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Theater Review: THE GULF (About Face Theatre at Theater Wit in Chicago)
ROCKING THE BOAT When we enter the theater, we see two women in a small fishing boat. It’s surrounded by huge buckets depicting the shallows of an inlet in the Alabama delta. Overhead netting seems to catch the stars. For nearly ninety minutes, this seemingly static situation becomes the engrossing story-setting for The Gulf, Audrey Cefaly’s…
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Theater Review: STOP KISS (Pride Films and Plays and The Arc Theatre at Pride Arts Center)
TOUCHING BUT TRAPPED IN A TIME WARP Stop Kiss was a big 1998 hit at New York’s Joseph Papp Public Theater. In 2000 it arrived in Chicago in a tepid local premiere by the Naked Eye Theatre Company. That misfire aside, Diana Son’s 95-minute one-act — a tale of two women who only discover they’re…
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Concert Preview: LILLIAS WHITE (Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa)
MY WHITE NIGHT I first saw Lillias White when she made her Broadway debut in Barnum in 1981; I’ve been watching her work for almost four decades since, and I promise you she never fails to blow the roof off the joint (happy are those who saw her “Effie” in the 1987 revival of Dreamgirls)….
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Opera Review: KING ARTHUR (Long Beach Opera)
KING ARTHUR DETHRONED If you’re a hardcore Henry Purcell fan, don’t expect anything resembling his original 1691 semi-opera, King Arthur, in Long Beach Opera’s production, which opened yesterday, Jan. 12, at the Beverly O’Neill. (A semi-opera is an unusual form of early opera that was half-sung and half-spoken.) Even in John Dryden’s libretto, there is…
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Theater Review: WHISPER HOUSE (Black Button Eyes Productions at The Athenaeum Theatre)
A LIGHTHOUSE SPILLS ITS SECRETS Isolation forces intimacy on its inhabitants, if only by its process of elimination. It can also foster secrets: Scattered souls protect their privacy by keeping stuff to themselves. In The Secret Garden or The Turn of the Screw what’s hidden must out — to respectively good and evil ends. This strategic formula works in Whisper…
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Music Preview: SONGS OF FANTASY (The Fox Singers in Santa Monica)
A FOX FANTASY The Verdi Chorus is So Cal’s only choral group which centers around the dramatic and diverse music for an opera chorus. The Fox Singers, who constitute the professional ensemble of this wonderful chorus, are presenting, for one-night only on Sat. Feb. 1 at 7:30, a program devoted to all things fantastical. You…
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Dance Preview: DANCE AT THE ODYSSEY 2020 (Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles)
AN ODYSSEY IN DANCE There is more dancing going on in L.A. than ever, but it’s difficult to discover these great little companies, as they have short runs and — being financially constrained — a short outreach. By offering its 4th annual Dance at the Odyssey 2020, Odyssey Theatre will give you many chances to…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: GROUNDLINGS MIX TAPE (The Groundlings Theatre)
MIXING IT UP For over four decades, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang. Performers showcase material that arises from improvisation workshops, and the scenes that have been created are legendary. The problem is, once the current Main Stage…
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Concert Preview: NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH KRISTIN CHENOWETH (Disney Hall)
A KRISTIN PRESENT FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE The supremely talented platinum blonde speaks in a small voice and possesses a very petite, yet bodacious body. When she sings, however, we get very unique, beautiful and extraordinarily powerful musical notes in perfect pitch. At 4’ 11”, this wacky and vulnerable powerhouse is the new amalgamated American…
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Theater Review: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (Greenway Court Theatre)
AN AMAZING INCIDENT Meet Christopher, a wannabe bloodhound who has significant social, behavioral and communication challenges; we assume the unnamed disorder is on the autism spectrum, but this magnificent play isn’t about his mental challenges. The British teen — the unlikely hero of Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel and Simon Stephens’ equally valued adaption, The Curious…
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Theater Review: THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre)
