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Los Angeles
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Dance Preview: ISADORA (Segerstrom in Costa Mesa)
DUNKIN’ INTO THE WORLD OF DUNCAN On September 14, 1927, dancer and San Francisco native Isadora Duncan was strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf (“which she had worn since she took up communism,” one newspaper reported) somehow blew into the well of the rear wheel on the passenger side of the sportscar she…
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Theater Review: ANNIE (Hollywood Bowl)
SHE’S BA-A-A-ACK For those who think the sun won’t come up until 2020, here comes another Annie, that 1977 optimistic spitfire of a musical — based on the Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie — which insists that simply thinking about a brighter tomorrow will perk you right up. Although a national tour just wrapped…
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Theater Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (North Coast Rep in San Diego)
A FUNNY THING’S HAPPENING AT NORTH COAST REP Only in Ancient Rome! Pseudolus, the wise-cracking slave (Omri Schein), can earn his freedom if he can somehow get the pretty, bubble-headed virgin (Noelle Marion) staying next door to become the beloved of his twenty-something master, Hero (Chris M. Kauffmann). Alas, she is promised to uber-masculine Army…
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Theater Review: UNDER MILK WOOD (Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre)
THE PLEASURES OF WEBFOOT COCKLEWOMEN AND MINCED CAT Under Milk Wood is a vivid combination of poetry, drama, and music that was first performed as a radio play in 1954, and it is squarely rooted in language. Set in a seaside town in Wales called Llareggub (“bugger all” backwards), it is described as a place…
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Music Review: AUGUSTIN HADELICH & STÉPHANE DENÈVE (LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl)
BOLÉRO GETS A PERFECT 10 It’s always fascinating to come for a headliner and be completely bowled over by another part of the program. The draw was Augustin Hadelich, one of the world’s greatest violinists, performing Sibelius’s only Violin Concerto at the Hollywood Bowl. I have seen the Juilliard-trained Hadelich on five occasions, and each…
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Theater Review: DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (The Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre)
ITCHING TO BE SWITCHING ROLES Burt Grinstead and Anna Stromberg’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde switches between comedic farce and serious scenes just as slickly as Jekyll, the affable, handsome physician, becomes Hyde, a maniacal, marauding murderer. Blessedly not as silly and madcap as the stage…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
PUMP GETS YOU PUMPED This invigorating, modest little 1980 musical was nominated for both a Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Musical in 1982. It may seem commonplace now thanks to John Doyle’s reinterpretation of Sondheim (for one), but this is one of the first musicals where the actors not only sing but also…
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Theater Review: SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM (Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles)
EMOTIONAL TURMOIL AND MUSICAL BLISS One of the pleasures of the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s production of Side by Side by Sondheim is the experience of hearing voices without amplification. I have never been to a Broadway musical without a sound system and have often wondered what it was like. Did it always take an Ethel…
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Dance Preview: MOVES AFTER DARK (Disney Hall)
GET YOUR MOVES ON It had to happen one day: L.A. is truly becoming a metropolis, with incredible events difficult to find anywhere else. To wit, the dance world is springing to new heights, and while site-specific dance has been going on for years, The Music Center goes a step further by selecting three L.A.-based…
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Music Review: SEAL and CORINNE BAILEY RAE (Hollywood Bowl)
HIS STANDARDS SEAL THE DEAL I was stunned at how many Bowl patrons were arriving during Corinne Bailey Rae’s set at the Hollywood Bowl last Wednesday. I get that Seal was the main attraction, but this soulstress — with her enchanting and seductive vocal whirls — has proved herself to be one of the most…
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Theater Review: CRY IT OUT (Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre in Los Angeles)
WE NEVER STOP CRYING IT OUT The term “cry it out” refers to the practice of letting babies bawl until their fit subsides without parents coddling and mollifying them; assumedly this causes the child to become more self-sufficient later in life. In Molly Smith Metzler’s persuasive west coast premiere, three adult women find themselves in…
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Theater Preview: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (5-Star Theatricals in Thousand Oaks)
SHE’S STILL A BEAUTY It is sheer luck that I’ve been able to see Broadway Baby Susan Egan in over 10 shows since the mid-1980s. From intimate stages (Babes at the Matrix; Hello, Again at the Blank) to national tours (Bye Bye Birdie as Kim) to Broadway (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Triumph of Love), she has always glowed with professionalism…
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Event Preview: MOVIE NIGHTS AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL (Great Films Live in Concert)
MOVIES AND FILM SCORES THAT WILL BOWL YOU OVER You want something out of this world? Something you can really chomp on? Something that will sound even better on another inspection? Something that’s completely magic? Well, grease up your lederhosen, because here comes Movie Nights at the Hollywood Bowl, 2018. Because of his indelible film…
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Music Review: VíKINGUR ÒLAFSSON (Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with Thomas Adí¨s and the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl)
BOWL OVER BEETHOVEN Last night at the Hollywood Bowl started off with a bang. British composer and guest conducter  Thomas Adès began an evening of “Beethoven Masterpieces” — with Iceland’s VÃÂkingur Ólafsson offering the Second Piano Concerto — with a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that was decidedly awesome: more rhythmic and decisive than any I…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THREE DAYS IN THE COUNTRY (Antaeus Theatre in Glendale)
THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF LOVE Antaeus Theatre closes its season with a terrific production of Three Days in the Country, Patrick Marber’s adaptation of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Turgenev was said to be Chekov’s inspiration to become a playwright, yet my affection for the latter has never extended to the former. Chekov feels…
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Theater Review: BIG FISH (Chance Theater)
FRIED, STEWED OR BROILED, THIS FISH WILL NEVER TASTE GOOD So here’s what baffles me: A show which is middling at best is suddenly showing up at regional, community and high school theaters with alarming regularity around the country. Well, maybe not so alarming. The show was, after all, on Broadway. Musical Theatre West in…
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Theater Review: ON YOUR FEET (National Tour)
DANCE DELIRIUM As jukebox musicals go, the rags-to-riches bio On Your Feet! definitely earns its exclamation point. No question, the upbeat tunes, with their irresistible Cuban-fusion street beat, would justify this 2015 tribute to the flashdance fervor of Gloria and Emilio Estefan and their Miami Sound Machine. But their lives warrant a work too: Alexander Dinelaris’s predictable and…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: THE SUMMER OF LOVE (Michael Feinstein Sings the Hits of the ’60s with the Pasadena POPS at the Arboretum)
FEINSTEIN & THE SUMMER OF LOVE: COME ON BABY, LIGHT MY FIRE Of all the Michael Feinstein Pasadena POPS concerts so far, my favorites were his solo presentations of both Gershwin and the two Frank Sinatra concerts, celebrating Ol’ Blue Eyes’ 100th birthday. That’s because Feinstein handed over the conductor’s baton to Larry Blank, who…
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Music Preview: BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV (Rachmoninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl)
DO NOT MISS BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL THIS WEEK Pianist Behzod Abduraimov is coming to the Hollywood Bowl this Thursday, July 12, 2018, so prepare yourself for one of the world’s greatest pianists. In fact, the in-demand, rightfully popular 27-year-old Uzbek pianist, who was born in Tashkent in 1990 just before the collapse…
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San Diego Theater Review: SPAMALOT (Cygnet Theatre)
THE HOLY GRAIL OF SILLY MUSICALS The tales of King Arthur and his knights of the round table stand as icons of literature, leaving them ripe for outrageous parody in Monty Python’s 1975 cult classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Spamalot walks the line of being a musical version of Holy Grail and being (as…
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