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Theater Review: THE MADRES (Skylight Theatre in L.A.)
STAGING A DIRTY WAR It’s 1979 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where people are disappearing right off the street. The so-called “Dirty War” waged by the military Junta against its own people is in full-swing. Josefina (Denise Blasor), a staunch homemaker in her 60s, and Carolina (Arianna Ortiz), her militant daughter, are searching for “Caro’s” pregnant daughter…
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Theater Review: HEAD OVER HEELS (Pre-Broadway San Francisco Premiere)
GO-GO SEE THIS SHOW Head Over Heels is an exhilarating and seemingly improbable musical mash-up of Sir Philip Sidney’s sixteenth-century work The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (libretto by James Magruder, adapting from an original book conceived by Jeff Whitty) and the songs of the iconic 1980s’ female rock band, The Go-Go’s (and a few tunes from…
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Theater Review: SAINT JOAN (Bedlam Theatre Company on tour at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
SAVING FAITH Even with a few blemishes, Bedlam’s revival of George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 masterpiece Saint Joan is an immersive and ultimately gratifying theatrical experience. The story, told in six scenes and an epilogue, concerns the last two years of Joan of Arc’s life (1429-31): arrival at court and the discovery of the dauphin; leadership of sieges…
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Theater Review: PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL (Pre-Broadway World Premiere)
PRETTY UNLIKELY WOMAN When worlds collide: A celluloid fantasy about an L.A. call girl suddenly thrust into affluence, the much-loved 1990 film Pretty Woman starred a suave, salt-and-pepper-coiffed Richard Gere and Julia Roberts’ all-American Cinderella. The film drew on the wishful feeling of an inexhaustible fairy tale — and for good measure also referenced My Fair Lady, Educating Rita,…
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Theater Review: ON YOUR FEET (National Tour)
DANCE DELIRIUM As jukebox musicals go, On Your Feet! really earns its exclamation point. No question, the music alone, which won 26 Grammy Awards, would justify this 2015 tribute to the flashdance fervor of Gloria and Emilio Estefan and their Miami Sound Machine. Their irresistible Cuban-fusion street beat is more fun than we deserve. Two dozen numbers…
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Theater Review: LOVE NEVER DIES (National Tour at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago)
THE PHANTOM NEVER DIED, BUT SHOULD HAVE Gaston Leroux knew: The original author of The Phantom of the Opera concluded his horror romance with his disfigured serial-killer as dead as Lon Chaney, while Christine Daae, stalked and sexually harassed throughout the Paris Opera House, was safe in the arms of her trusting Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny. In…
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Theater Review: SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS (National Tour at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
YOU LEAVE SEEKING PEACE AND A PLOT When a play comes along that is entirely different from any play that has preceded it, especially in our era of over-informative white noise and copycatting creativity, it deserves attention. Even Small Mouth Sounds — Bess Wohl’s 2016 work, now stopping at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica as…
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Theater Review: ALADDIN (National Tour)
A BROADWAY AMUSEMENT PARK THAT FLIES LIKE A CARPET “Open sesame” indeed. It’s “Abracadabra” times ten as the arrival of Aladdin in Hollywood feels as triumphant as Prince Ali’s magnificent entrance into Agrabah at the top of the second act. A theme park of a musical, Disney Theatrical Productions’ eye-popping transformation of the 1992 film…
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Theater Review: LUZIA (Cirque du Soleil on tour)
MEMORIES OF MEXICO, LUZIA UNLEASHES A RAIN OF JOY The Cirque du Soleil just made a run for the border ’” and not the Canadian one — as the Montreal-based human circus lavishes its unstoppable imagination on our neighbor to the south. Luzia, the latest (ad)venture under the redesigned white-and-gold Grand Chapiteau (its tent planted in the…
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Theater Review: BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL (National Tour)
MAKING YOUR MUSIC MATTER If notes make joy, these 150 minutes are the elixir of happiness. Spanning only 13 years of its creator’s career (1958-1971), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical balances life against art. Magnificently. Its wonderful songs both stand on their own and preserve the pain and pleasure that went into their making. Douglas McGrath’s…
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Theater Review: SOMETHING ROTTEN! (National Tour reviewed in Los Angeles)
