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Los Angeles
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Music Review: DUDAMEL CONDUCTS SALONEN & SHOSTAKOVICH (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
A WONDERFUL WORLD PREMIERE BY SALONEN There’s nothing more wonderful than witnessing a world premiere and craving to hear it again immediately as an encore. Such was the experience with Esa-Pekka Salonen’s brand new 12-minute tone poem, composed this year. If the Symbolist Debussy and Modernist Salonen had a love child (Debusalonen!), it would be…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SIGNIFICANT OTHER (Geffen Playhouse in Westwood)
TOGETHER ALONE Keilly McQuail and Will Von Vogt are absolutely riveting in Significant Other, Joshua Harmon’s mostly funny, sometimes sad take on the pitfalls of being the GBF (gay best friend). Both actors fearlessly explore their characters’ self-obsessions so fully and so believably, that behavior and dialogue which might grow irritating, instead stays fresh and…
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Dance Review: GISELLE (Dada Masilo & The Dance Factory at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
WILIS AT THE WALLIS First staged in 1841, Giselle is one of the oldest surviving ballets still in the international repertory, especially because the lead role is a showcase for the world’s leading prima ballerinas. Since its inception, the Romantic story ballet has had several revisions, but most companies follow Marius Petipa’s fin de siècle version. Now, South African…
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Theater Review: SAINT JOAN (Bedlam Theatre Company on tour at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
SAVING FAITH Even with a few blemishes, Bedlam’s revival of George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 masterpiece Saint Joan is an immersive and ultimately gratifying theatrical experience. The story, told in six scenes and an epilogue, concerns the last two years of Joan of Arc’s life (1429-31): arrival at court and the discovery of the dauphin; leadership of sieges…
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Los Angeles Music Review: MAHLER’S SONG OF THE EARTH (LA Phil)
FANTASIA 2018 Coming in at a clean 68 minutes, LA Phil’s production of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) was short and sweet with plenty of meat. But through Saturday night, you get far more than just an orchestral rendering, which was also a mournful offering from conductor Gutavo Dudamel to…
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Dance Preview: ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET (on tour at The Soraya in Northridge)
NOW YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SANTA FE Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (ASFB) celebrates the third year of its four-year residency at The Soraya with a program of three works that celebrate the company’s commitment to creating new contemporary dance. The entire evening, which plays only once — this Saturday April 7, 2018 at 8…
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San Diego Theater Review: KING CHARLES III (Coronado Playhouse)
WOULD SHAKESPEARE BY ANY OTHER PLAYWRIGHT SMELL AS SWEET? If the title King Charles III sounds rather Shakespearean, yet you cannot recall a “Charles” among all his Henrys and Richards, there’s a good reason. Mike Bartlett’s homage to the “Bard of Avon,” written just over 400 years later than Richard III, is about a king that Shakespeare…
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Music Review: LAGRIME DI SAN PIETRO (TEARS OF ST. PETER) (Los Angeles Master Chorale)
FEARLESS “TEARS” ELEVATES MUSIC TO A MIND-BLOWING EXPERIENCE At a gala performance honoring Los Angeles Master Chorale donors, Peter Sellar’s critically acclaimed staging of Lagrime di San Pietro returned to Disney Hall with an encore of such luminous majesty and originality that it’s an honor to have this version of Orlando di Lasso’s last work continue on…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: 57 CHEVY (Highways)
57 CHEVY: THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT ANTIDOTE, OR HOW BROWN WAS MY VALLEY? There’s palpable excitement surrounding the upcoming West Los Angeles engagement of Cris Franco’s autobiographical comedy, 57 Chevy. “We’re remounting the show because of the Trump administration’s full throttle attack on our families. It’s time to fight back!” says the play’s award-winning author. The true…
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Los Angeles Theater Feature: REPRISE RETURNS WITH NEW SEASON OF MUSICALS (Freud Playhouse)
REPRISE REPRISED It’s a strange sort of serendipity. Just when Musical Theatre West announced its final season after eight glorious years presenting rarely produced musicals in concert form (The Reiner Reading Series), along comes an organization that shuttered its doors years ago, but now returns. Reprise! Broadway’s Best, which presented nearly 50 productions of classic musicals between…
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Dance Review: ROMEO AND JULIET (Joffrey Ballet)
SUCH SWEET SORROW FOR THE WRONG REASONS It’s as if choreographer Krzysztof Pastor, director of the Polish National Ballet, gave Prokofiev the opportunity to protest Stalin’s tyranny that he never had in 1940. Pastor’s two-act treatment of the Russian’s celebrated three-act ballet carries no Renaissance finery, just real-world immediacy. Premiered by the Scottish Ballet in…
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Los Angeles Opera Review: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE / ORPHÉE ET EURYDICE (LA Opera)
DON’T MYTH OUT, OR DANCING THAT’S ORPH THE CHARTS LA Opera’s gorgeous production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (Orphée et Eurydice), featuring a welcome collaboration with the Staatsoper Hamburg and Chicago’s Lyric Opera (with the Hamburg and Joffrey Ballets), lives up to the hype, hope, and expectation it has generated since its announcement….
