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CD Review: CONTRABAJO — WORKS FOR BASS AND STRING QUARTET (Pablo Aslan)
CONTRABAJO BAND Double bassist, composer, arranger, and producer Pablo Aslan has released an exciting collection of tunes that offer insight to both his instrument and the way his Argentinian roots inform the works. With Gabriel Senanes’s glorious arrangements meeting at the exciting juncture of jazz and tango, Contrabajo — Works for Bass and String Quartet is…
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Theater Review: THE FULL MONTY (Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre in Evanston)
GET YOUR FULL For the sake of the butterfly we love the cocoon. The Full Monty, a musical version by David Yazbek and Terrence McNally, is industriously inspired by the popular 1997 film about unemployed working-class Brits. The movie fondly embraced a bunch of lovable losers who give themselves a second chance to make and feel…
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CD Review: BERLIOZ’S ROMÉO ET JULIETTE (San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas)
HERE’S WHAT LOVE IS What’s in a name? That which we call a symphony by any other name would sound as sweet. In the way that Monteverdi rethought the madrigal, so too did Berlioz re-imagine symphonies. He altered any previous preconceptions of what a symphony can be with his Symphonie fantastique (my first classical album!)…
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Film Review: VICE (directed by Adam McKay)
VICE FRAUD Watching the biopic Vice — written and directed by Adam McKay (The Big Short) — I found myself getting more and more irritated. Not because the film isn’t a brilliant exposé on one Dick Cheney but because Cheney is, in one simple word, a monster, one who got away with every single monstrous deed he…
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Chicago Dance Review: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO (Season 41 Winter Series at the Harris)
GROUP DYNAMICS SURGE AT HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO Four world premieres, especially crafted by in-house choreographers for the skills and needs of their company colleagues, display a tales-within-tales meld of individuality within synchronicity, a deepening of dance that’s more than conceptual. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s current Winter Series, a part of their ongoing dance(e)volve program,…
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Film Review: 21 (directed by Robert Luketic)
21 IS A GOOD BET What happens when you put together a team of young, money-driven fanatics? Yes, something exceptional. 21 features a team of six talented students of MIT, led by their aberrant Math professor, who master the art of card counting, code talks, and body gestures to conquer the world of Casino in…
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CD Review: HEAD OVER HEELS (Original Broadway Cast Recording on Masterworks Broadway)
GO-GO GET THIS ALBUM Head Over Heels is an exhilarating and seemingly improbable musical mash-up of Sir Philip Sidney’s sixteenth-century work The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (libretto by James Magruder, adapting from an original book conceived by Jeff Whitty) and the songs of the iconic 1980s’ female rock band, The Go-Go’s (and a few tunes from Belinda…
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Theater Review: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG (National Tour)
THE PLAY ABOUT THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG GOES WRONG The title is brutally honest — and you can’t say you weren’t warned. In the style of Monty Python and Michael Frayn’s self-destroying farce Noises Off (an infinitely cleverer romp), The Play That Goes Wrong, a 2015 London hit written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, is…
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Theater Review: SHE LOVES ME (Actors Co-op)
LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPINESS I’ll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by Miklós László, is so resplendent, so charming, and so well-constructed that a 2011 gathering of literati for…
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Opera Review: CENDRILLON (CINDERELLA) (Lyric Opera of Chicago)
I TELL OF A HELL OF A CINDERELLA Never before performed at Lyric Opera, Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon cannot be more delightful, especially for those who love the lightness of French opera. Indeed, it is the only French opera programmed this season, and the second Massenet in three years. The score’s exuberance and playfulness is reminiscent…
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Music Review: MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS AND PATHÉTIQUE (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
NOTHING LIKE MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS EVER WAS Michael Tilson Thomas is a rock star. The Los Angeles native, who made his conducting debut here 50 years ago, proved last night at Disney Hall that he not only maintains a Bernstein-like vigor at the podium — bringing pulse-pounding magic and emotion to Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique —  he…
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CD Review: WILL HE LIKE ME? (Philip Chaffin)
I LIKE HIM I’ve had a few friends do cabarets in which they sing songs they’ll never get hired to do. Then there are cabarets which are song cycles — those which tell the performer’s life story through songs. (There have also been albums like that: Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides, Now comes to mind.) Philip…
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Theater Preview: SOUTH PACIFIC (Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura)
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING INDEED At about 8 am on December 7, 1941, Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below on the United States Naval Air Base in the Territory of Hawaii in the Pacific. At 8:10, a 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck of the…
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Chicago Dance Review: Christopher Wheeldon’s THE NUTCRACKER (The Joffrey Ballet)
TAKING ANOTHER CRACK: AN UPDATE ON MARIE AND THE GREAT IMPRESARIO No matter how many times you see it, you will ALWAYS be amazed by the gorgeous Nutcracker that Christopher Wheeldon imagined in 2015 for the Joffrey Ballet and the Auditorium Theatre. It’s simply impossible to remember how beautiful it is, so each witnessing is transcendently close…
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Theater Interview: EURIAMIS LOSADA (appearing in WINK at Hollywood’s Zephyr Theatre)
LOSADA COLADA! Looking at photos of Euriamis Losada, it’s no wonder the female (and some part of the male) populace goes gaga at his looks on his muscular 6’ frame. Cuban-born and USA-raised since age six, this talented actor and singer has been performing since his teenhood in Miami, Florida. After years of singing in…
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CD Review: HYMN (Sarah Brightman)
TIME TO SAY GOODBYE She stands on the cover of her latest album, Hymn, like a diva who just came down from Sinai with the word of God, but instead of 10 Commandments, the British Broadway, West End, and ersatz-pop star Sarah Brightman is wearing a tight golden dress — not unlike Cecil B. deMille’s…
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Review: COME FROM AWAY (North American Tour)
A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER This intimate ensemble piece may only have one stand-alone song, and it may not even be the best-crafted musical or have the emotional impact it could have, but it’s a cultural blessing when a show comes along that melts away the coldness of our polarized times by…
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CD Preview: RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (Soundtrack)
AWESOME SOUNDTRACK ARRIVES THIS WEEK Walt Disney Records releases the soundtrack for the hit film Ralph Breaks the Internet this week. The album features original songs “A Place Called Slaughter Race” (performed in the film by Sarah Silverman and Gal Gadot) and “Zero,” written and performed by Imagine Dragons; as well as “In This Place,”…
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Chicago Theater Review: FAMILIAR (Steppenwolf)
STRIDENTLY SILLY, THEN SUDDENLY SERIOUS The title Familiar alludes to family’”and, when loved ones squabble over who they are and where they come from, this title questions just what is familiar. A Chicago premiere from Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Familiar is Danai Gurira’s family tragicomedy about whose legacy will control the future. Insistently manic, Danya Traymor’s staging, unfortunately, fits all too well…
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Film Review: DESTROYER (directed by Karyn Kusama)
SHE AIN’T KIDMAN From the opening scene of Destroyer there is a keen sense that something very different and extremely artistic is upon us. Karyn Kusama’s modern noir, aided by the sharp eye of her cinematographer Julie Kirkwood, paints amazing pictures by using a multitude of long shots capturing a sun-drenched, gritty Los Angeles in…
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