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Los Angeles
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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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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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