Areas We Cover
Categories
Los Angeles
-
San Diego Theater Review: SHOCKHEADED PETER (Cygnet Theatre Company)
WHAT A SHOCK In 1845, German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a disturbing but popular children’s book featuring the perils of children who misbehave. A century and a half later, in 1998, the popular book was adapted for the stage by Improbable, a London theater company, and The Tiger Lillies, a cult British musical trio; together, they brought the stories…
-
Los Angeles Music Preview: 2017 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 10 & 11, 2017, can seem a bit intimidating, so let me…
-
Los Angeles Concert Preview: BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN AGE (Michael Feinstein, Liza Minnelli, Storm Large & the Pasadena POPS)
MICHAEL FEINSTEIN! LIZA MINNELLI! STORM LARGE! JOEL GREY! BROADWAY! No one can argue that Michael Feinstein’”charismatic, appealing, boyish, excited, and eager to please’”has singlehandedly reinvigorated the American Songbook for the 21st century, but this beguiling raconteur is also a consummate showman who is so knowledgeable and adorable that you may just want to pinch his…
-
San Diego Theater Preview: THE IMAGINARY INVALID (Fiasco Theater at The Old Globe)
AN IMAGINARY IMAGINARY Back in March, Roundabout Theatre announced their plans for 2017. After collaborating with Fiasco Theater on their acclaimed paired-down production of Into the Woods in 2015, Roundabout has named Fiasco their company in residence. This means Fiasco will be provided with an artistic home and full use of Roundabout’s resources to continue developing their work….
-
Theater Review: THE BOOK OF MORMON (National Tour reviewed at Hollywood Pantages Theatre)
FAITH IN FANTASY One of the best and certainly funniest shows of this century has returned. Beginning its latest national tour at the Hollywood Pantages last night, The Book of Mormon remains a perfectly packaged fusion of the satire our world desperately needs and a sassy musical comedy. From the wizards who concocted the all-offending South Park…
-
Los Angeles Music Preview: LUX AETERNA 20TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT (Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall)
SHINE ON, ETERNAL LIGHT In just twenty years of existence, Morten Lauridsen’s gorgeous choral masterwork Lux Aeterna has become one of the most performed works worldwide. Under direction of the late Paul Salamunovich, our own Los Angeles Master Chorale presented the world premiere of this five-movement requiem in 1997, and recorded it the next year. Now, this iconic gem…
-
Los Angeles Dance Review: MARTHA GRAHAM AND AMERICAN MUSIC (Valley Performing Arts Center)
DESIRING MARTHA GRAHAM Presented at the Valley Performing Arts Center, Martha Graham and American Music took five dance pieces from within the Dance Company’s repertoire and matched them to live accompaniment by the L.A.-based music collective wild Up and its conductor Christopher Rountree. The result was a testament to Graham’s modern-day relevance as an artist, enhanced by a universal theme that…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: BATTLEFIELD (Peter Brook’s production at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
SNOB HIT Well, that was boring. Of all the people on the planet who should understand the difference between theater and an underwhelming fringe entry (low cost and well-meaning with no set, minimal costume, and small cast), you would think it would be the great innovator and influencer Peter Brook. He may not be a household…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: LUCKY STIFF (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
A LIMP STIFF Before composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens were, well, the Flaherty and Ahrens who created Once on This Island, Ragtime, Suessical, et al., they were a young upstart pair of ambitious writers. Their first project, Lucky Stiff, a musical farce based on Michael Butterworth’s 1983 novel The Man Who Broke the Bank at…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: FIVE GUYS NAMED MOE (Ebony Repertory Theatre)
SIX KINDS OF WONDERFUL I’ve loved Obba Babatundé since I first saw him thirty-five years ago in Dreamgirls. Even amidst the legendary star turns of his female co-stars, he made a remarkable impression, with his ineffable presence, and warm, smoky voice. He’s had many successes in the years since, and the 25th Anniversary production of…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: THE SWEETHEART DEAL (Los Angeles Theatre Center)
