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Theater Review: BABY (Hollywood Fringe / The Elysian)
WHEN CLOWNING, THERAPY, AND TRAUMA COLLIDE Rachel Troy’s fierce, genre-breaking solo triumph is fully realized, ferociously smart, and genuinely exhilarating. I receive thousands of invitations every year to see one-person shows—solo works popping up everywhere from major U.S. cities to international Fringe festivals, where artists travel circuit to circuit chasing audiences, awards, and momentum. With…
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Concert Preview: THREADS OF GOLD—DOLLY PARTON GOES SYMPHONIC (National Tour)
THREADS OF GOLD—DOLLY PARTON GOES SYMPHONIC Her songs get the orchestral treatment in a cross-country concert experience Dolly Parton has never been one for half measures. When she says the threads of her life run through her songs, she means it. That idea is taken literally with Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs in Symphony, a…
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Theater Review: HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD (National Tour, Emerson Colonial Theater)
SPECTACULARLY CONFUSING You don’t need me to tell you that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has tapped into something deeply elemental for many people. Her stories about a young wizard and his education at Hogwarts, a school that teaches the magical arts while bearing a strong similarity to a traditional British public school, have…
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Theater Review: HELL’S KITCHEN (National Tour)
HELL’S ON FIRE Hell’s Kitchen, a jukebox musical featuring the music of R&B superstar Alicia Keys (with several new songs) and a book by Kristoffer Diaz, took Broadway by storm in 2024, racking up thirteen Tony nominations. And now, a little over a year later, its first national touring production has arrived in Chicago at…
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Theater Review: BESIDE MYSELF (Laguna Playhouse)
A GREAT PREMISE GETS LOBOTOMIZED Laguna Playhouse offers a dazzling wall of doors and not much behind them Paul Slade Smith’s new play Beside Myself arrives with a knockout premise: Gemma, a therapist, is so consumed by anxiety that she undergoes an experimental “minimally invasive” brain surgery to excise her worry. But near the end…
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Theater Review: THE HEART SELLERS (South Coast Rep)
THE QUIET COST OF BELONGING Suh’s Thanksgiving duet is lovely and lived-in, but leaves one wishing for deeper stakes The Heart Sellers at South Coast Rep offers a focused, uninterrupted glimpse into the lives of two strangers on Thanksgiving Day, 1973, near the end of Richard Nixon’s reign. The story begins with Luna (Nicole Javier),…
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Dance Review: FRANKENSTEIN (San Francisco Ballet at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa)
When creation becomes choreography in Frankenstein, the laboratory turns into a stage of desire Mary Shelley’s creation continues to haunt not only literature but the stage, where movement and music conspire to make visible the tremors of his unnatural birth. The late choreographer Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein, brought vividly to life by San Francisco Ballet, joins…
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Concert Review: DANIIL TRIFONOV, PIANO (Season Opener at Soka Performing Arts Center)
STORMS, WHISPERS, AND THE SPACE BETWEEN Daniil Trifonov has become a figure around whom the current piano world seems to orbit. He is not only astonishingly skilled, he is unpredictable in the best way, always willing to risk fragility or silence rather than hide behind sheer volume. His playing has the uncanny quality of making…
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Theater Review: COME FROM AWAY (La Mirada Theatre)
A Town, a Tragedy, and the Triumph of Kindness The musical Come From Away — with book, music and lyrics by married couple Irene Sankoff and David Hein — tells the remarkable true story of the small town of Gander (population 9,000) in Newfoundland, Canada, about 1,500 miles from New York City. Nearly 25 years ago, in 2001,…
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Theater Review: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER (Laguna Playhouse)
MURDER NEVER SOUNDED SO SWEET The gentleman killer returns to Southern California with a smile that could polish the silver. In a joint run between Laguna Playhouse and North Coast Repertory, this A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder arrives in Laguna looking eager to please and blessedly well cast, though the gilding runs somewhat…
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Concert Review: RACHMANINOFF & SIBELIUS (Pacific Symphony | Ludovic Morlot, conductor | Alessio Bax, pianist)
PACIFIC SYMPHONY OPENS ITS 48TH SEASON WITH RUSSIAN SOUL AND FINNISH SPIRIT Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is one of the most beloved works in the piano repertoire. Composed between 1900 and 1901, it marked a turning point in Rachmaninoff’s career, emerging from a period of deep personal and creative…
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Concert Review: CANDLELIGHT: THE BEST OF JOE HISAISHI (Richard Nixon Library & Museum, Yorba Linda)
THE MINIATURIZATION OF MAGIC At the Candlelight concert in The Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, devoted to Joe Hisaishi‘s Studio Ghibli scores, I found myself contemplating the curious alchemy by which music transforms, or fails to transform, when moved from one context to another. The evening, presented by Fever in a ballroom (replicating the…
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Theater Review: GUYS AND DOLLS (Ogunquit Playhouse, Maine)
A WINNING ROLL OF THE DICE The musical theater classic Guys and Dolls has been produced so many times and in so many ways you might think it couldn’t get much better, but don’t bet on it. The odds are in the Ogunquit Playhouse’s favor, thanks to tight direction and eye-popping choreography from Al Blackstone….