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Music Review: JOHN BEASLEY’S MONK’ESTRA & GERI ALLEN’S ERROL GARNER PROJECT (Disney Hall)
THE MAGICAL MONK LEFT HIS MARK Just when I thought nothing could touch Jason Moran’s recreation of Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall recording last November, along comes the great John Beasley with his take on the great jazz inventor. Beasley wasn’t trying to recreate Monk at Disney Hall last night; instead, he has come up with themes…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SELL/BUY/DATE (Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Renberg Theatre in Hollywood)
SEX WORK/#METOO/FUTURE TENSE Sarah Jones is a prescient writer and an actor of rare gifts and remarkable range. It’s no wonder that an early patron and supporter was Meryl Streep, for like Streep, Jones goes in and out of accents and physical characterizations with precision in a way that appears effortless. In her engrossing new…
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Theater Interview: PAT KINEVANE (starring in three plays at The Odyssey Theatre)
THE LUCK OF THE IRISH AMBASSADOR Pat Kinevane, 51, is a native of rural Ireland — specifically County Cork — now living and working in Dublin, the capitol of Eire. A qualified spokesperson on Irish culture, he is on a month-long visit to Los Angeles with his three one-person shows which have garnered him a…
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Los Angeles Music Review: A TRIP TO THE MOON & THE PLANETS (Teddy Abrams and the LA Phil)
WHAT A TRIP Close on the heels of LA Phil’s behemoth production of Bernstein’s Mass comes another large-scale work with mind-boggling logistics. Co-commissioned with the London Symphony, A Trip to the Moon is Andrew Norman’s fanciful musical about a fin de siècle voyage to the Moon, whose inhabitants have trouble communicating with the Edwardian/Victorian astronomers…
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Los Angeles Music Review: THE OSCAR CONCERT (A.M.P.A.S. and LA Phil at Disney Hall)
HIGH SCORES FOR A CONCERT OF SCORES The logistics of putting together this terrific night, including an assemblage of Hollywood’s A-List composers and directors, must have been daunting. Indeed, so much work went into The Oscar Concert that it’s a shame it only played once. A co-production of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and…
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Los Angeles Music Review: DANIIL TRIFONOV & SERGEI BABAYAN (Two-Piano Recital at Disney Hall)
A WELL-MATCHED TEACHER AND STUDENT One of our greatest living pianists — if not the greatest — Daniil Trifonov (dan-EEL TREE-fon-ov) came to Disney Hall for a solo recital exactly two years ago. He played a gargantuan program lasting over 160 minutes. Included were the Brahms Chaconne in D minor for the Left Hand (after…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Boston Court in Pasadena)
A MODERNIZED STREETCAR Since struggle for power among the classes is one of the main themes in Tennessee Williams’ still-shocking A Streetcar Named Desire, it makes perfect sense that director Michael Michetti would choose to update the Pulitzer Prize winner for modern times. A Southern Belle schoolteacher, Blanche DuBois, arrives in New Orleans needing the…
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Los Angeles Music Review: JOHN ADAMS CONDUCTS (McIntosh World Premiere with the L.A. Phil)
A JUICY MCINTOSH What used to feel like the LA Phil’s token new music series seems to finally be hitting its stride. Green Umbrella is trending up thanks to a massive new commission budget and Los Angeles’s sudden role as new music tastemaker. Last Tuesday’s concert was the latest in what seems like a constant…
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