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Regional
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Theater Review: STEPHEN SONDHEIM: IN CONVERSATION (Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa)
IT COULD HAVE BEEN WONDERFUL Attendees who had never seen Stephen Sondheim being interviewed in person must have been licking their chops with every juicy morsel that the legend said about himself to the packed house at Segerstrom Concert Hall–especially those who have been listening to Sondheim’s musicals for years. The great Broadway composer sat…
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Chicago Theater Review: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (Theatre at the Center)
A SHOW WHICH PLANTS ITSELF IN YOUR MEMORY Back in 1985, Bill Pullinsi staged a satirical musical called Little Shop of Horrors at his Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Summit that was one of the joyous entertainments of the decade. Pullinsi is now the artistic director of Theatre at the Center, which is reviving the musical…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PAGEANT OF THE MASTERS: THE GENIUS (Irvine Bowl in Laguna Beach)
“BEAUTY IS A FORM OF GENIUS–IS HIGHER, INDEED, THAN GENIUS, AS IT NEEDS NO EXPLANATION.” Oscar Wilde Years ago, on a neighborhood stroll with my entourage of giggly young Girl Scouts, I caught my first glimpse of the Pageant of the Masters. Lured by faint orchestral strains, we happened upon the fence that bordered the…
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San Diego Theater Review: HARMONY, KANSAS (Diversionary Theatre)
GOLD DISCOVERED IN THE PLAINS I rolled my eyes when I heard about the plot of Harmony, Kansas, a musical having its world premiere at Divisionary Theatre in San Diego. Heath is a gay Kansan farmer who lives with his cultured boyfriend Julian in a rural community, but Julian longs for more than just an…
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Regional Theater Review: INHERIT THE WIND (The Old Globe in San Diego)
CREATIONISM VS. EVOLUTION; RELEVANCE VS. TIMELESSNESS Dubbed “The Trial of the Century” (with rhetorical apologies to O.J.), the actual 1925 trial that inspired Inherit the Wind marks a milestone in the American legal system: The first time science vs. religion found its way to the public courthouse. The Scopes trial (named after defendant John Scopes,…
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San Diego Theater Feature: THE OLD GLOBE 2012 SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (Lowell Davies Festival Theatre)
ALL THE WORLD’S A GLOBE After previewing in the month of June, The Old Globe officially opens the 2012 Shakespeare Festival this week. Adrian Noble returns for his third season as the internationally renowned festival’s Artistic Director, taking the helm on both Inherit the Wind and As You Like It, while British director Lindsay Posner…
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Theater Review: BLOOD AND GIFTS (Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre; La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego)
GRIPPING PLAY EXPLORES THE TANGLED WEB BORN OF AN IDEALISTIC WAR Set primarily in Pakistan along the Afghan border, J.T. Rogers’ Blood and Gifts begins in 1981, a critical point in the Cold War. Brezhnev’s Russian invasion of Afghanistan has Reagan in a quagmire: how does the U.S. attempt to stop the spread of communism…
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Regional Theater Review: COMING ATTRACTIONS (Moxie Theatre in San Diego)
CAMPY LAUGHS FROM BROAD CHARACTERS Playwright Zsa Zsa Gershick is best known for her GLAAD and NAACP award-winning play Bluebonnet Court, a drama with humorous moments. With her latest world-premiere at Moxie Theatre, Coming Attractions, she flips the intention, giving us instead a wit-filled comedy with touching moments. Though all-but-one of the characters are fiction,…
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Regional Theater Review: THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS (Old Globe in San Diego)
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY BECOMES A MUSICAL COMEDY 1931 was a crossroads in American history. With no economic recovery in sight, the Depression had people edgy, and when Americans are edgy, they are discordant. An acrimonious populace is a perfect breeding ground for intolerance. As such, issues that were quelled during the over-consuming, over-spending 1920’s were…
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Theater Review: NOBODY LOVES YOU (World Premiere Musical Comedy at the Old Globe)
