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Theater Review: THE PIANO LESSON (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival / Center Valley, PA)
KEYS TO THE PAST Directed by James Ijames, August Wilson’s masterpiece resonates powerfully in an exceptional PSF production As the fourth installment in August Wilson‘s immense American Century Cycle, The Piano Lesson continues the playwright’s exploration of the Black American experience throughout the twentieth century. Set in Pittsburgh in 1936, Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama wrestles…
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Theater Review: AIN’T TOO PROUD (Ogunquit Playhouse / Ogunquit, Maine)
TRAGEDY AND TEMPTATIONS The rise and fall of a hit machine Ain’t Too Proud tells the story of the rise of The Temptations, a musical group comprised of young Black men who came together in Detroit to form what became the most successful R&B band in history. The story begins like this: Following a six-month…
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Theater Review: SANCTUARY CITY (Chance Theater / Anaheim)
THE COST OF STAYING A rigorously observed production that grips in silence, even as the play leans toward explanation There is a language people invent when citizenship can vanish with a knock at the door. It moves sideways. It disguises itself as ordinary conversation. It turns omission into grammar. Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City hears that…
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Theater Review: FREMONT AVE. (South Coast Repertory / Costa Mesa)
THE HOUSE THAT BUILT YOU A sweeping, structurally ambitious play that grips in the moment even as it searches for its final form There is a moment near the end of the first act of Fremont Ave. when George Plique, a music therapist who cannot stop composing, sits alone at a piano in a room…
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ST. AUGUSTINE MUSEUMS: Why Medieval Torture Museum Belongs at the Top of Your List
St. Augustine, Florida, occupies a unique position in the American cultural landscape. As the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States, it carries more than five centuries of layered history — Spanish colonial architecture, Native American heritage, British occupation, and the complex narratives of settlement, conflict, and transformation that define the American…
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Theater Commentary: THE PRICE OF NOT PERFORMING EMPATHY
CRITICISM VS CONFESSION When analysis starts to look like refusal Editor’s note: Jesse Green was reassigned from his role as chief theatre critic at The New York Times in 2025 and now serves as a culture correspondent, continuing to write about theatre alongside broader arts coverage. This commentary reflects on the larger critical and cultural…
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Theater Review: EAT ME (South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa)
A HUNGER THAT DOESN’T QUITE NAME ITSELF A sharp new play still discovering its center Lewis Carroll understood that eating is never just eating. When Alice stands before the small cake and weighs the risk, she is doing what everyone in Talene Monahon’s Eat Me does across this hundred-minute production: measuring the cost of wanting…
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Dance Review: SYLVIA (American Ballet Theatre at Segerstrom Center)
DELIBES TAKES THE LEAD In ABT’s return of Ashton’s Sylvia, the best performance at Segerstrom wasn’t onstage Frederic Ashton’s Sylvia arrives at Segerstrom Center for the Arts after nine years away from American Ballet Theatre’s repertory, with the Pacific Symphony in the pit. Start there. Ormsby Wilkins conducted, and he set the terms of the…
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Music Review: LANG LANG PLAYS BEETHOVEN (Pacific Symphony)
FATE AND THE NEW WORLD Beethoven’s Egmont Overture was still settling into the air above Segerstrom Concert Hall when it became clear that Monday evening March 23 was going to demand more than the usual pleasant surrender to familiar music competently played. Carl St.Clair opened the Pacific Symphony’s program with the Egmont, followed by Dvorak’s…
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Theater Review: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (South Coast Rep)
A CLASSIC THAT STILL CUTS DEEP A perfect cast brings Albee’s brutal masterpiece roaring to life—if with slightly less bite than usual There’s a reason Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? refuses to age: it’s one of the greatest plays ever written, a savage autopsy of marriage, illusion, and the lies we need to survive. South…
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Theater Review: THE SHARK IS BROKEN (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
THREE MEN IN A BOAT, WAITING FOR A FISH At Laguna Playhouse, the making of a blockbuster becomes a chamber piece about ego, craft, and survival Gildart Jackson, Will Block, and Adam Poole The mechanical shark that tormented Steven Spielberg during the filming of Jaws in the summer of 1974 was nicknamed Bruce, after the…
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Concert Review: FROM MOZART TO MAHLER (Pacific Symphony)
INTIMACY AND ENORMITY: MOZART AND MAHLER IN COSTA MESA Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, is a peculiar piece to a classical program. It omits oboes entirely, replacing them with clarinets for a softer, more inward blend, and there are no trumpets or drums at all, no means of making a…
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Theater Review: GOD OF CARNAGE (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
CIVILITY CRUMBLES, BUT THE COMEDY NEVER BUILDS South Coast Rep’s revival exposes how thin satire needs sharper direction to truly sting Melinda Page Hamilton and Kim Martin-Cotten The first time I saw Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage was at The Ahmanson Theatre with an all-star cast, one so good that they practically hid that the…
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Dance Preview: STILL/HERE (Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company on Tour at Royce Hall)
STILL HERE, STILL ESSENTIAL The tour of Bill T. Jones’s landmark dance comes to Royce Hall with undiminished force The first time I saw Still/Here, it was at BAM. It was 1994, the year of Stonewall’s 25th Anniversary and The Gay Games in NYC. So, yes, there was celebrating, but the AIDS epidemic was still…
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Opera Preview: RIVERSIDE LYRIC OPERA (Grand Re-Opening Gala Concert on March 7)
OPERA RETURNS TO RIVERSIDE, AND IT’S BRINGING A 54-PIECE ORCHESTRA The Riverside Lyric Opera’s gala concert on March 7 marks a rare moment for the Inland Empire: a full-scale operatic event with world-class talent, right in its own backyard. Riverside has one of the largest collections of Mission-style architecture in Southern California, a university campus…
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Theater Review: MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT (North American Tour)
HOLY GRAIL, WHOLLY DATED A high-energy tour packed with talent, nostalgic chaos, and humor that doesn’t always land in 2026 Risking impalement by a heavily armored knight, and death by cheeky British puns, I joined a lively crowd at Segerstrom Hall for Monty Python’s Spamalot. Shockingly, I am a virgin—to the musical, that is. The…
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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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