Tours

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE BOYZ Conquering the globe with appearances on stage and screen, BalletBoyz is one of the most audaciously unique and groundbreaking influences in modern dance. The distinctive style merges remarkable dance, both robust and nimble, with music and film. The UK company’s  2014 U.S.A. tour doesn’t make a lot of stops, but…

MORE SINNED AGAINST At one point in act four, the disillusioned and blinded Gloucester refuses help along the road: “I have no way and therefore want no eyes.” It’s a line that Bill Buckhurst would have been wise to cut before directing a King Lear as wayward as the one that has landed in Santa…

BOY OH BOYS With a career spanning over five decades, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons have amassed an impressive catalog, including numerous #1 hits (“Sherry,” “Walk Like a Man”) and over 100 million record sales worldwide. Furthermore, countless covers have been done of the group’s work that extend far beyond the pop rock genre,…

MORE THAN ONCE Ironically, the real-life love affair celebrated on screen about collaborators Glen Hasard, an Irish composer, and Markéta Irglová, a Czech songwriter, fizzled after John Carney’s 2007 film became a success (well, it’s not called Once for nothing). But the Tony-triumphant theatrical  version, now at the Pantages in a soaring, enchanting, and lovely national…

WE WILL SCHLOCK YOU A huge West End hit for twelve years (just closing last May), this awful jukebox musical does for Queen what Mamma Mia! did for ABBA, Buddy for Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Jersey Boys for The Four Seasons. But it’s much closer to the first example, if only because the…

PRESERVED AND REVIVED I first visited New Orleans in August, 1978. I only had one night to spend in the French Quarter and swore I would take in every known debauchery in that short span. At that time, the legal drinking age was 18 in the Quarter (the federal government has since insisted it be…

TECHNICOLOR TURNCOAT It’s like one of the Great Plagues of Egypt:   Every so often, some producer decides to dust off another production of this old Andrew Lloyd Webber chestnut, and cast some past-his-sell-by date TV star in the role of Joseph, the hot young Biblical fellow whose dreams and visions earn him fame and favor…

I LOVES YOU, STORY I grew up with Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday singing “Summertime” outside a context of which I was ignorant; I never cared much for the late Romantic tradition of which composer George Gershwin usually reminds me, and what I’d read of Porgy and Bess frightened…

RURALITY AS A METAPHORICAL STRATEGY IN CHEKHOV: CHECK Deconstructing two Anton Chekhov short stories with a series of post-hip Director’s Theater flourishes, Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson are presently touring the 75 incredibly long minutes of Man in a Case.   Familiar Chekhovian themes are investigated:   of backwoods stultification, of falling to the level of one’s…

TAYLOR-MADE When a visiting dance company plays Los Angeles, it usually offers pieces which cover both the old and the new. And so it is with Paul Taylor, who presented last weekend at the Chandler three works created between 1978 and 2011. The triptych certainly speaks to the inventiveness of Taylor, who has created 139…