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Los Angeles
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SHREK (5-Star Theatricals in Thousand Oaks)
SHREK TO THE RESCUE The first time I saw Shrek The Musical was on Broadway in 2008. I loved it then but 5-Star Theatricals’ production has me really loving it now. With book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and music by Jeanine Tesori, Shrek is set in a mythical once-upon-a-time sort of land, where a…
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Theater Preview: THE SEAFARER (Laguna Playhouse)
THE DEVIL’S AT THE DOOR “He knows not Who lives most easily on land, how I Have spent my winter on the ice-cold sea Wretched and anxious, in the paths of exile Lacking dear friends, hung round by icicles While hail flew past in showers:” From the medieval poem The Seafarer translated by Richard Hamer…
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Dance Preview: SUTRA (Alonzo King LINES Ballet at the Wallis in Beverly Hills)
DANCE & MUSIC ROYALTY: KING/HUSSAIN Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain is drenched in Eastern Classicism, yet looks to Western influences to explore and experiment. Meanwhile, choreographer Alonzo King combines principles of transcendental Eastern thinking with the foundation of Western ballet’s classical forms and techniques. Over the past two…
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Music & Dance Preview: ROMEO AND JULIET (LA Phil and L.A. Dance Project at Disney Hall)
A WHOLE NEW DANCE PROJECT WITH LA PHIL Romeo and Juliet is probably Prokofiev’s best dramatic work (I say “probably” because “hearing” the duck being eaten by the wolf in Peter and the Wolf nearly traumatized my childhood). Arguably, it’s his best orchestral work. Positively, it’s his most lyrical, emotional, and deeply moving work. Yet…
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San Diego Theater Review: HIR (Cygnet Theatre)
WHO DOES HE THINK SHE IS? Him:Her:Them:Zir:Hir? In the transgender and non-binary community, the struggle with pronouns almost rivals the struggle with civil rights. Hir, now in a San Diego premiere, is both the title and a gender-neutral pronoun combining “his” and “her” (and pronounced “heer”). Its world is the creation of singer/songwriter/ performance artist/playwright Taylor Mac…
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Music Preview: ALISA WEILERSTEIN: COMPLETE BACH CELLO SUITES (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
WEILERSTEIN TO WOW AT THE WALLIS I had been following Alisa Weilerstein for over a decade, but until a few years ago it was only on recordings and YouTube. Having seen her perform live three times since I can assert that the phenomenal American cellist has attracted attention worldwide because her playing combines a natural…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SILENCE! THE MUSICAL (Bucket List Theatre at The Actors Company)
HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL WANTS A WHIFF OF SOMETHING SPECIAL I didn’t know what to expect when I made plans to see Bucket List Theatre’s production of Silence! The Musical, a parody of the multiple Oscar-winning film The Silence of the Lambs, now at the Actors Company in Hollywood. Would it be gross-out humor, a too-long…
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Theater Preview: 42ND STREET (3-D Theatricals)
YOU’VE GOT SOME FEET TO MEET Call us saps or suckers but we can’t, it seems, get enough of “The Understudy Who Becomes A Star.” Not when the sweet and satisfying story is stuffed with thrills like “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and “Young and Healthy.” Some clichés justify themselves, if only because nothing less than…
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Theater Preview: THE BARBERSHOP CHRONICLES (Freud Playhouse at UCLA)
Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. They talk, argue, unwind and, of course, get their hair cut. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. For one weekend only,…
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Theater Review: EVERYTHING THAT NEVER HAPPENED (Boston Court in Pasadena)
ANCIENT LIES AND MODERN QUESTIONS Theatrical magic happens when all the elements of a production come together to form a seamless whole; when the text, direction, acting, and technical contributions feel so organically intertwined that it is hard to tell where one person’s work ends, and another’s begins. Everything That Never Happened at the Boston…
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Music Review: LA PHIL’S CENTENNIAL SEASON, OPENING WEEK (Disney Hall and Citywide)
