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Los Angeles Theater Review: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (The Actors’ Gang in Culver City)
LOCKED IN Dalton Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun was published in September 1939, the same month Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. It was not an immediate hit, but it was perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist of the time. In those first months of the war, Americans saw the conflict as…
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Chicago Theater Review: LADY IN DENMARK (Goodman Theatre)
WHEN REALISM IS NOT ENOUGH, SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN DENMARK It’s strange that an enterprise as lavishly bounteous as Goodman Theatre should seem to shrink itself: Currently it’s hosting two world-premiere solo shows in both its big Dearborn Street stages. (Talk about taking “less is more” too literally: Also, in the last year, Goodman has…
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Theater Review: SEôOR PLUMMER’S FINAL FIESTA (Rogue Artists Ensemble in West Hollywood)
IMAGINATIVE PHANTASMAGORIA DOESN’T PLUMB THE DEPTHS OF PLUMMER’S HISTORY One of the most bemusing, bewildering affairs in recent memory, Seí±or Plummer’s Final Fiesta is an incredibly imaginative, immersive, interactive outing suffocated by convoluted storytelling and juvenile acting. While it’s rated “PG-13” the entire shebang of snippets — aided by puppets and wide-eyed, Disney-esque narrators —…
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Theater Review: WOMEN OF SOUL (WITH A TRIBUTE TO ARETHA FRANKLIN) (Black Ensemble Theater)
A CELEBRATION OF DIVAS Three years ago, Black Ensemble Theater’s associate director Daryl D. Brooks created a kinetic tribute called Men of Soul. The revue embraced solid singers whose hearts were as strong as their lungs. Now proper, perhaps overdue, homage is paid in a celebration called Women of Soul (With a Tribute to Aretha Franklin). Seeing…
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Music Preview: MENDELSSOHN & SIBELIUS STRING QUARTETS (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
CHAMBER MUSIC WITH THE LA PHIL: MENDELSSOHN & SIBELIUS STRING QUARTETS Sibelius’s String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56 (1908-1909) is one of his most mature, significant, and inspirational chamber works. Indeed, it’s the only substantial chamber work he produced after the turn of the century. He wrote it in between the Third and Fourth…
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Theater Review: CIRCOLOMBIA: ACÉLÉRÉ (The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare on Navy Pier)
A COLOSSAL CIRCUS CARAVAN FROM COLOMBIA Three rings do not make a circus, any more than “two boards and a passion” make a play. Sometimes all you need is fifteen performers for sixty power-packed minutes. That’s the fantastic formula working in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s all-purpose Yard space on Navy Pier. Making its North American debut…
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Theater Review: THE LITTLE FOXES (Antaeus Theatre)
THE DEVASTATION OF POWERLESSNESS When the curtain comes down at the end of The Little Foxes you hear a remarkable sound: 80 people letting the air out of their lungs. We have all been holding our breath, tingling with anticipation and horror. This is an Antaeus Theatre Company audience. Logically, every single person watching knows…
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Film and Music Preview: NOSFERATU & VAMPYR (Theatre at the Ace Hotel and Disney Hall)
SILENT SCREAMS Two of the spookiest horror films ever made were completed before much of today’s audiences were born. One, Nosferatu, is far better known than the other, especially for the creepy-ass make-up given to the vampire. But have you ever heard of Vampyr, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 masterpiece? Horror buffs have, as it regularly…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE WOMAN IN BLACK (Pasadena Playhouse)
CREEPY FUN, BUT NOT AS BLACK AS IT COULD BE Pasadena Playhouse’s production of The Woman in Black is a delicious, handcrafted thriller of the classic style, at once dingy and disturbing. Based on Susan Hill’s 1983 faux-Gothic novel, the slight ghost story follows Mr. Kipps, a British junior solicitor hired to sort out the estate…
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Theater Review: VIETGONE (East West Players)
GOING, GOING, VIETGONE Prior to last night’s L.A. premiere of Vietgone, the actor playing playwright Qui Nguyen tells us that his 2015 play is about his parents (“who this play is absolutely not about”), who met and fell in love in 1975 in an Arkansas relocation camp for Vietnamese refugees, jokingly adding that we were…
