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Film Review: DUMBO (directed by Tim Burton)
STOP REMAKING ANIMATED CLASSICS As is too be expected, Tim Burton’s Dumbo has a beautiful and somewhat strange looking design and a disastrous third act. At times he captures a sympathetic and lovable flying elephant but the tinkering of the story is where this film goes awry. Maybe children who are new to this tale…
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Las Vegas Theater Review: V – THE ULTIMATE VARIETY SHOW (V Theater at Planet Hollywood Resort)
A VIRTUAL VOLCANO OF VISCERALLY VIVACIOUS VARIETY Not every rewarding entertainment experience in Las Vegas tries to blow audiences’ minds with a massive cast, dazzling special effects, and topless dancers. Consider V – The Ultimate Variety Show at the V Theatre inside the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood Resort. The variety show is housed…
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Theater Review: JERSEY BOYS (2018-19 National Tour)
THE BOYFRIENDS ARE BACK Back by popular demand but for only one week at the Auditorium Theatre, the mega-jukebox musical Jersey Boys continues to stir up a perfect storm of industrial-strength nostalgia. Replete with doo-wop harmonies, pile-driving rock anthems and blue-collar verismo, the trademarks of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, this well-packaged blast from the past…
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Theater Review: THE MEATBALL CHRONICLES (Hudson Guild Theatre in Hollywood)
HERE’S THE BEEF What happens when you’re brought up to feel invisible? Where do you go for solace? Where do you go to find your identity? For actress Debrianna Mansini it was in cooking; this was her joy, her salvation, her escape and most importantly it was the only way she was able to communicate…
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Music Preview: MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL ON TOUR (Disney Hall)
GET YOUR JAZZ ON Hooray and hallelujah! Long before her third Grammy win, I have always been a fan of jazz vocalist and song interpreter extraordinaire Cécile McLorin Salvant. But seeing her live three times now has not only cemented my opinion that this is the most exciting thing in all music ’” not just…
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Chicago Theater Review: ADMISSIONS (Theater Wit)
AFFIRMATIVE RE-ACTION Don’t let the title fool you. Produced last year at Lincoln Center Theater, Admissions arrived too early to address the recent scandal involving illegal offenses in college admissions — bribes, cheating and gaming the system by rich parents with underachieving children. Felicity Huffman was still in the future (and past). But this one-act…
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Theater Review: AFTERGLOW (Pride Films and Plays)
DOES LOVE NEED A LEASH? “The heart wants what the heart wants.” Emily Dickinson’s seemingly simple saying (akin to Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose”) in fact packs a lot of wary resignation into a vote of confidence. So does the 2017 off-Broadway hit Afterglow, 80 minutes of theatrical “comfort food” that…
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Theater Review: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (National Tour)
THE CANDY MAN CAN’T The stage musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl’s beloved children-of-all-ages’ story — has spun into town just, it seems, to make your teeth ache. Directed by Jack O’Brien, this already extended national tour arrives to a city near you even though it flopped on Broadway (27…
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Theater Review: CHAPS (Lamb’s Players in San Diego)
CHAPSCHTICK It’s 1944. The war is raging across the English Channel and the Germans could invade at any moment. Britain needs levity to get through these tough days. Miles (Charles Evans, Jr.) is the station manager for a BBC program and he’s got the solution. BBC has announced that a famous, beloved American country band…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: IF PRETTY HURTS UGLY MUST BE A MUHFUCKA (Playwrights Horizon)
PRETTY HURTS SO GOOD The title of Tori Sampson’s If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka is a sly retort to Beyoncé’s 2013 song “Pretty Hurts,” both of which lament the negative impacts of rigid, Eurocentric beauty standards on young women — especially young black women. Beyoncé is not the only iconically beautiful woman…
