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Los Angeles
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San Diego Theater Review: KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (Welk Resorts Theatre in Escondido)
ALONG CAME THIS SPIDER Defying torture and humiliation in a Latin American prison, two cellmates—seeming enemies—build a passionate friendship and a larger loyalty. Hollywood visions become escapist illusions, binding dramatic opposites: an apolitical gay window-dresser and devoted mama’s boy named Molina—serving eight years for sex with a minor—and Valentin, a straight, unrepentantly newly jailed idealistic…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: DAYTONA (Rogue Machine at the Met Theatre)
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT One of the brilliant things about Oliver Cotton’s Daytona, is how his dialogue both reveals and conceals at the same time. “Billy, are you in trouble?” Joe (George Wyner) asks his younger brother (Richard Fancy). “I’m 72 now,” is Billy’s answer, a response that says both everything and nothing. Upon learning…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: PIPE DREAM (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
A DREAM TO SEE THIS MUSICAL As Musical Theatre West will no doubt prove on Sunday, March 12 at 7, even a flop Rodgers and Hammerstein musical has its surefire appeal. Get ready to discover a score that was lost on the American public because the show itself was a turkey. With a live 14-piece orchestra,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: IPHIGENIA IN AULIS (Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades)
AULIS WELL AT THE GETTY Check out the production of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis by Chicago’s Court Theatre, and you’ll see why I rave about theater in the Windy City. Guided by the scholarship of translator Nicholas Rudall (founding artistic director of Court Theatre from 1971 to 1994), director Charles Newell has crafted a powerful…
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San Diego Theater Preview: ACCOMPLICE (Scripps Ranch Theatre)
ACCOMPLISHED ACCOMPLICE Rupert Holmes’s Accomplice is the wittiest and most accomplished fooler play since Ira Levin’s Deathtrap. Each time you think you know what is unfolding you find yourself fooled again. As with Deathtrap, I have seen Accomplice more than once, and I still get swept along on a theatrical thrill ride that rivals the twists and turns…
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Los Angeles Opera Preview: CARMEN (LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
AN EXTRA PERFORMANCE AND A SIMULCAST: SHE JUST KEEPS ON GIVING This isn’t the first time LA Opera has opened a season with Carmen, but it is the first time that ticket sales are so great that an extra performance has been added before performances began. The run remains as September 7 through October 1,…
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San Diego Theater Preview: LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS (North Coast Rep in Solana Beach)
HE WHO LAUGHS AT LAST LAUGHS BEST Barney Cashman is a neurotic, shlubby, well-intentioned if somewhat misguided seafood restaurateur who feels his life and marriage have become too predictable, and attempts to spice both up with some hot action on the side. He sets up a makeshift bachelor pad at his ma’s place while she’s…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ (La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts)
IN HARLEM’S WAY “One never knows, do one?” That’s the favorite catchphrase of Fats Waller (1904-1943), an irrepressible master of music. The 285-pound, cherubic-cheeked jokester genius is the powerhouse presence and driving dreamer behind Ain’t Misbehavin’, the still irresistible 1978 tribute revue from Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr. In this happy case, well, one do…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: CARMINA BURANA & CHICHESTER PSALMS (Los Angeles Master Chorale on September 23 & 24, 2017, at Disney Hall)
WHERE DO YOU GET ORFF..? There are some entertainments that bear repeating: Los Angeles Master Chorale has visited Carl Orff’s pagan-fest, Carmina Burana, under each of their music directors, but the splendid, massive, exultant and squeaky-clean rendering four years ago under Grant Gershon made me want to toss off my clothes and march triumphantly towards my smoke-filled sky of destiny,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: RHINOCEROS (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice)