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Dance Review: SWAN LAKE (Miami City Ballet)
NO MIST, NO MERCY, JUST SWAN LAKE Forget what you think Swan Lake is. Forget the gauzy tragedy, the white tutus, the endless fluttering. At Segerstrom Hall tonight, Miami City Ballet, under Alexei Ratmansky‘s choreography, has cracked open the windows. Something sharper moves through the air now. The story’s cruelty remains intact. It is a…
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Music Announcement and Commentary: ALEXANDER SHELLEY (Incoming Music Director of Pacific Symphony in Costa Mesa)
Alexander Shelley and the Turn No One Saw Coming at the Pacific Symphony When Carl St.Clair steps down, after thirty-four years of quietly shaping the Pacific Symphony, will most people notice? That’s not a dig. It’s just the reality of classical music in Southern California — always slightly off to the side, just out of…
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Concert Review: VERDI’S REQUIEM (Pacific Symphony)
St. Clair’s Swan Song: Pacific Symphony’s Volcanic Verdi’s Requiem Last night, the walls of the Segerstrom Concert Hall didn’t merely vibrate. They braced. Verdi’s Requiem opened not with reverence but with rupture. What followed wasn’t a farewell so much as a reckoning. Carl St. Clair’s final appearance as Pacific Symphony’s Music Director arrived wrapped in…
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Theater Review: LIFE OF PI (National Tour at Segerstrom Hall)
TIGERS, TRAUMA, AND THEATRICAL MAGIC: LIFE OF PI ROARS TO THE STAGE Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel’s story has found enormous commercial success — first in Yann Martel’s Booker Prize–winning novel, and then in Ang Lee’s visually stunning film adaptation. Now, in its national tour, Life of Pi makes an ambitious leap to the stage at…
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Theater Review: THE CHINESE LADY (Chance Theater)
Fractured Reflection: The Chinese Lady and the Cost of Being Seen She doesn’t enter. She appears—still as a painting, but alive, watching. In Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, now haunting the Chance Theater with a whisper that lingers long after curtain, Afong Moy isn’t introduced. She’s arranged. Composed. A presence to be consumed. A figure…
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Theater Review: THE STAIRCASE (South Coast Rep)
MEMORY LOOPS AND ECHOES IN GARDNER’S THE STAIRCASE Rain doesn’t fall in The Staircase. It lingers, heavy and waiting. Like a secret no one asked to hear. Like a mother halfway between a lullaby and a memory she can’t put down. In the hands of Noa Gardner, this first-time playwright turns weather into something far…
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Theater Review: YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE END OF THE WORLD! (South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
END-OF-WORLD TRAGICOMEDY CRACKS, BLEEDS AND THRIVES The end arrives not with a sob, but with a drag queen in a glittering black pantsuit, standing in a celestial spotlight, grinning like they’re about to host the universe’s weirdest game show. Keiko Green’s You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! doesn’t so much begin…
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