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Dance Preview: THE RED SHOES (National Tour of Matthew Bourne’s Production)
MATTHEW BOURNE’S THE RED SHOES: U.S. TOUR BEGINS IN L.A. SEPTEMBER 15 Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved fairy tale and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s legendary 1948 film The Red Shoes, Matthew Bourne and company (New Adventures) adapted the breathtaking story and created a theatrical ballet which took the U.K. by storm last year. After winding up its tour across…
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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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Los Angeles Concert Review: PENTATONIX FOURTH OF JULY WITH FIREWORKS (The Hollywood Bowl)
A TONIX FOR WHAT AILS YOU The fireworks went off both on and above the Hollywood Bowl stage last weekend. After five short selections by American composers performed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the U.S. Air Force Band of the Golden West, the entrancing and loquacious conductor Thomas Wilkins took a back seat after…
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Dance Review: TCHAIKOVSKY (Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg at the Music Center)
UNDERSTANDING TCHAIKOVSKY Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg’s production of Tchaikovsky. PRO et CONTRA explores duality, loneliness and the price of fame in an emotional and technically brilliant production that takes storytelling to new heights. Artistic director Boris Eifman’s portrayal of the composer’s life through first person perspective and a doppelganger that is at his side at…
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Tour Preview: DAVID SEDARIS (Royce Hall at UCLA)
FINDING DAVID SEDARIS For those unfamiliar with David Sedaris’ work, he is a prolific writer, mostly of satire and non-fiction. Many of his stories revolve around his personal life and family, though–as with any great writer, and by his own admission–he does tend to embellish. His latest book, however, is a departure from his collections of…
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Theater Review: THE BOOK OF MORMON (National Tour reviewed at Hollywood Pantages Theatre)
FAITH IN FANTASY One of the best and certainly funniest shows of this century has returned. Beginning its latest national tour at the Hollywood Pantages last night, The Book of Mormon remains a perfectly packaged fusion of the satire our world desperately needs and a sassy musical comedy. From the wizards who concocted the all-offending South Park…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BATTLEFIELD (Peter Brook’s production at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
SNOB HIT Well, that was boring. Of all the people on the planet who should understand the difference between theater and an underwhelming fringe entry (low cost and well-meaning with no set, minimal costume, and small cast), you would think it would be the great innovator and influencer Peter Brook. He may not be a household…
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Dance Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Scottish Ballet)
A STREETCAR TO HEAVEN Thankfully not just a review of record. Still, you only have two more chances to catch what is surely the most phenomenal storytelling I have ever seen in a narrative ballet. The highest compliment I can offer director Nancy Meckler, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and composer Peter Salem is that you don’t…
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Theater Review: JERSEY BOYS (2017-18 National Tour)
JERSEY CASH COW Jersey Boys, the terrific 2004 jukebox musical inspired by the story of pop sensation Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, is one of the greatest triumphs in Broadway history, spawning a spate of companies around the globe and a slew of national tours. So what’s a producer to do since the Broadway…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: INGING (Jeanine Durning at Automata in Chinatown)
GERUNDING Multiple monitors flash images of choreographer and performer Jeanine Durning’s face as she filters through emotions of delight, amusement and pensiveness in the small, private Automata Theater in L.A.’s Chinatown. After pacing endlessly around the studio, Durning’”maneuvering through narrow gaps between the audience’s scattered folding chairs’”starts talking about the building’s exit and entrance. After this…
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Chicago Theater Review: DYLAN BRODY’S DRIVING HOLLYWOOD (Apollo Theater)
LACERATING LA-LA LAND It’s a crash course in one man’s life-long damage control: Up close, personal, and, therapeutically playful, Dylan Brody’s Driving Hollywood is a liberal-minded California humorist’s cri de coeur. Forthrightly and plaintively, Dylan Brody contemplates “a history of disappointment in self-expression.” Now playing Chicago’s Apollo Theater studio, his free-form, 80-minute confessional is rich…
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Theater Review: THE BODYGUARD (U.S. Tour at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre)
REQUIEM FOR WHITNEY Even if you’ve never seen the 1992 film that gave birth to the musical in 2012 in London’s West End, the story is familiar: A pop superstar falls in love with her bodyguard. He takes a bullet for her. Though they can never be together, their love lingers on in her music….
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Los Angeles Dance Preview: MATTHEW BOURNE’S EARLY ADVENTURES (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
THE EARLY BIRD GETS TICKETS NOW Touring internationally for the first part of the year, Matthew Bourne’s Early Adventures’”a program of the newly knighted choreographer’s first works’”will have one U.S. appearance. And it’s right here in Los Angeles for one weekend only, May 17-21, 2017, at the Wallis in Beverly Hills. One of the greatest…
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Theater Review: ALADDIN (North American Tour)
A WHOLE NEW WORLD FROM BROADWAY: A MUSICAL THAT TRULY SOARS “Open sesame” indeed! It’s “Abracadabra” times ten as the arrival of Aladdin in Chi-town 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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE ENCOUNTER (Complicite at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
THEATER ON TAPE Once the mainstay of fringe festivals and performance art houses, one-person plays showcasing the likes of James Whitmore and Lily Tomlin became financially viable in the latter quarter of the twentieth century, but they were rare. Given the financial constraints of modern theater, however, solo shows are cropping up like opium poppies…
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Theater Review: CAVALIA’S ODYSSEO (North American Tour Under the White Big Top at Soldier Field)
260 HOOVES AND 96 FEET Pegasus would be proud: The vast White Big Top commanding the south parking lot of Chicago’s Soldier Field barely hints at the $30 million “theatrical adventure” beneath this tent. From the Canadian-based creators of 2011’s Cavalia comes Odysseo, an elaborate extravaganza celebrating the bonds between people and horses. What we…
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Theater Review: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (National Tour reviewed at the Hollywood Pantages)
THE DANCING ENTRANCES, BUT THE BOOK DOESN’T STAND A CHANCE Back in the era that spawned musicals with tunes by Gershwin, Kern, Porter, and Rodgers, the Broadway Musical Comedy book was almost unnecessary. The 1920s and ’30s saw shows constructed piecemeal’”a comic star here, a songwriting team there, whoever was available, really. The cliché-ridden plots and dubious groaners…
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Theater Review: RAIN: A TRIBUTE TO THE BEATLES (U.S. Tour at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago)
SGT. PEPPER’S AT 50; LET IT RAIN For baby boomers wanting to share their childhood with their kids, for all the true-blue or late-blooming fans of the Fab Four whose great regret is that they never got to see the world’s greatest quartet in concert, or for folks who like to watch great songs return…
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Dance Review: WHIPPED CREAM (American Ballet Theatre World Premiere)
WHIPPED INTO SUBMISSION Explaining the creation of his 1924 two-act ballet, Richard Strauss stated, “I cannot bear the tragedy of the present time. I want to create joy.” Thus was born Schlagobers, which premiered at the Vienna State Opera. More sweet than meat, it was meant to satiate the angst caused by a brutal world…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE TOWN HALL AFFAIR (The Wooster Group at REDCAT)
BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER Having complained more than once that postmodern deconstruction often a) picks on literature that can’t fight back and b) discourages dialogue by speaking in and to a closed system, I am ecstatic to find that the new Wooster Group show dissects a text so dense and fraught that cutting it up only…
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