SOMETHING SILLY; NOT QUITE ROTTEN BUT HARDLY FRESH What is it about William Shakespeare that inspires lesser authors (namely, everyone else) to try to take him down? George Bernard Shaw spent his life seeking to supplant or at least discount that other playwright. In Shakespeare in Love, Tom Stoppard imagines the world’s greatest writer as an opportunist who…
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Theater Review: ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE (pre-Broadway tryout at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago)
A COUNTRY/CARIBBEAN ROMP AT CLUB JIMMY It’s a jukebox musical that marinates in Gilligan’s Island/South Pacific nostalgia. Plus, it’s got a feel-good love story that’s a creditable excuse for over two dozen Jimmy Buffett “beachabilly” hits. En route to a 2018 Broadway opening next February, La Jolla Playhouse’s origination of Escape to Margaritaville is elaborately likable, even…
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Theater Review: SCHOOL OF ROCK THE MUSICAL (National Tour at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago)
WEBBER RETURNS TO HIS ROCKIN’ ROOTS “Out of the guitars of babes”: The 2003 film was a four-star charmer: Jack Black, a screen actor with the chops to be richly ordinary, depicted a slob who saves himself by freeing others. He was, indelibly, Dewey: This substitute teacher rose, unexpectedly and magnificently, to an unearned occasion, liberating privileged…
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Theater Review: BARBECUE (Strawdog Theatre Company at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre in Chicago)
UNDERCOOKED AND INNUTRITIOUS Yes, disruption continues to roil the stage in 2017. Old-fashioned make-believe dwindles into its opposite: dis-illusionment. The latest test case: Robert O’Hara’s determinedly deceptive Barbecue. Its constant joke is on us. This two-act concoction is the kind of treacherous script that puts critics in a bind: To fully expose its sardonic subterfuge, we’d have to…
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Theater Review: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (North American Tour)
DETECTING LOVE A 15-year-old math whiz, Christopher is an only child with Asperger’s Syndrome. The anomaly is enough to push adolescence way beyond awkward. His autism manifests in manic multi-tasking, an inability to focus (or to lie), attention deficits, a maddening literal-mindedness, and a disarming directness that both shames and irritates adults with secrets. Afraid…
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Theater Review: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (National Tour reviewed in Chicago)
PARIS AS A PAS DE DEUX The opening image’”a baby grand piano under the Arc de Triomphe’”suggests the rest. The hopeful harbinger of a new normality, the beloved 1951 film An American in Paris employed George and Ira Gershwin’s gorgeous songs and supple lyrics to celebrate a postwar romance that healed, well, whatever wounds musicals can fix….
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Theater Review: PARADE (Chance Theater)
SEE IT BEFORE THIS PARADE PASSES YOU BY The emotionally pile-driving Parade by bookwriter Alfred Uhry and composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown reprises an ugly and evergreen tragedy. Their driven musical chronicles the reflexive racism that, a century ago, doomed a suspect stranger, Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-born Jew in 1914 Atlanta. Here the bigotry is anti-Semitism, a xenophobia…
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London Theatre Preview: ANGELS IN AMERICA (National Theatre Live Screening)
ANGELS IN AMERICA APPROACHES In two sprawling works written in the 1980’s, Tony Kushner brought alive the American national scene of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, mixing raw naturalism with fantasy, dreams, visions, and hallucinations. It was, and remains today, a dazzling achievement that’s worth every minute of nearly eight hours of cumulative playing time….
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Theater Review: SOMETHING ROTTEN! (National Tour reviewed in Chicago)
SOMETHING SILLY; NOT QUITE ROTTEN BUT HARDLY FRESH What is it about William Shakespeare that inspires lesser authors (namely, everyone else) to try to take him down? George Bernard Shaw spent his life seeking to supplant or at least discount that other playwright. In Shakespeare in Love, Tom Stoppard imagines the world’s greatest writer as an opportunist who…
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Theater Preview: THE GRAND TOUR (Pageant of the Masters / Laguna Beach)
TAKE A GRAND TOUR WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR SEAT Pageant of the Masters, now in its 83rd year, is a singularly unique entertainment that has perfected the art of tableaux vivants (“living pictures”). With world-class designers and over 600 volunteers (including actors and a research team), this elegant and classy outfit—equal parts museum, play, concert, and…
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