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Dance Preview: GISELLE (The United Ukrainian Ballet at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa)
DANCING THROUGH WAR Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center, which has presented world premieres by Alexei Ratmansky for more than a decade — including American Ballet Theatre’s Of Love and Rage (2022), Whipped Cream (2017), The Sleeping Beauty (2015), and Firebird (2012) — once again proves itself as one of the country’s most exciting dance centers by presenting Ratmansky’s all-new full-length production of Giselle, appearing June…
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Theater Review: AS YOU LIKE IT (Actors Shakespeare Project in Collaboration with Theater Offensive, Balch Arena Theater at Tufts University, Medford MA)
AS WE LOVE IT Talk about chemistry! The amazing Genevieve Simon, who wowed us with a riveting performance in the title role of Coriolanus earlier this year, flirts and schemes into our hearts in the very different role of Rosalind in Actors Shakespeare Project‘s As You Like it — in collaboration with Theater Offensive, whose…
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Theatre Review: SHARON (World Premiere at Cygnet Theatre in San Diego)
SUCH STRANGE GOINGS ON Cygnet Theatre’s new play Sharon is set in Everett, Washington, 90 minutes from Seattle. The time is 2019. The action is concentrated in the parlor of a dilapidated apartment building operated by a middle-aged woman named Sharon and her son Jake. This world premiere is difficult to describe further without revealing…
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Theater Review: LOVE ALL (La Jolla Playhouse)
WHEN KING WAS THE QUEEN OF THE COURT Ask most people what they know about Billy Jean King, other than fact that she played tennis, and there’s a good likelihood that you’ll hear a story about Bobby Riggs. Anna Deavere Smith’s play turns that inside out by focusing on almost everything but that to show…
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Theater Review: SIX THE MUSICAL (National Tour)
THESE SIX QUEENS SLAY IT The cast of Six riled up the audience at Segerstrom in this pop concert remix of Tudor history. Catchy earworms, check. Iconic costumes, check. American-Idol-esque belting moments, double-triple check. Thundering applause and cheers erupt from the crowd following every number? Check. Did I mention that the songs are earworms? It…
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Theater Review: ELEANOR (North Coast Rep)
“You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.” — Eleanor Roosevelt Eleanor at the North Coast Repertory Theatre is a one-woman drama that condenses the life of Eleanor Roosevelt into a glowing portrait of one of America’s great ladies. Running barely 85 minutes with no intermission, each minute is…
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Recommended Theater Preview: ELEANOR (North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach)
THE BEST FIRST LADY IS COMING TO TOWN Playwright Mark St. Germain (Camping with Henry and Tom, Freud’s Last Session) had a hit at North Coast Rep with his Becoming Dr. Ruth, starring Tovah Feldshuh. Now St. Germain returns to North Coast Rep to bring to life Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential First Lady the world…
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Theater Review: DESTINY OF DESIRE (The Old Globe in San Diego)
AS IF TELENOVELAS WEREN’T MELODRAMATIC ENOUGH FOR YA’… As someone who blew off after-school activities because he just couldn’t miss General Hospital (in the grand days of Luke and Laura vs. Elizabeth Taylor), I’m not in a position to cast stones at the many flaws of telenovelas. Quality or not, the format is opium to…
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Highly Recommended Event: IMMERSIVE DISNEY ANIMATION (Lighthouse Immersive Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios in Hollywood
[Editor’s Note: The opening of the Los Angeles venue for Immersive Disney Animation has been delayed until further notice. There is no further comment at this time apart to say that guests have been notified, and tickets holders are being issued refunds. Lighthouse Immersive Studios apologizes for any inconvenience or disappointment.] IMMERSIVE DISNEY ANIMATIONPREMIERING IN…
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Theater Review: CHICAGO (National Tour)