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Chicago Theater Review: MASTER CLASS (TimeLine Theatre at Stage 773)
LA DIVINA EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU After she prematurely destroyed her once “smoky,” soaring voice, the “prima donna assoluta” — Greek soprano Maria Callas — decided that if you can’t sing, teach. Semi-tragically separated from her billionaire lover Aristotle Onassis, near the end of her too-short life (she died at 54 in 1977), the…
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CD Review: LET THERE BE LOVE (Peggy Sarlin)
LOVE PREVAILS Some people give up hope and let their lives fall away after a disaster. Not Peggy Sarlin, a singer and writer whose husband had a stroke in 2012. In 2016, the chanteuse — who had written for Bette Midler and Patti LuPone — released the successful Friends and Family, a most relatable collection…
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Theater Review: HELLO, DOLLY! (National Tour)
IT ONLY TAKES A MUSICAL To start with, let’s agree to never say “Goodbye, Dolly.” Thornton Wilder’s genius for the common touch isn’t just a golden legacy in Our Town or The Skin of Our Teeth, two perfect comedies of life. There’s almost as much warm wisdom in The Matchmaker, Wilder’s craftily-plotted 1955 mating romp that Michael Stewart and…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BRIGHT STAR (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
SHINING BRIGHT Bright Star is a bittersweet bluegrass musical with music, book and lyrics by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. It was nominated for five Tony awards when it ran on Broadway and it’s easy to see why. The story takes place in two time periods, 1923 and 1946. When the play opens we meet…
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CD Review: BLUES DIALOGUES: MUSIC BY BLACK COMPOSERS (Rachel Barton Pine, violin)
AN ALLURING, STYLISH ASSORTMENT OF WORKS DRENCHED IN THE TIMELESS STYLE OF THE BLUES I was lucky enough to see violinist Rachel Barton Pine in Los Angeles twice last year with both the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Pasadena Symphony, performing Mozart and Vivaldi. Adroit, sophisticated, vigorous, sensitive and profound only begin to scratch the surface…
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Theater Review: DEAR EVAN HANSEN (National Tour)
A SHOW FOR FOREVER That songwriters and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — critical darlings for La La Land (film), Dogfight (Off-Broadway), and A Christmas Story (Broadway) — are in effect the Rodgers and Hammerstein of this generation is as alarming as climate change. At least their true colors as creators of whitewashed pop and unintelligent lyrics…
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Film Review: BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (directed by Bryan Singer)
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY WILL MORE THAN ROCK YOU Even before production began, this film has had controversy attached to it: Sacha Baron Cohen was originally attached to play Freddie Mercury, but dropped out when he realized the producers were aiming for a PG rating, skimming around Mercury’s hedonistic lifestyle. Since 2010, actor changes, story changes, and…
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Theater Review: OPPENHEIMER (Rogue Machine at Electric Lodge in Venice)
PARTNERING ARROGANCE WITH SACRIFICE In taking residence at the Electric Lodge, their new digs in Venice, Rogue Machine makes an audacious choice with the American premiere of Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer, first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. The play takes over three hours, a cast of 24, and multiple physics lessons to tell…
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Theater Review: PRIVATE PEACEFUL (Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago and on tour)
TRENCH STAGEFARE It’s a small-scale marvel, a feat to treasure: In only 80 minutes director/adaptor Simon Reade and performer Shane O’Regan do total justice to Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 anti-war novel for older children. Not to be missed at Chicago’s Greenhouse Theater Center, it’s an enthralling achievement, this solo reenactment of childhood, peace, coming of…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SHREK (5-Star Theatricals in Thousand Oaks)
SHREK TO THE RESCUE The first time I saw Shrek The Musical was on Broadway in 2008. I loved it then but 5-Star Theatricals’ production has me really loving it now. With book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and music by Jeanine Tesori, Shrek is set in a mythical once-upon-a-time sort of land, where a…
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