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Los Angeles
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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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Opera Review: DON CARLO: (LA Opera)
DOMINGO A SHINING LIGHT IN SOME DARK STAGING In LA Opera’s production of Verdi’s Don Carlo, which has some cosmic casting but a stifling set and stingy staging, the titular character has had a rather rough time before a note is sung. He has sneaked away from his princely duties to meet his betrothed, Elisabeth…
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Theater Review: MAME (Musical Theatre Guild)
THE ENDURING LEGACY OF JERRY HERMAN AND THE ‘STAR VEHICLE’ The chief pleasure in Musical Theatre Guild’s presentation of Mame at the Alex Theatre is hearing the music, full-out, as written, unencumbered, and unembellished. I mean that in the best sense. Jerry Herman’s score is lush and lovely, and it requires no reinvention. In the…
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Theater Review: THE CAKE (Geffen Playhouse)
LOVE AND TOLERANCE BEGIN AT HOME Debra Jo Rupp is like a hurricane in miniature. She takes us inside a character’s small, unexpected, interior storms. We see and feel her mind and emotions churning. Sometimes she lets all that energy propel itself outward, and she bounces around the stage with adorable comic effect. Other times…
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Theater Review: BONNIE & CLYDE (Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater in Claremont)
A SURE(GUN)FIRE HIT The team of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow, the most famous robbing, murdering, loving couple in U.S. history, is as unlikely a subject for a musical as Sweeney Todd. From their first meeting in West Texas through their tumultuous courtship and romance; from their brief, history-making crime spree to their fateful…
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Theater Review: THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE (Studio/Stage in Hollywood)
BLACK COMEDY, KITCHEN SINK DRAMA & ONE FECKIN’ MOTHER While the horror and suspense aren’t as delectable as previous productions of The Beauty Queen of Leenane — Martin McDonagh’s 1996 black comedy — the dark humor, bleakness, and romance positively boil over, making Capricorn Eleven Productions’ revival a recommended trip. For 20 years, 40 year-old spinster…
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Music Preview: WYNTON MARSALIS AND THE JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA & CLAYTON-HAMILTON JAZZ ORCHESTRA (The Hollywood Bowl)
JAZZ, GENIUS AND ORIGINAL COMPOSITIONS Wynton Marsalis’s wildly enjoyable composition, a new dance suite called Spaces, combines modern dance with big band jazz in a playful and entirely entertaining exploration of the animal kingdom. Performed for the first time in 2016, this visually captivating Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra production hits the Hollywood Bowl this Thursday,…
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Theater Review: THE HEART OF ROCK & ROLL (The Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage)
AN EARNEST HEART THAT SHAKES, THROBS, PALPITATES & FLATLINES For all of its sincere heart and driving rock ‘n’ roll, this new jukebox musical inspired by Huey Lewis and the News’s upbeat pop tunes — either original (“I Wanna New Drug”; “The Power of Love”) or covers (Curtis Mayfield’s “It’s Alright”) — remains earthbound. Surprisingly…
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