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Theater Review: FINDING NEVERLAND (National Tour at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago)
A HIGHLY ORGANIZED ENCHANTMENT Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie “the man who was Peter Pan.” If so, it was an author’s compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was a shy Scotsman, awkward and diffident in public with an extroverted artistry to compensate for self-effacing insecurity. In the 2004 motion picture Finding…
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Theater Review: STOMP (National Tour)
STILL BANGING FOR THE BUCKS The incredibly basic concept behind Stomp, a phenom now in its third decade, remains: “Make a rhythm out of anything we can get our hands on that makes a sound.” (Luke Cresswell, co-founder/director). The result: four global productions, including permanent venues in New York and London’”and the rousing tour now…
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Theater Review: ANNIE (National Tour)
SO’”JUST EXACTLY WHEN WILL THE SUN COME UP? (HINT: 2020) The first Christmas special came early this year: another national tour of the industrial-strength 1977 heart-warmer, Annie. Resistance is futile to this cunning confection. Again we warm to the tale of the plucky, Depression-era orphan redhead with an equally scrappy dog who never finds her parents…
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Theater Review: FUN HOME (National Tour)
LEARNING TO LOVE FROM WHAT DAD DIDN’T DO Dedicated memory-mongering, the 2013 chamber musical Fun Home–based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 semiautobiographical graphic novel–is a worthy coming-out. We get the inside portrait of a lesbian daughter who learns more than she wanted from her gay dad. With serviceable songs by Jeanine Tesori and persuasive lyrics and…
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Theater Review: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (National Tour)
THE WINNER BY AN INCH Not long into its original run at Jane Street Theatre Off-Broadway in 1998, a cult following had already been firmly entrenched for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It was the West Village’s answer to Rent (1996), which gave a musical voice to gays, AIDS, homelessness, and a disaffected generation. Hedwig…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE TRUMP CARD (Mike Daisey at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
DAISEY’S TRUMPETRY The virtues of monologist Mike Daisey are many. He’s gifted at societal critique; he creates awesome mental pictures; and he’s a wiz at diagnosing and dissecting our modern world. Part journalist, part storyteller, part embellisher, part memoirist, the corpulent and energetic Daisey performs his shows seated at a table–quite often mopping his brow–as…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS (Valley Performing Arts Center Gala)
THE PRIDE OF JAZZ PURITANS Wynton Marsalis has received a plethora of awards from numerous countries, committees and academies for his talents and contributions to the world as a musician, arranger, composer, and cultural ambassador. In 2009, he received the Insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honor from France; it’s the equivalent of attaining knighthood in the…
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National Tour Theater Review: KINKY BOOTS (Oriental Theatre in Chicago)
THESE BOOTS ARE MEANT FOR WALKING Oscar Wilde supposedly said, “Be yourself. All the other lives are taken.” That’s defiantly the gospel credo of Kinky Boots, a musical movie spin-off that played Chicago four years ago en route to Broadway fame. It’s returned for a one-week touring engagement at the Oriental Theatre, having garnered a…
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Tour Review: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Shakespeare’s Globe)
THE GLOBE’S STUNNING PRODUCTION HIGHLIGHTS SHAKESPEARE’S PLEA FOR DIGNITY AS MUCH AS MERCY A decade ago a Chicago critic notoriously concluded his review of The Merchant of Venice by offering a rather perverse take on Shakespeare’s supposedly anti-Semitic play. In a case of devil’s advocacy he argued that Shylock’s punishment (for trying to cancel a debt by killing…
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Tour Review: TORUK – THE FIRST FLIGHT (Cirque du Soleil, North American Tour)
JAMES CAMERON MEETS CIRQUE DU SOLEIL Cirque du Soleil writes a new chapter in make-believe with Toruk – The First Flight, a not so typical two-hour fantasy inspired (but not based on) James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar. For one thing, there are no clowns (a happy relief for those who found them irritating and obnoxious);…
