Los Angeles

MAGIC STRIKES TWICE IN THE SAME PLACE In 2013, a new production of The Magic Flute from Berlin’s Komische Oper became a sell-out sensation, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera. Now, it returns to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion starting Saturday, February 13, and then playing for six performances only. Directors Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky…

A  FUNNY AND NOT-SO FUNNY THING An irresistible mix of Roman “new comedy,” commedia dell’arte, and vaudeville, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rivals The Producers as the funniest musical comedy ever. Cabrillo  Music Theatre’s tame-yet-still-diverting revival is fine  for the first-time visitor to this once and future 1962 smasheroo. The gags here are…

COLORFUL COLORATURA IN A CLUNKY CANDIDE There isn’t much I could say about the musical Candide that hasn’t been written about before. Leonard Bernstein created one of our greatest Broadway scores when he – along with Lillian Hellman (book), Richard Wilbur (lyrics) and John Latouche (additional lyrics) – adapted Voltaire’s 1758 novel satirizing the mores…

CENSORSHIP COMES TO LOS ANGELES The Wooster Group has let Stage  and Cinema know  that Samuel French, Inc., which manages the United States rights for Harold Pinter’s work, has banned  critics from reviewing (or reviewers from criticizing) the world premiere of Wooster’s production  of his  The Room  at REDCAT, opening next week on February 4, 2016 and running through February 14….

COME HOLLER FOR MAHLER A pair of mind-blowing works meets a stunning pair of artists when the Los Angeles Philharmonic plays a full weekend beginning Friday night, January 29, 2016.  LA Phil Conductor Laureate  Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to Disney Hall to lead Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, with soloist Yefim Bronfman, and Mahler’s First Symphony. Beethoven’s first piano…

DREAMY There were some noticeable threads in three seemingly disparate works presented at Disney Hall. The program consisted of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony — one of the great listener favorites in the entire canon of Romantic symphonies; Brahms’ impellent, magnificent, and demanding First Piano Concerto; and the West Coast premiere of Spanish composer Cristóbal Halffter’s Tiento…

CHRISTINE EBERSOLE COMES TO THE WALLIS Two-time Tony award-winning actress Christine Ebersole has really done it all. I’ve seen her  on the Broadway stage, on television, in films and concerts, and own  her many recordings. Not only is she one of our most captivating performers, but she’s funny as all get-out. I still recall her amazing 1993…

CARVING A “HAM” Direct from a critically acclaimed off-Broadway run, Harris’s  HAM: A Musical Memoir  makes  its West Coast debut at the LGBT Center’s Renberg Theatre this  Saturday, January 23, 2016. But the show can only last so long  (as with any great ham, even if its refrigerated), so this  strictly limited engagement will close on  February 7. Tell me you remember…

IT JUST KEEPS ON KEEPIN’ ON This  Friday, January 22, Clark Terry protégé and jazz pianist  Justin Kauflin  will be appearing at the Wallis in Beverly Hills for one night only. Following an 8pm screening of Keep On Keepin’ On, Alan Hicks’ ode to the friendship between the prodigious lifetime Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Clark Terry and Kauflin (see…

YOUR PAL IS COMING TO TOWN Sassy and brassy  Pal Joey  is  a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. As part of its Reiner Staged Reading Series,  Musical Theatre West  is presenting Rodgers and Hart’s original 1940 version of their masterwork, and I promise  a  glorious revival at CSULB  on Sunday, January 24 at 7.  With…

A CLASSICAL UNFINISHED EMPEROR In a program in which familiarity breeds joy, the Pasadena Symphony begins the New Year with three of the most popular pieces in the repertoire, led by the insanely affable and exuberant Nicholas McGegan: Prokofiev’s short but mighty Classical Symphony, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, best known…