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Tours
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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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Highly Recommended CD and Tour: JOY TO THE WORLD (Chanticleer on Delos)
CHANTICLEER CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN The boys are celebrating their new album that rings, glows, and absolutely delivers The GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer rings in the season with Joy to the World, its luminous new Christmas album and first release on Delos, now available on CD and streaming worldwide. An elegant, glowing companion for…
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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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Theater Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (North American Premiere Tour at The Ahmanson Theatre)
CAN HORROR WORK ONSTAGE? PARANORMAL ACTIVITY MAKES ITS CASE I imagine most people’s response to hearing that Paranormal Activity has been turned into a stage play is a raised eyebrow—doubt mixed with intrigue. How is that going to work? Horror—especially supernatural horror—isn’t a genre you often find in theatre. It thrives in film, where the…
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Concert Review: LENNON AND NILSSON: SONGS FROM THE LOST WEEKEND (Live from Laurel Canyon at The Carpenter Center)
LOST WEEKEND, FOUND MAGIC Lennon and Nilsson Get a Vibrant Tribute Live from Laurel Canyon, known for blending storytelling with faithful musical tributes, returned to the Carpenter Center on November 9 with Lennon and Nilsson: Songs from the Lost Weekend, a two-act concert chronicling the music, friendship, and notorious misadventures shared by John Lennon and…
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Theater Review: THE 4TH WITCH (Manual Cinema)
BLACK AND WHITE AND DREAD ALL OVER Chicago-based Manual Cinema employs an extraordinary suite of “old-school” technologies and techniques to bring a response to Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the Emerson Paramount theater as part of the Arts Emerson series. With no spoken dialogue, the company uses shadow puppets, projected pantomime, live music, and recorded sound effects…
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Theater Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (National Tour at The Nederlander in Chicago)
YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO SEE A BETTER PRODUCTION OF THIS EVERGREEN MUSICAL. JUST BRING SOME CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM. How do you solve a problem like the schmaltz in The Sound of Music? Or even, how do you review a populist juggernaut like The Sound of Music? It’s been sixty-five years since its first appearance on Broadway…
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Theater Review: JULIA MASLI: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (Pasadena Playhouse)
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA OFFERS UNITY THROUGH AN ABSURDIST GROUP THERAPY SESSION I had no idea what I was walking into when I drove out to the Pasadena Playhouse (more than an hour’s drive during traffic) to see absurdist clown Julia Masli entertain the crowd at a 70-minute absurdist clown’s group therapy…
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Dance Review: FRANKENSTEIN (San Francisco Ballet at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa)
When creation becomes choreography in Frankenstein, the laboratory turns into a stage of desire Mary Shelley’s creation continues to haunt not only literature but the stage, where movement and music conspire to make visible the tremors of his unnatural birth. The late choreographer Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein, brought vividly to life by San Francisco Ballet, joins…
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Theater Review: SUFFS (National Tour)
A GREAT MUSICAL, SUFFS REMINDS US THAT DEMOCRACY ONLY MOVES FORWARD WHEN WOMEN DO While much of what we love in musicals is pure fiction, history has had an undeniable flair for the dramatic — and Broadway has always noticed. From Hamilton to 1776 to Evita, political legends have inspired some of the stage’s most…
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