Los Angeles

ANYTHING BUT DISGRACEFUL Sometimes plays that win the Pulitzer Prize do so less for their content and more for the ideas they embody and the zeitgeist of their time. It’s just an added bonus when the work turns out to be a good play as well as a snapshot of a certain era or time…

GOING UNDERGROUND A Critics’ Pick by both The New York Times and Backstage, the passionate docudrama Home/Sick explores how idealism turns to radicalism, as a handful of leaders from the ’60s-era Students for a Democratic Society take over the once-peaceful protest organization and turn it into the ’70s-era radical group known as the Weather Underground,…

THE LITTLE MERMAID THAT COULD It is surprising that the stage adaptation of The Little Mermaid took until 2008 to hit  Broadway.  The 1989 film on which it’s based  marked the beginning of a major comeback for the Walt Disney company as a purveyor of animated movie musicals. The movie studio responsible for Bambi and Dumbo had gone…

SCREWBALL MUSICAL HEAVEN When it opened on Broadway in 1978, On the Twentieth Century achieved the impossible. Cy Coleman’s clever score’”a beautiful pastiche of turn-of-the-century operetta and silent film scores with some added jazz and musical comedy bounce’”collided on the tracks with Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s delectably chewy lyrics and screwball script, resulting in…

THE CITY COMES ALIVE The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is about to begin a new era under the leadership of its new Artistic Director Paul Crewes. Right out of the gate is a production of  novelist, essayist and playwright Anthony Giardina’s The City of Conversation, which premiered at Lincoln Center last year. While…

HONKY IF YOU LIKE RACISM It’s such a weird time in America. From talk shows to a speech from President Obama, it’s clear that the racism remains a topical subject. But we don’t actually  talk about it. Can a white person get a simple answer if they ask a black person, “Why can you say ‘nigger’…

MAKE SOMEONE SOMEWHAT HAPPY At the risk of repeating myself — oh, wait — I am repeating myself, but it bears repeating. I wrote about the great Coco Peru when she appeared in Miss Coco Peru: She’s Got Balls  at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Renberg Theatre. Now, this remarkable entertainer who seamlessly blends the…

A FRIEND OF DOROTHY’S What makes this boisterous jukebox musical about the life of late music and stage legend Peter Allen (whose songs make up the show’s core) so winning, is the combination of larger-than-life excess and the piquant whiff of melancholy – all of which are frankly irresistible to a wide swath of showtune-loving…

COME RIDE  THE CAROUSEL It’s sad, really, that a town crammed with some of the best musical artists in the country has so few musicals produced. And when they are, for the most part, it’s the overblown Broadway tour variety or a one-night-only concert staged reading. Fortunately, colleges continue to offer some of the best productions…

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION For almost 40 years, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang (and creating more Big Bangs than stars; have you ever been backstage during a performance?) Performers showcase material that arises from improvisation…

GREET A GREAT GRIEG The Grieg piano concerto is one of those works that  is  hindered by its  own popularity. I remember vividly its famous strains played over and over in a 1970s’ commercial for a classical compilation on LP. And Frank Loesser popularized the main theme above concert hall status  by adding the famous strain to  the song “Rosemary”…

FINDING THE HEARTBEAT OF FIDDLER “To Life” indeed. There’s a ton of it, not to mention heartbreak and wisdom, in the 1964 Stein/Harnick/Bock musical triumph, Fiddler on the Roof, now receiving a worthy production at the Norris. For all the shenanigans that can come with  professional community theater (a little  mugging, a few line flubs, some weak…

KISS OFF A backstage comedy with  more personalities than Sybil, Sarah Ruhl’s preposterous — and in some ways pretentious — 2011 play was apparently given a boffo treatment at Playwrights Horizon, San Francisco Playhouse, The Guthrie, and more. But not at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, where Stage Kiss  had its World Premiere, and certainly not at the Geffen,…

MURRAY PERAHIA IN RECITAL AT DISNEY HALL Murray Perahia is the rare concert pianist so popular and profound that his performances cannot be confined to a standard recital hall. That’s to be expected of a pianist who has consistently engaged with music that’s greater than any one performer, and who combines a joyous, lucid virtuosity…

DO NOT MISS  BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV AT DISNEY HALL THIS WEEKEND I am happy to say my instincts were correct: When pianist Behzod Abduraimov appeared in his Disney Hall debut as a last-minute replacement in 2014, I knew he  was the real thing. They don’t appear often, these  fresh-to-the-scene soloists who completely enrapture ’” those who combine the old-school…

INDEED I DUBIN He wrote the lyrics to the songs that kept the world singing through some of the darkest times in human history: The Great Depression and WWII. But as with most songwriters who aren’t named Gershwin, Porter, Berlin or Rodgers & Hammerstein, this man, who passed at the age of 53,  has been forgotten…

NOISE WILL BE NOISE Two vastly different programs offered by LA Phil this week confirm that “contemporary” music doesn’t sound modern — that is, “new.” For me, both Brad Lubman’s Tangents and John Adams’s Scheherezade.2 fall squarely into “noise,” and I’ve heard it all before. As a reviewer, I have tried  to create a critical and…