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Theater Review: YEN (Raven Theatre in Chicago)
TODAY’S LOST BOYS Theater takes us places and shows us stuff that we might never freely choose to go or see. Exhibits A-Z are Yen, a 2013 visit to Gorki’s “lower depths” by British playwright Anna Jordan. Depicting marginalized misfits in a broken west London neighborhood, Yen impressively manages to both chronicle the outrages of outcasts…
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Theater Review: NOTES FROM THE FIELD (ZACH Theatre | Kleberg Stage in Austin, TX)
GRACE NOTES Now on the Kleberg Stage in Austin, TX, Anna Deavere Smith’s powerful, engrossing and resonant solo play — Notes from the Field — has been updated for four actors by ZACH’s Producing Artistic Director David Steakley. As always, Ms. Smith has crafted a series of first-person portrayals culled from hundreds of her own…
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Off-Broadway Review: SMART BLONDE (59E59)
BLONDE, YES: SMART? WELL… It’s tempting, if unfair, to compare Willy Holtzman’s Smart Blonde to the 1963 Broadway musical Funny Girl: both use flashback to frame the biographies of young Jewish girls from New York City who defy expectations and become superstars, with all the highs and lows that accompany it. However, Funny Girl’s tale…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL (5-Star Theatricals in Thousand Oaks)
A VAULTING MATILDA Imagine Annie with psychokinetic powers, Nancy Drew as a mind-reader, or Cinderella acting as her own fairy godmother. Self-empowerment fuels this upbeat, knock-down, pell-mell 2011 musical. A multi-Tony and Olivier award winner, Matilda the Musical is now being given a piping-hot presentation by 5-Star Theatricals at Kavli Theatre. The much motivated heroine…
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Review: FREAKY FRIDAY (San Diego Musical Theatre)
THANK GOD IT’S FREAKY FRIDAY On the weekend of her mother’s everything-must-be-perfect second wedding, teenager Ellie (Rivers Harris) is in a funk: little brother Fletcher (John Perry Wishchuk), who talks through puppets, is driving her crazy; mother Katherine (Cassie Bleher) is bossing everyone around; her fiancé Mike (CJ Ravine) is trying too hard to get…
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Theater Review: FAITH HEALER (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles)
THE BUSINESS OF FAITH The late Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Faith Healer premiered some 40 years ago and is now considered one of his greatest works. It is a memory play with three characters, told in a series of monologues. Frank is an Irish faith healer who takes his one-man show to isolated villages and…
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CD Review: BEYOND (Libera)
BEYOND BEAUTIFUL The all-boy English vocal group Libera has morphed ever since they began in 1995. The approximately 40 members — 35 on this latest album — are between the ages of seven and sixteen, which means between the changes in voices and age, the singers come and go (most have unchanged boy soprano, a.k.a….
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Chicago Theater Review: BRIGHT STAR (BoHo Theatre at Greenhouse Theater Center)
A BRIGHT STAR ISN’T ON THE HORIZON; IT’S RIGHT HERE You can savor heart and hope in every scene in Bright Star, BoHo Theatre’s new triumph in their upstairs home at the Greenhouse Theater Center. Nostalgic without escapism and redemptive with utterly earned emotions, this 2014 bluegrass musical by phenoms Steve Martin and Edie Brickell spins an…
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CD Review: ISANG YUN: SUNRISE FALLING (Bruckner Orchestra Linz, Russell Davies)
SUNRISE ISN’T THE ONLY THING THAT’S FALLING; IT SOUNDS LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD This is my first time hearing the music of Isang Yun, the South Korean composer who was once kidnapped from Germany and put on trial for his support of Korean reunification. Korean born, Berlin resident Isang Yun, who died last…
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CD Review: STRAVINSKY (Le Sacre du printemps) & DEBUSSY (La Mer) (New York Phil, Jaap van Zweden)
RITE ON! Remember the first time you heard a classical work that became a seminal moment for you? Mine came watching Disney’s Fantasia. When I heard the pounding and mysticism and that swirl of orchestrated colors in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps), I was hooked. It didn’t hurt that I was watching…
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