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Concert Review: VENETIAN SPLENDOR: Vivaldi Four Seasons & Gondola Songs (Avi Avital and SF’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, SoCal Tour: Soka, Granada Theatre, The Soraya)
BRAVO, AVI! As part of a SoCal tour, Israeli Mandolinist Avi Avital and San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra stopped at at Soka University Concert Hall on Sunday, Nove 10, 2024. The concert’s main feature was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with the solo violin part transcribed to Mandolin by Avital himself. The program repeats tomorrow night Nov…
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Theater Review: BACK TO THE FUTURE: THE MUSICAL (National Tour)
TIME I’LL NEVER GET BACK Without hyperbole, I can say that Back to the Future is the worst musical I have ever seen. Any time I see a show that truly knocks it out of the park, it fills me with so much joy to be able to review it. Nothing quite compares to the…
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Recommended Theater: LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL K (Handspring Puppet Company and Baxter Theatre at The Wallis)
THE WALLIS HOSTS EXTRAORDINARY THEATER Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse) joins Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre to bring Life & Times of Michael K to the Bram Goldsmith Theater at The Wallis in Beverly Hills November 21 to 24, 2024. I was lucky enough to catch it at St. Anne’s Warehouse in Brooklyn and it’s a must-see to…
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Concert Review: RUFUS-RETRO-WAINWRIGHT-SPECTIVE (Rufus Wainwright at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
A RUFUS CONVERT During Rufus Wainwright‘s homey, intimate concert last night at the packed 500-seat theater at The Wallis in Beverly Hills, he chuckled that he didn’t really want to do A Rufus-Retro-Wainwright-Spective again. Constantly appearing in different shows, he noted that the three-night engagement here was “a lot.” And he ain’t kiddin’. Over three nights,…
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Off-Off-Broadway Review: WHORE’S EYE VIEW (Tour@HERE)
Whore’s Eye View is a unique event, more of a lecture on the history of women’s sexuality than the personal monologue one would expect from a sex-worker. Now at HERE Arts Center as part of an international tour, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson, writer/performer Kaytlin Bailey literally starts from the Fertility Goddesses and biblical Lilith,…
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Cabaret Review: THEATER ADULT with GIANMARCO SORESI (Joe’s Pub at Public Theater)
QUIPS AND CHORDS Seasoned comedian Gianmarco Soresi asked a jovial audience member at Public Theater’s cozy Joe’s Pub: “Did you go to school for musical theater?”; “What was the last musical you booked?”; and “Could you sing a little of it right now?” At first this moment is playful crowd work, but when Gianmarco summons…
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Concert Review: AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH NORM LEWIS (The Barns at Wolf Trap in VA)
NORM SETS THE STANDARD An Intimate Evening with Norm Lewis at The Barns last night was a magical journey through his musical theater career, brimming with charm, humor, and breathtaking vocals (there is one more performance tonight). The evening began with a dynamic rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” followed by the gentle, hopeful…
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Concert Review: AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (U.S. Tour at Jordan Hall in Boston)
MAKING THE OLD NEW “Make it new,” Ezra Pound urged the poets of the early twentieth century. For Modernists such as T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Amy Lowell, and Pound himself, making it new meant innovating to produce something never before seen or read. Yet Boston’s Celebrity Series has now brought us two concerts…
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Theater Review: KIMBERLY AKIMBO (National Tour, Pantages)
YOUR GREAT ADVENTURE AWAITS If you rearrange the letters of “progeria,” you can get “opera rig,” or “rigor ape,” or “prior age.” That last one is befitting. Progeria is an incredibly rare syndrome that causes people to age faster than normal. Though the turmoil of high school, a troubled home, and growing up in New…
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Highly Recommended Theater: SYMPHONY OF RATS (West Coast Premiere, The Wooster Group at REDCAT in Los Angeles)
In Symphony of Rats, a President of the United States has strange encounters of the phantasmagorical kind. Surrounded by his presidential aides, he plunges into a series of incidents where he meets otherworldly beings, among them a giant rat with a special message. October 18-20 & 22-23, 2024, the legendary Wooster Group transforms REDCAT in downtown L.A. into a sort of mad laboratory for their latest deliriously trippy production Symphony of Rats, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte,…
