Los Angeles

WONDERFUL WONDERFUL Never heard of the 1953 musical,  Wonderful Town? Well, certainly you’ve heard of composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Even though the songs are terrific, none of them have entered the hit parade. Bernstein offers catchy melodies in tunes that range from conga to an Irish jig, and the lyrics…

METHANE DEPOSIT A new play opened at the Geffen this week. It is called Icebergs, and it was written by Alena Smith. It was directed by Playhouse artistic director Randall Arney. It is a show illustrative of several tendencies in modern regional theater: It is written by a Yale-educated TV writer. Smith’s best work is…

EVERYBODY LOVES SHE LOVES ME I’ll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by Miklós László, is so resplendent, so charming, and so well-constructed that a 2011 gathering of literati…

BLACK COMEDY AND KITCHEN SINK DRAMA: A BEAUTY-FULL IRISH STEW While the horror and suspense aren’t as palpable as previous efforts of The Beauty Queen of Leenane’”Martin McDonagh’s 1996 black comedy’”the dark humor, bleakness, and romance positively boil over, making Galway’s Druid Theatre Company’s revival a recommended trip. For 20 years, 40 year-old spinster Maureen…

LOVE STORY Watching 1984 live, in a roomful of high school students, my biggest surprise was how long two minutes lasts. I’m a hateful person now, and as a teenager even more so, but during Fairfax High School’s second period this morning, none of us could keep shouting epithets at Emmanuel Goldstein for even a…

BOYS WILL BE BOYS Musical Theatre West’s (MTW) Reiner Reading Series begins  its 2016-17  season with a musical from the beginning of the second decade of the Broadway Musical’s Golden Age. Some say this era began with Oklahoma! in 1943, but it’s also safe to say it began in 1927, the year that  Showboat was born. The fully…

DVOŘíK & SIBELIUS  AT DISNEY HALL An LA Phil favorite, prizewinning German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser (pictured left) makes his return under the baton of exciting young Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali (pictured below) for a performance of Dvořák’s monumental and much-loved cello concerto. Also this Friday through Sunday (Nov. 11-13, 2016), Rouvali  leads the acclaimed L.A. orchestra in…

AGITPOOP When Urinetown opened up Off-Broadway in  2001, then splashed all over Broadway just after 9/11, the show was hailed as a Brechtian revamp of musical theater. About an overpopulated, under-hydrated world in which private toilets are outlawed, Urinetown is a simultaneous assault on fascist economics and on mindless revolution. It’s supposed to be a black…

THE PHARAOH-EST OF THEM ALL Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaten was not just provocative in his lifetime. Today, over three millennia after his reign, Egyptologists still debate theories about his life and relative importance. After his death, succeeding Pharaohs did their best to erase every trace of the man who had dared to displace the many gods…

UNBOUND FOR GLORY It takes talent to juggle political activism, sexual tension, and a highly suspenseful thriller plot, but playwright D.G. Watson has done it. His compelling drama hits an almost astonishing number of dynamic points with a deceptive ease that belies nuances of philosophy and morality. Unbound  charts how idealism quickly rots into corruption–and how…

TWO HOURS HATE While getting fitted for a hundred-thousand dollar suit, a gross presidential-candidate billionaire argues politics with his immigrant tailor. Several monologues inform the bigot that he’s a bigot. The billionaire threatens the Muslim tailor and his family privately and then, a few minutes’ stage-time later, incites violence against them on TV. Two and…

MEMPHIS SOARS The most entertaining musical of the year is not a great musical. Here is  a show  with a predictable, synthetic feeling book and  19 songs  which only  emulate the music of the 1950s  (they sound  more like cover versions of the great anthems of the period than great Broadway tunes).  But director/choreographer Edgar Godineaux, in the tradition of Fosse, is that…

BRING ON THE TEARS Orlande de Lassus, Europe’s most famous musician during his lifetime, created nothing finer than the Lagrime di San Pietro, (Tears of St. Peter) a collection of twenty spiritual madrigals and one motet. A cycle of intense reflections on the sorrows of St Peter following his denial of Christ, it was assembled…

“DEATH DEFYING DANCES” DEBUTS BODYTRAFFIC, the contemporary dance outfit headquartered right here in Los Angeles, has smartly scheduled three performances of its upcoming showcase of exciting new works–including a preview and a World Premiere–at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica.  The last two times I saw this exciting company at the Broad, patrons were turned away…

INCONVENIENT TRUTH A show as good as Blueberry Toast should be a city-wide phenomenon but it’s going up in Atwater Village, so not a lot of people from the West Side are going to see it before it closes next weekend. If you live in Glendale you have no excuse. But if you have to…

STILL SEARCHING Is there life after Lily Tomlin? Producer Jon Imparato is attempting to find out: under his auspices, the Los Angeles LGBT Center is reviving The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Written for Tomlin, who won the 1986 Best Actress Tony for the original production, Jane Wagner’s one-woman  play, which she…