Los Angeles

SUICIDE ISN’T PAINLESS My dad had a great record collection. At 16, I would drive over after school to smoke cigarettes and listen to Stan Getz. One afternoon I found Pop putting his affairs in order. The divorce had broken him. Whiskey had taken its own toll, and an ill-advised romance had sucked up his…

TO SIR MA’AM WITH LOVE It’s an irresistible setting seen in many successful films and plays: When an underdog teacher shapes her troubled teenaged students, she is rewarded by bucking a system that all but excludes the seemingly hopeless youth. Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins (The Homosexuals, Failure: A Love Story) gives the genre a refreshing…

DIAMOND LI’L Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series wraps up its amazing season with a musical from smack dab in the middle of Broadway’s golden age.  Given the terrific score (music by Gene De Paul, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer) and deliciously satiric book (Norman Panama and Melvin Frank), it’s no surprise that Li’l Abner brought…

BRINGING BERNSTEIN TO LIFE Older spectators will remember Leonard Bernstein not just as a conductor, composer, and pianist, but as one of the most vivid personalities and astonishingly effective communicators in the history of American classical music. His life may have ended on notes of regret and frustration, but he was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, and…

NEW BALLET PREMIERES IN L.A. It is said that American novelist James T. Farrell regretted writing the Studs Lonigan trilogy, novels that were so iconic that fellow Chicagoan “Studs†Terkel adopted the hero’s name for a pseudonym. Farrell always believed he’d written better books but they suffered because of Studs’ popularity. We don’t know if…

SHAKESPEARE UNDER ATTACK A comedy’s brewing up in Santa Monica. Soon, winds will whip, distressed voices will call out and a ship’s timbers will be shivering, cracking, and smashing against a coastline in Shakespeare’s play about the confusion caused at Countess Olivia’s court by a set of identical brother and sister twins. Two castaways’”the lady…

HERE’S A PLACE FOR US When I first heard West Side Story, it was the original Broadway cast recording on my parents’ mono Magnavox console. Without the Jerome Robbins’ direction and choreography, without the sets and costumes, and without the dialogue, I was transfixed over and over by the 1957 trailblazing musical, an updating of…

YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET I have seen  Michael Feinstein perform many times, but he was never better than last year when he celebrated Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday with the Pasadena POPS at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. Indeed, The Sinatra Project was one of my favorite concerts ever, and not just because of the wonderful  songs…

A FIRE SPARKLING IN HOLLYWOOD Opening a play or musical is always a risk. Plenty of hard work (and sometimes a lot of money) goes into a show, and producers just have to keep their fingers crossed hoping the public will attend. But opening a new theater, especially one which is designed for immersive productions,…

A MORE CASUAL CRUELTY Richard III, the final play of eight of Shakespeare’s histories, has also been an ever-popular play. It offers one of the most coldblooded characters in all of literature, and is told with such compelling, exciting drama that its length can go virtually unnoticed (in Shakespeare’s canon, only Hamlet is longer). The…

FORLANDO The Wallis and the Los Angeles LGBT Center will be presenting a one-time only concert in memory and support of the victims of the recent tragedy at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The tribute takes place on Saturday, July 16, 2016 at The Wallis in Beverly Hills. FORlando includes musical performances by the Gay Men’s…

ABT’S  FIREBIRD  SWOOPS INTO  THE CHANDLER Making a rare visit to Southern California, American Ballet Theatre returns after a three-year  absence  to Los Angeles’s Music Center — but just for one weekend beginning Thursday July 7, 2016. For this  engagement, the estimable company arrives  bearing the great gifts of Alexei Ratmansky, whose production of Firebird centerpieces  an all-Ratmansky program. The  classic 1910 Igor Stravinsky…

IT’S YOUR DREAM NIGHT, GIRLS After  nearly two years of renovations, I caught an early glimpse of the historic John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, one of Los Angeles’s top entertainment venues. With a new eatery, landscaping, soundwall (which blocks the 101 Freeway and Hollywood Bowl noise), and  amenities for both artist and audience,  the gorgeous performing venue  under the stars…

BEE THERE The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has charmed audiences across the country with its effortless wit and humor. Featuring a fast-paced wildly funny and touching book by Rachel Sheinkin (Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Book) and a truly fresh and vibrant score by William Finn (Falsettos), this bee is one…

HOLY DIONYSUS, GREENSPAN! Five-time Obie Award winner David Greenspan’s unique brand of gentle wit and exquisite lyricism will be on display when Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the West Coast premiere of his meta-theatrical comic romance, Go Back to Where You Are, beginning July 9 and running through September 4, 2016. In Greenspan’s tender comedy, which…