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Los Angeles

  • Theater Review: HELLO, DOLLY! (National Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | January 31, 2019
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    BUCKLEY BUCKLES A BIT, BUT DOLLY DEFINITELY DELIVERS To start with, let’s agree to never say “Goodbye, Dolly.” Thornton Wilder’s genius for the common touch isn’t just a golden legacy in  Our Town  or  The Skin of Our Teeth, both perfect comedies of life. There’s almost as much warm wisdom in  The Matchmaker, Wilder’s craftily-plotted 1955 mating romp that…

  • Theater Review: SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (South Coast Rep)

    By Tony Frankel | January 27, 2019
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    IT COULD HAVE BEEN MURDER Stephen Sondheim’s  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street  is a musical that never fails to impress, no matter how many times it’s been seen. It tells of  Benjamin Barker, a Victorian-era barber who returns to London, having been imprisoned on false charges, to exact vengeance on those responsible for the tattering…

  • Concert Review: BERNADETTE PETERS (Disney Hall)

    By Tony Frankel | January 25, 2019
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    SAINT BERNADETTE Now that she’s hung up her late-Victorian hat after taking over for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway last year, the inimitable Bernadette Peters has embarked on another international tour, making a stop at Disney Hall last Tuesday to share her love of theater, singing selections from musicals as if for the…

  • Theater Review: AN INSPECTOR CALLS (The Wallis)

    By Harvey Perr | January 24, 2019
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    MAKE A CALL ON THIS INSPECTOR In Stephen Daldry’s architectually inspired revival of J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, an astute mixture of comedy of manners/tragedy of class/family crisis/ socialism versus capitalism/whodunit, the audience is asked, along with a trio of curious children, to get past that heavy red velvet curtain and enter a world of…

  • Theater Review: HIR (Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | January 22, 2019
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    CRUEL INTENTIONS Now at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Hir had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizon in 2015, engendering a rave in the The New York Times and going on to play internationally to enthusiastic reviews everywhere. I searched for other reviews because while the stated tone and subject matter of the show are what…

  • Theater Review: LAST CALL (Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | January 21, 2019
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    RAGING AGAINST THE DYING LIGHT Elderly parents losing their independence is more significant demographically in America now than at any time in our history. Most still-living Greatest Generation parents of Baby Boomers are in their seventies to nineties or even early one-hundreds. After lifetimes of gritty independence, often forged during the Depression, they tend to…

  • Music Preview: BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET & YUKO MABUCHI TRIO (Segerstrom Concert Hall)

    By Tony Frankel | January 18, 2019
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    JAZZIN’ HOT IN COSTA MESA With propulsive muscled arrangements, intense high-powered playing, and ceaseless creativity, saxophonist/composer Branford Marsalis is one of his best and brightest musicians that America has ever produced, and his proficiency in both jazz and classical is mind-boggling. He joins his hard-swinging yet sensitive quartet to heat up the winter for one…

  • Theater Review: LINDA VISTA (Mark Taper Forum)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | January 17, 2019
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    BEAUTIFUL HONESTY The title of Tracy Letts’ play Linda Vista, Steppenwolf Theatre’s production now at the Mark Taper Forum, translates as “Beautiful View.” In a literal sense, it refers to a San Diego apartment complex with a tiny slice of ocean visible (if you know where to look). It is also ironic. Nothing here looks…

  • Theater Review: 1776 (La Mirada Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | January 15, 2019
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    YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? How remarkable to have been a fly on the wall when the creators of 1776, the 1969 musical receiving a terrific La Mirada Theatre/McCoy Rigby revival, were deciding the 11 o’clock number (the trope given for the big, late in the second act number by a self-realizing main character…

  • Los Angeles Theater Review: SMART LOVE (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | January 14, 2019
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    ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VS. AUTHENTIC EMOTION Brian Letscher’s new play, now at Pacific Resident Theatre, is pitched as a cutting-edge take on how our species might be affected by new developments in artificial intelligence. The narrative follows a family in Michigan through a night of unexpected developments that challenge their identities in the present, as well…