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Theater Review: KIMBERLY AKIMBO (National Tour, San Diego)
WILL YOU STILL NEED ME, WHEN I’M (LOOKING) SIXTY-FOUR? How would you live your life if you knew you were going to die of old age : in your late teens? All teens experience appearance issues, but Kimberly Levaco (Carolee Carmello) has it worse than most. Kim has a rare chromosomal disease very similar to…
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Theater Review: TESLA: A RADIO PLAY FOR THE STAGE (Tour at Cal Tech and Big Bear Lake Performing Arts Center)
AN ELECTRIFYING TESLA Much has been written about Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, radio and so much more, ever since his name became one of the world’s most known electric automobile brand names in 2003. Robbed of the scientific accolades he deserved by others more in tune with how to make…
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Highly Recommended Theater: RANDY RAINBOW FOR PRESIDENT (McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert)
A RAINBOW COMES TO PALM DESERT If you’re looking for a truly iconic evening of laugh-out-loud comedy, you’re in luck. This Friday and Saturday, October 11 and 12 at 7:30, internet sensation Randy Rainbow is headed to the McCallum Theatre, a perfect venue for Rainbow’s hilarious brand of entertainment. With election season quickly approaching (let’s…
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Highly Recommended Film Concert: SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE LIVE IN CONCERT (International Tour)
GET STICKY WITH IT Building on the success of sold out shows worldwide, a new 50+ city U.S. tour has begun of the next chapter of the Spider-Verse saga. The highly-anticipated sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Live in Concert will land at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Hall for one performance only on Sunday, October 27 at 2 before flying to spin its webs elsewhere. Tickets are available now by calling…
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Highly Recommended Theater: THE EMPIRE STRIPS BACK: A BURLESQUE PARODY (The Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood)
IT’S OK TO GET SAUCED FOR STUNNING SAUCY STRIPPERS AND SPECTACULAR SAUCERS, OR MAY THE TORSO BE WITH YOU Forget about Broadway or the latest Marvel Comic movie. The fun, hip and cool burlesque Star Wars parody ’” which isn’t just for fans of the franchise ’” is the show to see live onstage. Surprised by…
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Event Review: AN EVENING WITH AMOR TOWLES (“Table for Two” Book and Lecture Tour)
A GENTLEMAN FROM BOSTON IN BOSTON Amor Towles, author of the best-selling Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway as well as the newly published Table for Two, regaled an appreciative audience with anecdotes about his own life, his writing process, and a glimpse into the origins of one of the…
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Theater Review: FIGHT NIGHT (Ontroerend Goed Theatre Performance Company / North American Tour)
A LIVELY AND TIMELY EXAMINATION OF VOTING BEHAVIOR Fight Night, brought to seven American states by the Belgian performance group Ontroerend Goed (a punning name, roughly translated as “Feel Estate”), combines theater of the absurd with current events to engage and challenge. Directed by Alexander Devriendt, brings five candidates (Aurelie Lannoy, Julia Ghysels, Bastiaan Vandendriessche,…
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Theater Review: THE CHER SHOW (2024-25 National Tour)
I’VE GOT SOME GREAT NEWS TO CHER The Cher Show, a new musical that follows Broadway’s continuous trend of capitalizing on rockstar jukebox bio-musicals like MJ The Musical and Tina The Tina Turner Musical, stopped at Long Beach’s Terrace Theatre as part of its 2024-2025 national tour (the show closed after a year on Broadway…
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Theater Review: DUEL REALITY (Ahmanson Theatre)
STAR-CROSSED … AND TOSSED Think of The 7 Fingers (Les 7 doigts de la main) as a mini Cirque du Soleil performing onstage instead of in a ring under a Big Tent. This Montreal-based circus troupe and creative collective is making its Music Center debut with a brief two-week run of its current show, Duel…
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Theater Review: RACHMANINOFF AND THE TSAR: A NEW MUSICAL PLAY (Hershey Felder Presents on Tour)
CAUGHT BETWEEN A RACH AND TSAR-ED PLACE For those not familiar with composer and classical pianist Hershey Felder, he’s something of a living homage to great composers of the last 200 years. In 1999, he debuted his one-man show George Gershwin Alone after interviewing many of the composer’s family members. Its success prompted him to…
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