Regional

WHEN IT RAINS, IT SOARS Let’s start with the unavoidable down-side so we can end with the up-side. While Cygnet Theatre’s When the Rain Stops Falling is spectacular,  it is terribly complicated and confusing. It’s challenging enough that the 2008 play  time-jumps  across four generations, sometimes with different actors playing the same character, but  Australian playwright Andrew Bovell  purposely holds…

A MUSICAL THAT REACHES FOR NEW HEIGHTS Built during the Depression between 1930 and 1931, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest office building’”surpassing the Chrysler Building by a whopping 204 feet. The design of the building changed 16 times during planning and construction, but 3,000 workers completed the building’s construction in record time:…

CREATING A NEW CAROL While Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom developed the popular image of Santa Claus for Coca Cola advertising in the 1930s, it was the  Victorian era which introduced most of the  Christmas customs still practiced worldwide, including the illuminated / decorated tree and holiday greeting cards. In 1843, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published,…

SHOWS THAT TELL, SHOWS THAT SHOW A list of the most popular investigative themes for artistic works in 2015 would certainly include (1) art itself, particularly within the same medium, and (2) the relevance of identity politics to (1). With Indecent, which opened last week at the La Jolla Playhouse in a joint production with…

OOH LA LA FOR LA CAGE AUX FOLLES If any gay activist ever derides this delightful musical, they would do well to remember just how radical La Cage aux Folles was when it hit Broadway in 1983 (the original play [1973] and film [1978] even more so). A third of a century later, it’s still…

SCHOOLED BY CALLAS If you’ve ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally’s Master Class (1995) will seem very familiar. If you haven’t, then you’re in for a real eye-opener. A master class, as its name suggests, is a class given by an expert (or master) to students in a particular discipline, typically music,…

MARIINSKY BALLET &  ORCHESTRA DOUBLE DOSE Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet, one of the world’s most influential and historically rich dance companies, returns to Segerstrom Center for the Arts September 24 – 27, 2015 opening the Center’s 30th Season with Raymonda. Performing with the Mariinsky Orchestra, conducted by Gavriel Heine, this will be the company’s eighth visit to…

YOU CAN GO HOLMES AGAIN It turns out that you can teach an old dog new tricks, proven by The Old Globe’s contemporary stage-spoof treatment of the classic 1901 Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Longtime fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literature need not be skeptical: While Ken Ludwig’s adaptation’”in which three…