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Tour Review: AVENUE Q (Pantages Theatre)
SHORT RUN, SHORT TOUR, SHORT REVIEW Avenue Q, the delightful musical comedy which affectionately lampoons Sesame Street, blows through town this week at The Pantages as part of a short National Tour. Â Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx (music and lyrics) have conceived a deceptively simple idea: what would happen if you were to incorporate Life…
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Off-Broadway Theatre Review: A JEW GROWS IN BROOKLYN (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Theater)
WHEN YOU’RE WITH JAKE, THE WHOLE WORLD IS JEWISH Various Jewish delis have a specialty known as mish mosh soup: it’s chicken soup with rice, noodles, Matzo Ball, kreplach, and kasha. Jake Ehrenreich’s solo outing A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is a mish mosh: stand-up comedy, instrumentals, audience participation, solo biographical show and more; individually,…
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Theater Review: ROCK OF AGES (National Tour)
IT’S GETTIN’ DIFFICULT TO NOT STOP BELIEVIN’ It’s no accident that Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’†came from an album entitled Escape, because that is what I wanted to do from The Pantages as of the first scene in Rock of Ages. This nitwit of a musical uses Chris D’Arienzo’s preposterous book to showcase music of…
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Circus Theater Reviews: TRACES; CAVALIA; CIRQUE BERZERK (North America Tours)
THIS CITY HAS BECOME A CIRCUS Erica Jong said, “Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.†And what does Hollywood get? Three circus-themed diversions of derring-do opening in the same week: Traces, which is a terrifically tantalizing titillation by seven convivial yet streetwise twenty-somethings…
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Theater Review: HAIR (National Tour at Pantages)
MY TIE-DYED DIATRIBE ON THE TRIBE When a 1977 revival of the “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” Hair opened on Broadway, it received more pans than Julia Childs’ kitchen. The original 1968 Hair had taken the theatre world by storm because it had given a palatable, exuberant and tuneful voice to the contentious counter-culture revolution. (It also helped that a…
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Tour Review: WEST SIDE STORY (National Tour at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre)
WEST SIDE TRAVESTY If  the West  Side Story at the Pantages Theatre were a college production, it might pass muster, particularly if your favorite niece or nephew had a part in it. Otherwise, what you will see bears as much resemblance to the recent Broadway revival as a farm mule does to a thoroughbred racehorse….
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Tour Theater Review: NEXT TO NORMAL (kick-off of National Tour at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles)
THE NEW TRADITION OF AWARD-WINNING MUSICAL WORKS-IN-PROGRESS In the evolutionary process of the modern Broadway musical,  Next to Normal is still somewhere between ape and man; for all the pioneering and innovative writing, intriguing subject matter, and outstanding performances, the finished product left me  frustrated that it didn’t live up to its own potential. There are…
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LA RAZÒN BLINDADA by Aristedes Vargas / THE LITTLE FLOWER OF EAST ORANGE by Stephen Adly Guirgis / THE SUNSET LIMITED by Cormac McCarthy / GREAT EXPECTATIONS adapted by Neil Bartlett from the novel by Charles Dickens / PANDEMONIUM / ROCK’N’ROLL by Tom Stoppard – Los Angeles Theater Reviews
MORE GOOD L.A. THEATER AROUND THAN ONE IMAGINES There is so much theater activity in Los Angeles that there is bound to be a lot of good theater. But I have been so burned out by the extraordinary amount of bad theater I’ve had to sit through that I’ve seriously considered taking a vacation from…
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Theater Review: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (National Tour)
SMALLER PRODUCTION, BIGGER HEART Fans of the stage musical Beauty and the Beast will not be disappointed by the newly re-imagined (read: scaled down) version currently on tour. Original Broadway director Rob Roth has assembled the same team, including Tony-winning costume designer Ann Hould-Ward; what we get, instead of a two-ton castle set, is a…
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Tour Theater Review: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR (Shakespeare’s Globe at the Broad)
A  BLOODY GOOD MERRY A delightful, rollicking, and imaginative production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, famous for Falstaff (the Renaissance Homer Simpson, if you will), appeared at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and, through the magic of benefactors and angels in the art world, has arrived in North America; more specifically (and luckily) for us, in…
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A CONVERSATION WITH EDITH HEAD (Tour at El Portal Theater in North Hollywood)
INSIDE EDITH’S HEAD The celebrated film costume designer Edith Head is receiving a Valentine at the El Portal. No other celebrity could wish more than what actress (and co-author with biographer Paddy Calistro) Susan Claassen has done: a spot-on, almost uncanny impersonation of a cult figure (Head won 8 Oscars for design) that has us…
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Theater Review: YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (Tour)
THE NUTS AND BOLTS MUSICAL Here is the best way to enjoy yourself with the musicalized version of Young Frankenstein, now on tour at the Pantages Theatre: 1) Don’t see the movie first because there are many moments that work better in the original film – if you have already seen the movie, then do…
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