SWEETHEART DEAL IS A MISSED ROMANCE There’s been scant theater documenting the plight of the Latino farm workers and their fight for economic and racial equality, especially in California. Arts advocate and playwright Diane Rodriguez has lived some of that fight, which is reflected in the best parts of her new play, The Sweetheart Deal. Unfortunately,…
-
Dance Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Scottish Ballet)
A STREETCAR TO HEAVEN Thankfully not just a review of record. Still, you only have two more chances to catch what is surely the most phenomenal storytelling I have ever seen in a narrative ballet. The highest compliment I can offer director Nancy Meckler, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and composer Peter Salem is that you don’t…
-
Theater Review: JERSEY BOYS (2017-18 National Tour)
JERSEY CASH COW Jersey Boys, the terrific 2004 jukebox musical inspired by the story of pop sensation Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, is one of the greatest triumphs in Broadway history, spawning a spate of companies around the globe and a slew of national tours. So what’s a producer to do since the Broadway…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: INGING (Jeanine Durning at Automata in Chinatown)
GERUNDING Multiple monitors flash images of choreographer and performer Jeanine Durning’s face as she filters through emotions of delight, amusement and pensiveness in the small, private Automata Theater in L.A.’s Chinatown. After pacing endlessly around the studio, Durning’”maneuvering through narrow gaps between the audience’s scattered folding chairs’”starts talking about the building’s exit and entrance. After this…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: STATE FAIR (Musical Theatre Guild at the Alex Theatre in Glendale)
A GREAT STATE FAIR Corny? Completely! Simple and sentimental? Sure! Did I love it? You betcha! Rarely performed since its Broadway outing in 1996, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s frolicking farmyard musical will have you believing that happiness is just a thing called prize pig and perfect pickle (“She knows her way around a cucumber” is now…
-
San Diego Theater Preview: THE OLD MAN AND THE OLD MOON (The Old Globe)
OLD MAN, OLD MOON, OLD GLOBE Having seen PigPen Theatre Co.’s The Old Man and the Old Moon in Chicago, I can guarantee that gem of a theater experience will gently pluck at your heartstrings – just as it did with a successful run Off-Broadway’s Gym at Judson. Opening May 13 and running through June 18, 2017…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: PURE CONFIDENCE (Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble at Sacred Fools)
PURE CONFIDENCE BY A NOSE Featuring a bright, pretty Tom Buderwitz set, Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s Pure Confidence is a chance to see something increasingly rare under Equity rules: a stageful of hot actors really close up, working hard and nailing it. From the front row (there are only three), William Salyers’ frightened eyes, Tamara…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: PERICLES (The Porters of Hellsgate in North Hollywood)
PRINCE ON FIRE Chronicling the lurid and lamentable swashbuckles of a permanent ingenue, Pericles is a Book of Job for the Age of Reason. If the play were self-aware enough to be cynical, with its outrageous slings and arrows it could be a grandfather to Voltaire’s Candide. But Pericles doesn’t enjoy the season-anchoring repute of…
-
Los Angeles Dance Review: THE NAKED SOULS OF KINGS AND QUEENS (American Contemporary Ballet)
ACB’S BEGUILING ABC’S OF BALLET On the 32nd floor of The BLOC building in downtown LA, a small gathering looks out at a twinkling cityscape through large windows, admiring the scene until a wavering note from a lute draws us back into the room. Three musicians tune Renaissance instruments’”lute, long tabor, and double-reeded curtal (or dulcian)’”as audience members…
-
Theater Review: THE BODYGUARD (U.S. Tour at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre)
REQUIEM FOR WHITNEY Even if you’ve never seen the 1992 film that gave birth to the musical in 2012 in London’s West End, the story is familiar: A pop superstar falls in love with her bodyguard. He takes a bullet for her. Though they can never be together, their love lingers on in her music….
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