LIFE IS AN ABSURD BUSINESS It’s an absurdist masterwork, yet it is rarely produced in the States. A disquieting parable which warns against herd mentality, Eugène Ionesco’s three-act play is a boiling-hot indictment of fascism, written in 1959 on the heels of WWII and the McCarthy hearings. The denizens of a French town transform one-by-one…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: EMOTIONS (Blind Dance Company)
THE BLIND DANCE COMPANY’S EMOTIONAL VISION Hydeia Muhammad’s Blind Dance Company premiered its first show, Emotions, in the Los Angeles Fashion District to a well-deserved roar of applause. Performed at a building called The Lazarus Experience, the company’s production proved that an all-blind ensemble was no miracle, but rather came to life from CRE Outreach…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: LA FATE IN ITALIA and DANCES FROM LAKMÉ (World Premiere Ballets from American Contemporary Ballet)
ACB’S MODERN THROWBACK American Contemporary Ballet’s final production of the season reworks an old favorite and breathes life into once forgotten characters from another well-known ballet. The combination of singing and dancing was an innovative conclusion to a trilogy’s worth of education in the classics. Aside from a few logistical problems, the show was very…
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Theater Interview: CLINTON LEUPP (MISS COCO PERU: THE TAMING OF THE TENSION)
SHE WHO CAN’T BE TAMED Clinton Leupp may not aspire to self-help guru status, but his upcoming appearance as Miss Coco Peru in The Taming of the Tension is driven by a definite sense of mission. “I want to unify people,†he says. “We can’t truly get together as human beings until we understand how…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HONKY TONK LAUNDRY (Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Hollywood)
THE HARDEST WORKING GALS IN SHOW BUSINESS One thing is clear: If Bets Malone and Misty Cotton ever choose to sell themselves as an actual country music recording duo, they will be a smash. The intensity and quality of the singing is wonderful. Their blend is perfect, haunting and smooth, most notably on “Heaven, Heartache,…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: PINK MARTINI WITH CHINA FORBES & STORM LARGE, AND CHARO (Hollywood Bowl)
PINK MARTINI—I SAY “YES”! The last time I saw Pink Martini play the Hollywood Bowl, I was already wired after hearing them brilliantly execute an extended song list covering at least a dozen styles of music sung in eight different languages. But then this everlasting gobstopper of music turned the Hollywood Bowl into a festive…
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San Diego Theater Review: EVITA (San Diego Rep)
DON’T CRY, BUT SEE ARGENTINA The crime of being a legend is to be simultaneously loved and hated, while the truth will always be a matter of perspective and interpretation. Eva Duarte, later Eva Perón, was just such a figure. Both adored and reviled, the life of the grandiose first lady of 1940s’ Argentina makes…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV & RACHMANINOFF’S THIRD CONCERTO (LA Phil, Krzysztof Urbański conductor, 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 Tuesday August 15, 2017, so prepare yourself for one of the world’s greatest pianists. In fact, the in-demand, rightfully popular 26-year-old Uzbek pianist, who was born in Tashkent in 1990 just before the collapse of…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: FANTASM–”ODYSSEY OF DREAMS (Bellydance Evolution at The Ford Theatres)
FANTASM’S FANTASTIC FORAY INTO BELLYDANCING Bellydance Evolution’s Fantasm’”Odyssey of Dreams is a well-interpreted and abridged re-telling of One Thousand and One Nights, the Arabian tale that combines the legend of Queen Scheherazade with her stories about fictional celebrated sailor Sinbad. Portrayed by a multi-cultural cast assembled by choreographer Jillina Carlano, the ensemble successfully brings the story-telling aspects of bellydancing…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
IT WONDERS ME It’s uncanny that ever since Roger Bean wrote and directed this asinine jukebox musical in 1999, it’s lightweight nostalgia factor and updated arrangements of 50s and 60s tunes keeps packing them in from coast to coast. Since The Marvelous Wonderettes was clearly designed to appeal to an older crowd seeking sentimentalism (a…
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San Diego Theater Review: PUMP UP THE VOLUME: A 90S PALOOZA (San Diego Musical Theatre)
THE 90s ARE BACK AND SOUNDING SWEET While the nineties might not sound that long ago to an older crowd, when was the last time you thought about Lorena Bobbitt? Or tamagotchis? Or wondered who was paging you? Yep, the 90s are already ripe for nostalgia and San Diego Musical Theatre is on target for…
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