ALL THAT JAZZ AND MORE Bandstand, shining lights, and sexy murderers in lingerie. Chicago celebrates 25 years of razzle dazzle with this national tour featuring the original New York production directed by Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Ann Reinkingin the style of Bob Fosse. With the bandstand as the centerpiece of this City Center’s Encores!…
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Theater Review: XANADU (San Diego Musical Theatre)
XANA-DOOZY OF A MUSICAL Playwrights of musicals have frequently, with varying degrees of success, taken a successful non-musical movie and worked it into a staged musical. Billy Elliott, Waitress, and Mean Girls are among many movies given a whole new life on stage through song and dance. What makes 1980s’ Xanadu a very different case,…
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Theater Review: THE CHRONICLES OF KALKI (Moxie Theatre in San Diego)
VISHNU WERE HERE First, a little history lesson: In the Hindu religion, the god Vishnu incarnated ten times as different “avatara,” which can be interpreted different ways, including “descendent.” The final incarnation, calling himself Kalki, came to end a long period of darkness, degeneration, and chaos. While knowing this is not critical to following Aditi…
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Theater Review: AVAAZ (South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
A TRAILBLAZING VOICE EMERGES It is tough to capture what Avaaz is in writing. On the surface, it is a one-person play in which author Michael Shayan plays his mother, Roya, a Jewish-Iranian woman who is quite a character. The narrative journey can be traced back to Roya’s father, Shayan’s grandfather, who was jailed for…
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Theater Review: SHE LOVES ME (Palm Canyon Theatre)
I LOVES SHE LOVES ME Palm Canyon Theatre closed their 22/23 season this past week with a warm-hearted, inspired mounting of She Loves Me, one of the most romantic musicals ever written. She Loves Me is the 1963 melt-your-heart musical based on Hungarian playwright Miklós László’s Parfumerie and features one of the most adorable pairs…
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Theater Recommendation: GREAT BROADWAY LINE-UP (Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa)
2023–24 Broadway SeasonSUBSCRIBE
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Theater Review: ASSASSINS (Long Beach Landmark Theatre, First Congregational Church of Long Beach)
ASSASSINS SINGS! BUT THE COMPEXITY OF ITS THEMES GO MISSING ALONG WITH THE GUNS Assassins, with music and lyrics by the late Stephen Sondheim and a book by John Weidman, opened Off-Broadway at the Playwrights Horizon in the winter of 1990 and played seventy-three performances. Reviews were mixed to poor, applauding the music but questioning…
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Theater Review: ANGELS IN AMERICA: PART ONE (Bedlam and Central Square Theater in Cambridge, MA)
THE MILLENNIUM HAS COME AND GONE, BUT THE THEMES REMAIN THE SAME Central Square Theater’s collaboration with Bedlam of Tony Kushner’s still-relevant masterpiece Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is thrilling. Despite the three-hour run time, the intensity of Part One: Millennium Approaches is inspiring and moving. The acting is terrific. Eddie Shields…
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Cabaret Review: NO ONE IS ALONE: MELISSA ERRICO REMEMBERS STEPHEN SONDHEIM (CVRep)
ISN’T IT BLISS? Striding onto the CVRep stage last night, Broadway star Melissa Errico, in a black dress draped in silver sequins, dazzled the eyes looking as if she had just stepped off of the steps of a recent Met Gala in New York. Over the next 90 minutes, she dazzled the ears as well….
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Theater Review: JOY & PANDEMIC (Huntington Theatre Company in Boston)
FAITH, HOPE AND SCIENCE I found myself thinking of Henrik Ibsen and Lucille Ball as I watched this world premiere of acclaimed playwright and performance artist Taylor Mac. Ibsen and Ball are not two names normally associated in my mind, but the early twentieth-century interior setting (Philadelphia, not Norway) — in which the commanding figure…
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Theater Review: THE REALISTIC JONESES (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
NOTHING IS MORE REAL THAN NOTHING — Samuel Beckett Dramatist Will Eno doesn’t make it easy on the audience in his 2012 play The Realistic Joneses at the Laguna Playhouse. Viewers are asked to decide whether the play is primarily a comedy or a sober view of the human condition salted with bits of the…
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