogue Artists Ensemble in West Hollywood)
IMAGINATIVE PHANTASMAGORIA DOESN’T PLUMB THE DEPTHS OF PLUMMER’S HISTORY One of the most bemusing, bewildering affairs in recent memory, Seí±or Plummer’s Final Fiesta is an incredibly imaginative, immersive, interactive outing suffocated by convoluted storytelling and juvenile acting. While it’s rated “PG-13” the entire shebang of snippets — aided by puppets and wide-eyed, Disney-esque narrators —…
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Music Preview: MENDELSSOHN & SIBELIUS STRING QUARTETS (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
CHAMBER MUSIC WITH THE LA PHIL: MENDELSSOHN & SIBELIUS STRING QUARTETS Sibelius’s String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56 (1908-1909) is one of his most mature, significant, and inspirational chamber works. Indeed, it’s the only substantial chamber work he produced after the turn of the century. He wrote it in between the Third and Fourth…
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Theater Review: THE LITTLE FOXES (Antaeus Theatre)
THE DEVASTATION OF POWERLESSNESS When the curtain comes down at the end of The Little Foxes you hear a remarkable sound: 80 people letting the air out of their lungs. We have all been holding our breath, tingling with anticipation and horror. This is an Antaeus Theatre Company audience. Logically, every single person watching knows…
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Film and Music Preview: NOSFERATU & VAMPYR (Theatre at the Ace Hotel and Disney Hall)
SILENT SCREAMS Two of the spookiest horror films ever made were completed before much of today’s audiences were born. One, Nosferatu, is far better known than the other, especially for the creepy-ass make-up given to the vampire. But have you ever heard of Vampyr, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 masterpiece? Horror buffs have, as it regularly…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE WOMAN IN BLACK (Pasadena Playhouse)
CREEPY FUN, BUT NOT AS BLACK AS IT COULD BE Pasadena Playhouse’s production of The Woman in Black is a delicious, handcrafted thriller of the classic style, at once dingy and disturbing. Based on Susan Hill’s 1983 faux-Gothic novel, the slight ghost story follows Mr. Kipps, a British junior solicitor hired to sort out the estate…
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Theater Review: VIETGONE (East West Players)
GOING, GOING, VIETGONE Prior to last night’s L.A. premiere of Vietgone, the actor playing playwright Qui Nguyen tells us that his 2015 play is about his parents (“who this play is absolutely not about”), who met and fell in love in 1975 in an Arkansas relocation camp for Vietnamese refugees, jokingly adding that we were…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BRIGHT STAR (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
SHINING BRIGHT Bright Star is a bittersweet bluegrass musical with music, book and lyrics by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. It was nominated for five Tony awards when it ran on Broadway and it’s easy to see why. The story takes place in two time periods, 1923 and 1946. When the play opens we meet…
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Theater Review: DEAR EVAN HANSEN (National Tour)
A SHOW FOR FOREVER That songwriters and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — critical darlings for La La Land (film), Dogfight (Off-Broadway), and A Christmas Story (Broadway) — are in effect the Rodgers and Hammerstein of this generation is as alarming as climate change. At least their true colors as creators of whitewashed pop and unintelligent lyrics…
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Theater Review: OPPENHEIMER (Rogue Machine at Electric Lodge in Venice)
PARTNERING ARROGANCE WITH SACRIFICE In taking residence at the Electric Lodge, their new digs in Venice, Rogue Machine makes an audacious choice with the American premiere of Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer, first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. The play takes over three hours, a cast of 24, and multiple physics lessons to tell…
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