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Theater Review: SOME LIKE IT HOT (National Tour)
EVERYONE WILL LIKE IT HOT It wouldn’t be a valid review to simply write, “I loved it!” a hundred times and ship it off to my editor. However, if you’re looking for a bottom line or a simple recommendation, that’s exactly what this review will come down to. Leandra Ellis-Gaston and the company Evoking the…
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Off-Broadway and International Tour Review: DEAD AS A DODO (Wakka Wakka)
THE BONES OF GREAT THEATER Continuing its international tour, Wakka Wakka, the Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning theater company, returns to NYC with Dead as a Dodo, a surreal and darkly humorous production at the Baruch Performing Arts Center as part of Under the Radar. Their Norwegian-American penchant for irony—and their surreal imagination—are at the…
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Theater Review: & JULIET (Broadway National Tour)
STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE SET TO A POP BEAT After a few weather-related delays, Houston was introduced to the toe-tapping fun that is the national tour of & Juliet at The Hobby Center. Blending fireworks, both literal and metaphorical, & Juliet is a girls’ trip of self-discovery set to a jukebox score provided by powerhouse, Grammy-winning,…
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Theater Review: JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING (Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s The Yard)
AN UNFORGETTABLE LAUGHTER-ETCHED LESSON ON LIFE BY WALKING IN SOMEONE ELSE’S SHOES There are two things to know about Jocelyn Bioh, playwright of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, the theatrical sensation that’s currently delighting audiences in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s The Yard and had Broadway in such a tizzy 15 months ago. She starts with character and,…
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Theater Review: BACK TO THE FUTURE: THE MUSICAL (National Tour at San Diego Civic Theatre)
BACK TO BACK TO THE FUTURE For those of us old enough to remember the summer of ’85, when the movie Back to the Future reigned in movie theaters, here’s a daunting thought: Marty’s 30-year time travel back to 1955 was a shorter leap than going to 1985 from now. For the musical, the Broadway…
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Theater Review: RACHMANINOFF AND THE TSAR: A NEW MUSICAL PLAY (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley)
Hershey Felder has become synonymous with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, returning year after year from Europe to present his original musical productions. This year, he brings Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, a largely successful exploration of the life of Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, the renowned Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Felder has stated that this marks the final…
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Theater Review: SHUCKED (National Tour)
A SHUCKING DELIGHT The Broadway tour of Shucked by Robert Horn will be cracking up audiences in Chicago’s CIBC Theatre through January 19th before it continues on its national tour. If you look too closely this corny little musical starts to wilt with an aimless protagonist and too many ballads for a lighthearted comedy, but…
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Dance Review: DANCE OF ORIENTAL (Oever; World Premiere at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles)
Southern California hosts one of the largest Sino diaspora communities in the United States. Approximately 4% of the population—over 5,000 first-generation immigrants—centers around the 626 Asians, a celebrated food haven in the San Gabriel Valley (area code: 626) for authentic Chinese regional cuisine. Angelenos, fortunate to enjoy a diverse cultural landscape, have developed a taste…
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Music Interview: CODY FRY (Appearing in Concert with The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at Disney Hall)
CAUGHT YOU AT A GOOD TIME [Editor’s Note, Jan 8, 2025: Due to the Los Angeles fires, the January 10 concert referenced in this interview has been postponed. It has been rescheduled for Saturday, April 19, 2025. Tickets for the January 10 concert will be valid for the new date.] When Cody Fry is asked…
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Theater Review: BACK TO THE FUTURE: THE MUSICAL (National Tour at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa)
THE DELOREAN IS THE ONLY THING THAT FLIES IN THIS DUMPSTER FIRE Since the release of the Stranger Things television series in 2016, the public appeal of all things ’80s has left very few stones unturned. From the lady wrestler phenomenon reimagined in the Netflix TV series GLOW to the surreal neo-noir film Drive, the…
