Los Angeles

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…

O’HARA  SALON Broadway icon Kelli O’Hara ventured far west  of the Great White Way Friday night to perform Broadway favorites and a few originals to  a  well-sold house  at Valley Performing Arts Center, which is not only beautiful and glamorous, but has  the finest sound of any concert hall I’ve attended. This captivating creature proved her timelessness by never resorting to…

WHAT I DID FORSYTHE LOVE The Music Center begins its 2016-17 dance season this Friday, October 21, 2016, with Celebrate Forsythe, a remarkable evening devoted to the works of  William Forsythe. Equally special is that three separate ballet companies will each perform in the program. For more than 45 years, the innovative Forsythe has been  broadening the  world…

DEFICIENT DRAMA DILUTES DELUSION In 2011, writer/director Jon Braver created Delusion, a new kind of haunted house. In the ensuing years (except last year, 2015, which was dark), with a different tale presented annually, Braver has brought Los Angeles a much-celebrated high-end Halloween attraction that is so popular that it now sells out before opening…

REVEALING THE SOURCE There’s so much  buzz about The Source, which opens at REDCAT next week, that an extra performance has been added (the show runs Oct.19-23, 2016). The most fascinating aspect of its popularity is that people I know who are attending are curious about something: What is this show really about? The Source, which  premiered…

DUDAMEL AND BELL MORE THAN WELL Drop your plans this weekend and get to Disney Hall to  witness conductor Gustavo Dudamel leading  the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an astoundingly satisfying program. Fortunately, last night’s performance  (which I’m happy to say was full to the brim with patrons),  began a weekend of four performances through Oct.16. The draw here must…

THE STRINGS THAT BIND At first, the geometric shape dangling from thin cables in the fly loft appears simply as an “X”. Manipulated by slightly concealed upstage puppeteers, this creation–made up of thin green slats connected by small o-rings–morphs like a piece of paper manipulated by an origami artist. Soon, it will become an  animated, continually…

EAU DE MANCHESTER Kim Rubinstein’s new Odyssey production treats Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 A Taste of Honey not as a Chippendale museum piece but, smartly, as a serviceable old Sears sectional sofa. Rubinstein tarts up Delaney’s experimental kitchen sinker-cum-jazz cabaret confessional with an abundance of style. These are the basic choices for a director almost sixty…