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, YOU’LL GET YOUR PHIL It’s been quite a week for our Los Angeles Philharmonic, which starts its second century with a slew of performances that has slathered the city with festivities and honor. Angelinos should be rightfully proud that our orchestra is celebrating all things artistic — musically and socially —…
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Review: FRAN LEBOWITZ (CAP UCLA’s Words & Ideas Series at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel)
A THOROUGHLY METROPOLITAN LIFE A worshipful cult greeted Fran Lebowitz at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in downtown L.A. on September 30. She seemed incredibly pleased but not at all surprised, quipping, “I feel like Donald Trump at a Ku Klux Klan rally.” The Center for the Performing Arts at UCLA (CAP UCLA) presented…
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Theater Review: ROPE (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
HERE’S SOME GOOD NOOSE FOR YOU Amid the jukebox musicals and feel-good issue plays of the moment, thank the macabre heavens for two grippingly disturbing entertainments. The first is Echo Theater Company’s Gloria killing them across town at Atwater Village Theatre. The other is Actor Co-op’s splendidly unsettling Rope, Patrick (Gaslight) Hamilton’s 1929 play about…
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Theater Feature: OPPENHEIMER (Rogue Machine Theatre at its new home, Electric Lodge in Venice)
A READY ROGUE MACHINE OPENS OPPENHEIMER J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant, enigmatic and complex man. Ambitious and charismatic, Oppenheimer found himself uniquely placed to spearhead the largest scientific undertaking in all of human history, the Manhattan Project and the creation of the Atomic bomb — he’s the man in charge of the team whose…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: GLORIA (Echo Theatre)
IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS If anyone should dislike the confrontational and cynical aspects of Echo Theatre’s knockout L.A. premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria, I assert it’s no fault of the artists involved, including the playwright. This 2015 Off-Broadway two-act is unsettling, shocking and funny as it scathingly depicts the poorly-paid, dead-end, “soul-sucking” jobs of…
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Theater Review: UK UNDERDOG (Zephyr Theater)
HE’S NOT GOING TO THE DOGS, BUT THE PROCEEDS ARE There are many reasons to see writer/performer Steve Spiro’s entertaining and touching one man show, a powerful and emotional true story now playing at the Zephyr Theatre. Nicely shaped by director Ann Bronston, Spiro brings his childhood and subsequent years to life in a palpable way…
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Theater Preview: WHO’S HYSTERICAL NOW? (Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles)
GENDER-SWITCHED REENACTMENT OF THE KAVANAUGH/FORD TESTIMONIES ONE NIGHT ONLY, TUESDAY OCTOBER 2 If you think the Senate hearings last week were high drama, imagine seeing them live in the theater, but with a twist. Writer/producer Tina Poppy and Bootleg Theater’s Jessica Hanna offer you the timeliest commiseration on record. Tomorrow night, Tuesday October 2 at…
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Theater Review: AMERICAN HERO (IAMA Theatre Company at the Pasadena Playhouse)
FEAR THAT TASTES LIKE CHICKEN IAMA Theatre Company’s 2018-19 season opener, Bess Wohl’s American Hero (a Pasadena Playhouse guest production at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre) is a portrait in miniature of the underemployed working poor’s quiet and not-so-quiet desperation. There is superb teamwork between the actors, and when it is at its best, the play…
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Theater Preview: THE OTHER PLACE (Chance Theater)
THE PUZZLE BOX OF THE SOUL Sharr White’s riveting and affective play, The Other Side, concerns Juliana, a neurologist and holder of a billion-dollar patent, whose life suddenly starts crumbling before her eyes. The show begins with her — confident, sophisticated, impregnable — lecturing to a convention hall full of doctors. By the end she…
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Concert Preview: HILARY HAHN PLAYS BACH (Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra)
LACO GIVES YOU A HAHN It’s now practically lore that violinist Hilary Hahn decided that her debut album would not just be solos, but partitas and a sonata by Bach, works that have been held as the zenith of violin composition and the most intangible of objectives for a newcomer recitalist. It was a move…
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