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Theater Review: PRICE: A REPRESSED REPERTOIRE (SEQUENCES) (New Theater Hollywood)
ACTS, REPETITIONS AND REPRESSIONS There’s a new theater in town, Los Angeles, aptly named New Theater Hollywood, run by artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff. I discovered it quite by accident in an article in the LA Review of Books, which described it as “sceney.” I simply had to go. I checked out the first…
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Concert Review: SARAH BRIGHTMAN’S A CHRISTMAS SYMPHONY (International Tour)
A CHRISTMAS SYMPHONY? MORE LIKE A TRIBUTE TO A SELF-ANOINTED OPERA DIVA QUEEN Now an annual tradition, the international tour of Sarah Brightman’s A Christmas Symphony first began in 2022. Then she visited 22 cities in Canada and the US in 2023. This year, the tour includes 14 new cities in the Western United States…
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Theater Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (The Streetcar Project Tour in LA, NY, SF, DC & more — Highly Recommended)
NOW, THERE’S OH SO MUCH MORE TO DESIRE Since struggle for power among the classes is one of the main themes in Tennessee Williams’ still-shocking A Streetcar Named Desire, it makes perfect sense that director and co-creator Nick Westrate would choose to update the Pulitzer Prize winner for modern times. But wait til you hear…
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Highly Recommended Concert: A CHANTICLEER CHRISTMAS (National Tour at Walt Disney Concert Hall)
LET ME MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CHANTICLEER I may be enamored by the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Messiah, I may be enthralled by Pasadena Symphony’s Holiday Candlelight, I may be excited by the Gay Men’s Chorus’s Holiday Spectacular, but A Chanticleer Christmas, which plays Disney Hall on Dec. 17, is always the best choral show of…
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Concert Review: GEORGE GERSHWIN’S RHAPSODY IN BLUE (What Makes It Great? With Rob Kapilow)
YES, IT WAS GREAT! Celebrity music educator Rob Kapilow – joined by virtuosic pianist Clayton Stephenson and members of the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra conducted by Julius P. Williams – provided an enlightening and entertaining evening of musical analysis and performance last Friday night at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. Assisted by Stephenson and orchestra members…
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Theater Preview: THE GOLDEN GAYS: THANK YULE FOR BEING A FRIEND (Tour at Diversionary Theatre in San Diego)
PICTURE IT: MIAMI, 1985, AGAIN, BUT WITH SINGING When Bea Arthur initially gave a firm “No” to participating in the 80s sit-com The Golden Girls, she nearly denied millions of soon-to-be loyal fans 180 episodes of endearing, quotable, tremendously-funny memories. Thankfully, with a not-so-minor change in the roles (reversing Betty White and Rue McClanahan’s casting),…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret: MEOW MEOW: FELINE FESTIVE HOLIDAY (The Wallis, Beverly Hills, & Stanford U)
SANTA’S FUR IS GONNA FLY WITH MEOW MEOW’S FELINE FESTIVE HOLIDAY When you hear the words “performance art,” do you envision a motionless Marina Abramović allowing a 10-foot boa constrictor to wrap itself around her head? And when you hear the term “cabaret,” do you think of tired patter, same-old showtunes, and folks who’re trying…
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Highly Recommended Cabaret: MARVELOUS: AN EVENING WITH MARILYN MAYE (Hollywood’s Catalina Bar & Grill, Palm Springs’ The Purple Room, NYC’s Birdland)
Adore, adore, adore her. You have to believe me — at 95, the great Marilyn Maye simply enchants, and holds the room in the palm of her hand. Very, very few cabaret performers have this ability (my top three are Eartha Kitt, Elaine Stritch and Ms. Maye). She recently had a sold-out show at Carnegie…
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Theater Review: CAT KID COMIC CLUB (Tour at Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City)
EVERYONE BELONGS IN THIS CLUB Last year at this time, I saw the family-friendly and totally entertaining Dog Man: The Musical, in which comic book hero Dog Man, with the head of a dog and the body of a policeman, does his best to save the city from Flippy the cyborg fish. And now Flippy…
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Theater Review: HEXEN: AN ANCESTRAL WITCH PLAY (Tour at El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood)
CONFRONTING THE CURSE It is a signal accomplishment to produce 70 minutes of solo theater which are all the things Hexen manages to be: solemn, playful, enchanting, insightful, and finally, deeply moving. I first encountered Dreya Weber, the sole performer of Hexen (“witches” in German) at the bar before the show. When an exceedingly quirky…
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