Tours

PUTTING THE THEATER IN DANCE Living up to its name, Nederlands Dans Theater 1 bounded into Los Angeles last night, showing off the reasons why The Hague-based contemporary dance outfit is known for defying convention. With a mixture of acting, multi-media, unique choreography and bravado inventiveness, this world-class company offered three works in a program…

CIRQUE’S PERKS What’s a circus without lions, tigers, and elephants?   In the case of Cirque du Soleil’s Totem, their eleventh major production in 26 years, it’s a marked improvement, proving that animal acts are strictly for the birds when it comes to grand circus entertainment. Press materials tell us that “Totem traces the fascinating journey…

AMERICAN LEGENDS Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell took the stage at Valley Performing Arts Center to deliver a hot set of good old-fashioned country-flavored Americana music. It was an evening of legends paying tribute to those whom they revere and love, not excluding each other. Since their first meeting forty years ago, these highly regarded…

ONE NIGHT WITH PEARL Break out the Southern Comfort and feathered boa, One Night with Janis Joplin is a helluva concert experience presented at the Pasadena Playhouse. Writer-director-creator Randy Johnson offers a celebration of the biographical-musicological journey of Janis Joplin through a psychedelic prism and accents it with 21st century theatrics. No tragedy here, just…

SMILE, AND SMILE, AND BE A VILLAIN Since civilization stopped executing them outright, the notorious have always had the fallback of a second act as freakshow attractions.   From 1883 well into the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Americans and Europeans paid to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, featuring old Indian fighters and actual…

CROSS OVER FROM ROUTINE AND VIVRE LE VIE Napoleon’s vision to make the world his grand empire of France was stifled by his winter campaign in Russia and his defeat at Waterloo. However, what he may not have imagined is France’s prevailing influence in the world – not necessarily as a military superpower – but…

THE ACTORS’ GANG’S TARTUFFE RETURNS FOR THREE NIGHTS BEFORE NATIONAL TOUR The Actors’ Gang, the critically acclaimed Los Angeles based ensemble theatre company, will present highly successful version of Moliere’s comic masterpiece, Tartuffe, for three shows only before it hits the road on its national tour. This fast-paced, outrageously funny, farcical romp is precisely the…

PETER PAN AND CATHY RIGBY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON: THEY WON’T GROW UP When the musical fantasy adaptation of James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan landed on Broadway in 1954, it received rave reviews. Critics were high on Mary Martin as the boy who leads the three Darling children into Never Land where they encounter the…