NOT A SEVEN-COURSE DINNER, BUT FILLING JUST THE SAME While on a Midwest lecture tour, arrogant and overbearing critic and radio commentator Sheridan Whiteside slips on an icy doorstep, injures his hip, and is confined to a wheelchair in a small Ohio town for six long weeks of recovery. He completely disrupts and unnerves the…
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Opera Review: DER RING DES POLYKRATES (Numi Opera at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles)
A RINGER Erich Wolfgang Korngold is best known for his grand scores of the golden age of movie music – principally for such swashbucklers as The Seahawk, Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Andre Previn praised these great scores thus: “His wonderful melodies, orchestrated in the most gorgeous Richard Strauss-oriented manner, are a joy…
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Music Review: HANDEL’S MESSIAH (Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall)
HANDEL TO PERFECTION There’s little to say about Handel’s Messiah that hasn’t already been said. That this great work has been a seasonal favorite for two hundred and fifty years, assures us it will be performed at least annually for at least the next two hundred and fifty, and beyond. The scale of the piece…
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Theater Review: DANCE NATION (Steppenwolf)
DANCING AROUND ADOLESCENCE It happened with You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, that peculiar, often cloying, problem of adult actors playing unfledged kids. There’s an unavoidable condescension that’s not lost on grown-ups — even less so with young folks — when performers stoop to be small. But sometimes, as with Clare Barron’s 2017 Dance Nation (a Pulitzer…
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Concert Preview: DIANNE REEVES: CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE (Disney Hall)
DIANNE TIME IS HERE She was the first singer to ever perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and she returns this Friday, Dec 2, 2019, to get your jazz going with a holiday confection of yuletide treats. Songbird Dianne Reeves is easily one of my favorite voices, and I’m astounded how many folks are not…
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Theater Review: PRIDE & PREJUDICE (World Premiere Musical at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto)
LOST IN AUSTEN All of Jane Austen’s novels are built on the same premise. A woman meets and marries an eligible man after a series of usually comic difficulties. But Austen extracts a remarkable amount of drama, comedy, and human interest from her domestic tales through her witty, ironic prose and her shrewd but forgiving…
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Theater Review: JULIUS CAESAR (Warriors for Peace at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood)
HAIL, CAESAR! Shakespeare’s 1599 history play has, of course, had many lives – conservative as well as wildly interpretive – which has kept the slain Dictator of Rome in the forefront of our histories. Some directors have kept to the known facts as imagined by the Bard, and some have modernized it for contemporary comment….
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Dance Review: THE NUTCRACKER (American Contemporary Ballet; Santa Fe Ballet; Long Beach Ballet)
TRIPLE-CRACKED It wouldn’t be the holidays without The Nutcracker ballet, a wondrous fantasia limited in scope only by imagination — or, more practically, budget. This year I attended three separate SoCal productions: L.A.’s own American Contemporary Ballet’s sparkling condensed jewel and Santa Fe Ballet’s disappointing tour both pared down the work, while Long Beach Ballet…
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Theater Review: BURNING BLUEBEARD (The Ruffians at Ruth Page Center for the Arts)
ASHES TO THEATER It’s the spectacle that keeps on giving: No longer sprawling the width of the Neo Futurarium’s stretched-out stage or concentrated in Theater Wit’s proscenium hall, The Ruffians’ superb 100-minute Burning Bluebeard has now taken its glorious, dream-like make-believe and contagious magic realism to the Ruth Page Center for the Arts — in…
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Theater Review: A CHRISTMAS STORY (San Diego Musical Theatre at Horton Grand)
A HOLIDAY CLASSIC PUT TO SONG: ONE THAT WON’T SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT While it may seem a bit premature to call the 1983 movie A Christmas Story a “classic,” the near-universal popularity of the film and its nostalgic look back at a Christmas in 1940 certainly give it that feeling. True to the film,…
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