  • Theater Review: MIDDLE8 (Stella Adler Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | January 11, 2019
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    GREAT CHORUS, GREAT BRIDGE, GREAT INTRO WONKY SUPERSTRUCTURE A middle 8 is a section in song structure  — usually in the middle and consisting of eight bars — that is used to add some new content into the later part of a song to revitalize a tune that could get stale. It also breaks the repetition…

  • Los Angeles Theater Review: FOREVER BROOKLYN! (Whitefire Theatre)

    By Joan Alperin | January 9, 2019
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    NOTHING TRAFE HERE What I found most amazing about Forever Brooklyn! A Kosher Musical Comedy is that the writer/director Mark Wesley Curran is  not  from Brooklyn nor is he Jewish or even a comedian. Yet he totally captures what it is to be Jewish and what it was like growing up in Brooklyn. I should know since…

  • Music Review: ZUBIN MEHTA’S BRAHMS (LA Phil)

    By Jim Allen | January 8, 2019
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    ZUBIN (MEH)TA Since classical concerts are scheduled up to two years in advance, there is no possible way to know if an artist will need to be replaced. This is why, in opera for example, singers don’t always seem best-suited for each other when one must cancel. But it’s also how I discovered some bedazzling…

  • Dance Preview: THE GREAT TAMER (Dimitris Papaioannou at Royce Hall, UCLA)

    By Eve Meadows | December 27, 2018
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      A CREATOR WHO CAN’T BE TAMED Dimitris Papaioannou, who uses the human body to create vignettes brimming with humor, horror, circus-like stunts and optical illusions,  has  conceived, visualized, and directed The Great Tamer, a visually stunning and surreal pageant that grapples with the meaning of life, the mystery of death, time, destruction and reconstruction. This surrealistic and…

  • Dance & Music Preview: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO & THIRD COAST PERCUSSION (The Wallis)

    By Tony Frankel | December 21, 2018
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    HUBBA-HUBBA-HUBBARD As one of the world’s most important contemporary dance companies, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago encompasses a vast array of techniques and forms, as well as an understanding of abstract artistry and the emotional nuances of movement. With an exuberant, athletic, and innovative repertoire, Hubbard Street presents performances that inspire, yes, but also challenge how…

  • Los Angeles Music Preview: DECK THE HALL HOLIDAY CONCERTS, 2018 (Disney Hall)

    By Tony Frankel | December 19, 2018
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    EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN ONE DECKED-OUT HALL The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Â Deck the Hall Â Holiday Concerts Â at Disney Hall are just around the corner, and the variety this year is awesome. Be Â enchanted by the ever-popular Â Holiday Sing-Along (Dec. 22 at 11:30am and 2:30pm), hosted this year by Melissa Peterman, who wows us every year at the Sing-A-Long Sound of…

  • Theater Review: LOVE ACTUALLY LIVE (The Wallis)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | December 16, 2018
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    ACTUALLY MAGICAL I didn’t have any idea what to expect from this hybrid theatrical invention. It employs scenes from the beloved Richard Curtis film Love Actually, live musicians (who often arrive onstage as characters), and stage actors who act out some of the scenes and then sing songs from the soundtrack as well as a…

  • Theater Review: SHE LOVES ME (Actors Co-op)

    By Tony Frankel | December 5, 2018
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    LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPINESS I’ll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by Miklós László, is so resplendent, so charming, and so well-constructed that a 2011 gathering of literati for…

  • Music Review: MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS AND PATHÉTIQUE (Los Angeles Philharmonic)

    By Tony Frankel | December 4, 2018
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    NOTHING LIKE MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS EVER WAS Michael Tilson Thomas is a rock star. The Los Angeles native, who made his conducting debut here 50 years ago, proved last night at Disney Hall that he not only maintains a Bernstein-like vigor at the podium — bringing pulse-pounding magic and emotion to Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique — Â  he…

  • Theater Preview: SOUTH PACIFIC (Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura)

    By Tony Frankel | December 3, 2018
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    SOME ENCHANTED EVENING INDEED At about 8 am on December 7, 1941, Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below on the United States Naval Air Base in the Territory of Hawaii in the  Pacific. At 8:10, a 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck of the…

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