MUSICAL TAKES ON REALITY TV What better place than the stage to examine the phenomenon of Reality TV? One would hope that by now, Americans would be wise to the fact that these shows, whether romantic or adventurous, are not reality at all. In the new musical Nobody Loves You, the protagonist Jeff says that…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HANDS ON A HARDBODY (La Jolla Playhouse)
THE PAINT JOB ON THIS PROMISING MUSICAL NEEDS DARKER COLORS NPR’s This American Life is where I first heard about the 1997 film Hands on a Hard Body, which documented a 1995 dealership-sponsored contest in Texas. The rules were simple: whoever could keep their hand on a brand-new pickup truck the longest got the keys;…
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Tour Review: TOTEM (Cirque du Soleil)
CIRQUE’S PERKS What’s a circus without lions, tigers, and elephants? In the case of Cirque du Soleil’s Totem, their eleventh major production in 26 years, it’s a marked improvement, proving that animals acts are strictly for the birds when it comes to grand circus entertainment. Press materials tell us that “Totem traces the fascinating journey…
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Regional Theater Review: BROWNIE POINTS (Lamb’s Players in San Diego)
POINTS FOR THE RICH MIX IN BROWNIE Five women consider themselves to be friends because their daughters are in the same Girl Scouts troupe. The bond they share should have been enough to plan and co-lead a weekend camping excursion for the troupe, but challenges along the way reveal different personalities that were belied by…
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Regional/Los Angeles Theater Review: CLOUDLANDS (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
EXPOSITION, THE MUSICAL SPOILER ALERT in this first paragraph! There are attempts at surprising plot twists in Octavio Solis’ and Adam Gwon’s new musical drama Cloudlands, but this new piece, commissioned by South Coast Repertory, takes itself so seriously, struggling, grasping for some sort of esoteric significance that it never rises above its soap-operatic plot….
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Upcoming Regional Theater: THE PRIDE (Diversionary Theatre in San Diego)
WHAT DEFINES PRIDE? How much of our identity is defined by the era in which we live? How does the constraint or freedom of a particular time mold who we are? Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride, which opens this week at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre, examines the lives of gay men in two separate stories…
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Regional Theater Review: A ROOM WITH A VIEW (The Old Globe in San Diego)
A CHARMING MUSICAL WITHOUT A VIEW Theatre lore maintains that creating a successful new musical for the stage is more difficult and trying than creating peace in the Middle East. Noticing the deficiencies is easy; fixing the flaws can lead to a nervous breakdown. Jeffrey Stock and Marc Acito teeter between enjoyably simplistic and disconcertingly…
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Regional Theater Review: TORTILLA CURTAIN (Lyceum Stage in San Diego)
THE TORTILLA CURTAIN RISES TO BIG APPLAUSE A frequently-used device in plot is to create two or more distinctively different characters and see how they function once they are thrown together (Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Odd Couple), but in Tortilla Curtain, the difference is the effect they have had on each other as…
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Regional Dance Feature: FIREBIRD (American Ballet Theatre at Segerstrom in Costa Mesa)
FIREBIRD SWOOPS INTO SEGERSTROM In honor of Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ 25th Anniversary Season, American Ballet Theatre will present the world premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s production of Firebird, the classic 1910 Igor Stravinsky ballet, originally choreographed by Michel Fokine at the Ballets Russes in Paris. This event is not to be missed…
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Regional Theater Review: ANNA CHRISTIE (The Old Globe in San Diego)
ODD CASTING CHOICE NEARLY SINKS SHOW There is a perplexing and ultimately infuriating casting choice in the Old Globe’s production of Anna Christie that nearly sinks Eugene O’Neill’s 1921 tale of two sea-faring men and the woman who comes between them. Nearly. There is enough fully-realized acting and truly breathtaking stagecraft (including a scene change…
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San Diego Theater Feature: PARADE (Cygnet Theatre)
A PARADE IS COMING TO TOWN In the NY Times, Christopher Isherwood stated that while the authors of Parade deserve credit for their fidelity to history and their ambition to probe a painful chapter in the American past, the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched in Georgia in 1915 for…
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