Tours

KISSING KILLING  COUSINS Serial killers can be fun. In the film Theatre of Blood Vincent Price sardonically played a Shakespearean actor, a hate-filled ham who doggedly “offs” the critics who panned him, snuffing out each scribe in endgames inspired by the Bard (don’t get any ideas).  Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? was a less important…

A STORM IS BREWING Singer, songwriter, raconteur, author, actor, playwright, and powerhouse performer Storm Large is on tour with her band Le Bonheur and they’re coming to the L.A. area for two shows only. The only difference in venues here is that her appearance at the Broad in Santa Monica (February 26) is pricier than…

THE TROCKS ROCK! As part of their worldwide tour, one of the most original troupes on the globe  is coming to Carpenter Center in Long Beach this weekend. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, affectionately know as “The Trocks,” are not just men in tutus and pointe shoes going for laughs (although even their title “the…

THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT IS, OR  ALL’S ORWELL THAT ENDS ORWELL When the meek and paranoid everyman Winston Smith scribbles “Down with Big Brother” in his journal, he soon  blossoms into  a determined and impassioned rebel. But  taking a stand in the dystopian superstate of George Orwell’s sadly timeless 1984  hardly  creates the happy endings we see in today’s  books, films,…

BULL FROM  BROADWAY In keeping with the never-ending trend of turning films into Broadway musicals, Douglas McGrath and Woody Allen’s 1994 comedy, Bullets Over Broadway, has been  turned into a jukebox musical. It may have flopped on Broadway but, as with the disastrous If/Then  before it, producers must know that tickets will be bought for this disappointing dreck,…

WHAT/EVER Saved from total disregard by a libretto that occasionally manages to engage with humor and knowingness, this brave attempt to examine the subject of fate versus choice utterly fails to cohere into a moving experience. Composer/lyricist Brian Yorkey and composer Tom Kitt, the creators of Next to Normal, use parallel time-lines to explore the…

THE WRONG HOME FOR HOME If you happened to catch Broadway diva Kristin Chenoweth’s 2014 PBS special, Coming Home, there wasn’t much reason to see her live yesterday at Disney Hall. I am an enormous fan of the Wicked star and Oklahoman ambassador (her special was taped live at the theater that bears her name…

BETTER ON THE MARIMBA Such is the life of a theater critic.   On Friday, you might find yourself in a dusty living room in a seedier area of mid-town, seeing a salon-scale show in some half-crazed, semi-pro playwright’s dusty apartment.   And then on Saturday, you might be at the Broad Theater in Santa Monica, surrounded…

THE PHANTOM MENACE Last night’s opening of The Phantom of the Opera, a refurbished revival of previous national tours, proves one thing: Since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s baby was born almost 30 years ago in London, the only thing that’s improved is theatrical technology, not aesthetics or storytelling or performers. In an overwrought, overblown production overseen…

MEH TILDA Somewhere beneath this incredibly well-crafted tour is a wickedly delightful show. But when more than half of the presentation  is indecipherable, (actually more than half), it is impossible to recommend. At the opening of Matilda The Musical‘s  North American tour here in Los Angeles, there were two characters I heard better than others, but in…

SCULPTED TO PERFECTION Boris Eifman’s kinetic Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg is quickly becoming known for full-length ballets, quite often with a plot and literary source. What you will see is frenzied dancing, electric mood swings, pulsating lighting on swirling sets, and complete commitment to the emotional peak of every scene. The huge, young troupe’”currently…