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Los Angeles
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San Diego Theater Review: THE LONELIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD (Diversionary Theatre)
FROM ORANGE JUICE TO A PIE IN THE FACE “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life. I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before.” − Anita…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BORDERTOWN NOW (Pasadena Playhouse)
A WALL WILL NEVER STOP A BUTTERFLY When I was a kid, the word “wetback” had negative connotations, but I don’t remember it being considered particularly hateful. My mother even used it to describe herself. I think its relative mildness was directly connected to the widespread, pragmatic acceptance of a necessary system of employment. People…
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Opera Review: RIGOLETTO (LA Opera)
CARO RIGOLETTO In Rigoletto, Verdi’s score is as delightful and charming as ever, with such memorable songs as “La donna è mobile” and “Caro nome.” Moreover, it is perfectly balanced between large ensemble scenes and more intimate duets. Rigoletto doesn’t drag either, nor is it overly long, but lasts a reasonably full two and a half hours, including…
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Music Preview: 2018 PLAYBOY JAZZ FESTIVAL (The Hollywood Bowl)
THIS FESTIVAL IS ALL ABOUT PLAY, BOY OK, you’ve heard about it for years. But now you’re ready to take the plunge (and you should be) to attend the world famous Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. These two marathon days, June 9 & 10, 2018, can seem a bit intimidating, so let me…
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Theater Review: THE COLOR PURPLE (National Tour)
WHILE HARDLY REVELATIONAL, A REVVED-UP REVIVAL BECOMES RELATABLE It’s a miracle. After seeing the original 2005 musical adaption, it seemed that nothing could fix this show. But then The Color Purple met director John Doyle, who made a name for himself by reinventing musicals by eliminating choruses and having actors often playing instruments in lieu of an orchestra,…
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Dance Preview: BODYTRAFFIC (The Wallis)
FIVE NOT-SO-EASY PIECES BODYTRAFFIC, the contemporary dance outfit headquartered right here in Los Angeles, has smartly scheduled three performances of this weekend’s upcoming showcase of exciting works — including a Company Premiere and a World Premiere — at The Wallis in Beverly Hills. The last four times I saw this exciting company (three at the Broad,…
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Music Preview: Sol Gabetta, Gustavo Dudamel, LA Phil (SCHUMANN CELLO CONCERTO; SYMPHONY 3 & 4)
SCHUMANN TO WIN YOU OVER Although his life was difficult, to say the least, ending prematurely in madness, Robert Schumann nonetheless composed music that elevates us through its pure spirit and unique personal character. Last week, Gustavo Dudamel began a three-week exploration of this (I think) underappreciated composer. Of course, Schumann isn’t always necessarily easy, pleasant or…
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Theater Review: VIOLET (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
NO SHY VIOLET Based on The Ugliest Pilgrim, a short story by Doris Betts, Violet — with book and lyrics by Brian Crawley and music by Jeanine Tesori — takes place in 1964 and follows the 25-year-old Violet (Claire Adams) as she travels by bus from her home in the hills of North Carolina all…
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Theater Review: THE LAST SCHWARTZ (West Coast Jewish Theatre in Santa Monica)
BUT IS IT GOOD FOR THE JEWS? I love Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. It feels a bit highfalutin putting it that way, as if I sit around reading Victorian classics when not appreciating the high art of “theatre” (not “theater”). My first experience with it was not the book but the 2001…
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Theater Review: THE GIANT VOID IN MY SOUL (Ammunition Theatre Company at Pico Playhouse)
FILLING THE VOID IN L.A. THEATER Neither my friend nor I were looking forward to this play — I mean, good grief, when I heard that it was about a couple of “fools” going on a journey to fill the void in one of the best friend’s soul… Well, frankly, it just sounded like forgettable,…
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Theater Preview: DO RE MI (Musical Theatre West Reiner Reading Series in Long Beach)
GIMME THAT DO-RE-MI, BOYS The 1960 musical Do Re Mi is about a would-be big shot named Hubie Cram, a wheeler dealer who just can’t make the big time. As his wife Kay says, they have 400 hula hoops in their garage and the phase has already passed. This time Hubie has acquired 300 jukeboxes;…
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Music Review: SEMYON BYCHKOV, LABÉQUE SISTERS, & THE LA PHIL (Ravel, Bruch and Dvořák)
LABÉQUE TO THE DRAWING BOARD Forty years since they made their U.S. debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, French sisters  Katia & Marielle Labèque returned for a program that seriously needed to rethink its programming. After the duo’s take on Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite for four hands (1908), the French pianists — led by Marielle’s husband,…
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San Diego Theater Review: SOUTH PACIFIC (San Diego Musical Theatre)
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING, INDEED Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 Broadway hit South Pacific is so full of familiar, classic numbers that it almost feels like a Broadway review in itself − what a coup to have song after song that we recognize beyond its most familiar piece, Some Enchanted Evening. Overall, characters are likable and the…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! (Celebration Theatre at the Kirk Douglas in Culver City)
“I’M NOT ALONE ANYMORE, I HAVE ME!” Charles Busch once said he thought of himself as the Loretta Young of drag, specializing in creatures of artifice, vanity, and soulful, often unrequited longing. Even as far back as playing the ingénue haunted by a terrible secret in Psycho Beach Party, you could see the leading lady…
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Theater Review: FOREVER BOUND (Atwater Village Theater in Los Angeles)
WHEN METAPHORS BECOME MONSTERS Art thrives when it dances on the edge of a razor — flaunting itself and teasing us — fully embracing the risk of toppling over at any moment and smashing itself to smithereens. In Forever Bound, a world premiere at the Atwater Village Theatre, playwright Steve Apostolina, director Anne Hearn Tobolowsky,…
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Theater Review: THE IMMIGRANT (Sierra Madre Playhouse in Los Angeles)
BLENDING BANANAS AND BORSCHT Mark Harelik’s 1985 play The Immigrant is based on the story of his grandparents, Haskell and Leah Gorehlik, immigrants from Russia who settled in the tiny central-Texas town of Hamilton in 1909, and were the only Jews there. Haskell has arrived in America to escape the pogroms; now, he must gather…
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Theater Review: BELLEVILLE (Pasadena Playhouse)
SPLITSVILLE Five years after its world premiere, L.A. is just now getting Amy Herzog’s disturbing domestic thriller. Both praised and not, the controversy with this one-act has been more over the playwright’s construction — Herzog writes herself into a corner — than the subject matter. Was it worth the wait? For the first hour and a…
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Theater Review: THE BABY DANCE: MIXED (Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura)
AN UPDATED BABY IS STILL CAPTIVATING THEATER For all its melodrama, Jane Anderson’s The Baby Dance has always been one of my favorite plays since I first saw it at Pasadena Playhouse in 1990. Revisiting the show again at Actors Co-op years later only cemented my sentiments. A poor couple living in a Louisiana trailer…
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Theater Review: HONEYMOON IN VEGAS (Musical Theatre Guild in Los Angeles)
A HONEYMOON IN GLENDALE More fun than walking away a few bucks ahead from a black jack table, this pell-mell, silly-sweet, old-fashioned musical comedy (ya know, gangsters, lovers, Elvis impersonators, a curse) just couldn’t find an audience when it landed on Broadway in 2015. But that’s why we have Musical Theatre Guild, which takes rarely…
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Cabaret Preview: UNPLUGGED WITH SUSAN EGAN (Pasadena Conservatory of Music)
EAGER FOR EGAN It was 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 and as the original Belle in…
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