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Los Angeles
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Album Review: COR CHRISTMAS (Cally Banham)
YOU’LL FEEL IT TO THE COR At first glance, I assumed this album from the assistant principal oboe — and Solo English horn position — of the Saint Louis Symphony (SLS), Cally Banham, would be flat-out Muzak. Boy oh hautboy, was I ever wrong. Intimate, warm, plaintive, whimsical, fresh, and full of heart, this holiday…
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Review: DAVID SEDARIS (Royce Hall at UCLA)
BALLGOWN AT A URINAL Bestselling author David Sedaris provided evidence Friday night that he has not exaggerated in the stories he has written about shopping in Japan with his sisters Amy and Gretchen. The three of them (or sometimes just two) giddily, and with acknowledged codependence, buy clothes that are outrageous and often outrageously expensive….
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Opera Preview: HANSEL AND GRETEL (LA Opera)
ONCE UPON A TIME: : An intrepid pair of siblings took a dreamlike journey to unexpected places. The iconic Brothers Grimm story leaps from page to stage with a production pocked with perky puppets created by director Doug Fitch. Sure, a witch wants to bake some kids into gingerbread and eat them, but this deliciously…
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Theater Review: HUGHIE / KRAPP’S LAST TAPE (Geffen Playhouse)
BEAUTIFUL DESPAIR BY A MASTER THESPIAN The river of lost souls can be found in Westwood, and your magnificent tour guide is Brian Dennehy. In this coupling of one-acts by Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett, Dennehy supplies the concentrated crux of regret by embodying how time shreds our delusions. At the same time, with brilliant…
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Theater Feature: GREAT THINGS ABOUT THE LOS ANGELES THEATRE
Los Angeles, dubbed as the City of Angels, is truly a magnificent destination that holds some of the most beautiful architectural buildings in the world. One of the biggest attractions in LA is most assuredly The Los Angeles Theatre and its rich history. This luxurious spot hosts some of the biggest Broadway shows, and based…
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Music & Theater Review: THE TEMPEST (LA Phil and The Old Globe at Disney Hall in Los Angeles)
TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT An ill wind hit Disney Hall last weekend with this collaboration between LA Phil’s Guest Conductor Susanna Målkki and Old Globe Theatre’s Artisitic Director Barry Edelstein. Pairing edited versions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Jean Sibelius’s incidental music is a great idea, but the waste of talent and energy and money was…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: VALLEY OF THE HEART (Mark Taper Forum)
VALLEY OF THE HEART ON ITS SLEEVE Captivating stagecraft and a winning, although not always authentic, cast fuel this epic tale of war-time love. But the riveting aspects of a relationship between two American citizens — one Mexican, one Japanese — are diluted when didacticism dictates drama. Writer/director Luis Valdez has his heart in the…
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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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