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Theater: CABARET (Roundabout’s production on National Tour)
RUN TO THE CABARET You better tell Momma and everybody else to come see Roundabout’s production of Cabaret, which kicked off its national tour this year. It plays the Hollywood Pantages Theatre for a limited three-week run from July 19 – August 7, 2016, and continues through the summer of 2017. The backstage story that becomes…
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Theater Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (National Tour)
EV’RY MOUNTAIN GETS CLIMBED AGAIN It’s fitting that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final collaboration is a tribute to the art and craft they served so well’”music and singing. Like Mary Poppins, convent girl Maria Rainer is a very nice nanny (minus umbrella) who teaches by example and uses play to build courage and confidence. Fraulein Rainer…
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Theater Review: 42ND STREET (National Tour at Pantages Theatre Hollywood)
THE LAND OF 10,000 TAPS Call us saps or suckers but we can’t, it seems, get enough of “The Understudy Who Becomes A Star.” Not when the sweet and satisfying story is stuffed with thrills like “Lullaby of Broadway” and “Young and Healthy.” Some clichés justify themselves, if only because nothing less than hokey can…
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Tour Preview: OUT OF THIS WORLD (Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus)
THE COSMIC CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s traveling circus remains something to run away to see, if not join. For even diehard fans there are always new delights, and the current incarnation, Out Of This World, is taking audiences where no circus has gone before, upping the circus ante by conjuring up even…
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Theater Review: CHICAGO (National Tour at Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago)
CORRUPTION: MORE FUN WHEN CHOREOGRAPHED Now in its twentieth year, this slimmed-down, near-concert version of Kander and Ebb’s cynical and enthralling musical features, as the smoothly lying lawyer Billy Flynn, John O’Hurley (J. Peterman in Seinfeld and a fixture on Dancing with the Stars. (He last appeared in the show in the 2011 tour which…
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Tour Theater Review: KINKY BOOTS (National Tour at Pantages Hollywood)
BOOTS GOT MY KINKS OUT Another bus-and-truck tour of Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper’s Tony Award-festooned musical has “sashayed and shanted” its way back into Los Angeles at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, and it may just be the tonic you need after a rough day. Oh, yes, one can look at the show with the jaundiced old…
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Theater Review: RIVERDANCE (20th Anniversary Tour)
TWENTY YEARS OF HARD-HEELED HOOFING What Stomp delivered through percussive street-dancing, Forever Tango gave to Argentina’s national cooch dance, and A Chorus Line and 42nd Street did for tap, Riverdance breathtakingly offers Irish dance and its cultural spin-offs. Wowing rapt crowds at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre in its 20th anniversary world tour, this high-hoofing extravaganza can…
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Tour Theater & Film Preview: HISTORIA DE AMOR (Teatrocinema at REDCAT L.A. and MCA Chicago)
AMOR MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY Based on the graphic novel of the same name by French writer Régis Jauffret, Historia de Amor, which opens this Thursday, March 31 at REDCAT in L.A., addresses the hardly distinguishable boundary between reason and madness, love and domination. An English teacher abducts the young Sofia and…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: DREAMGIRLS (La Mirada Theatre & Valley Performing Arts Center)
KEEPING THE DREAM(GIRLS) ALIVE Dreamgirls opened on Broadway in 1981, won six Tony awards, and ran for nearly four years. Since then, the Michael Bennett musical has been revived, presented in concert, revised, made into a movie, played at high schools, community and regional theaters, and toured. Now at La Mirada Theatre we get a revival of…
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National Tour Theater Review: MATILDA THE MUSICAL (Oriental Theatre in Chicago)
MIND OVER MUSIC Imagine Annie with psychokinetic powers, Nancy Drew as a mind-reader, or Cinderella acting as her own fairy godmother. Self-empowerment of the Mulan persuasion fuels this upbeat, knock-down, pell-mell 2011 musical. A multi-Tony and Olivier award winner, Matilda the Musical is now on its first national tour, a Broadway in Chicago presentation at Chicago’s…
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