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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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Chicago Theater Review: GYPSY: A MUSICAL FABLE (Porchlight Music Theatre at Ruth Page Center)
LET HER ENTERTAIN YOU! Some people say Gypsy: A Musical Fable is the greatest Broadway musical ever written. And some people are probably right. It isn’t just a stirring story of an ugly duckling turning into a swan, or a stage mother from hell morphing into a humble fan (and admitting that for years she was living…
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DVD Review: KILLING EVE: SEASON ONE (BBC)
THIS SERIES IS A KILLER This spy thriller/crazy-woman drama is full of sly wit and generous amounts of spooky drama in which a spy-catcher (Sandra Oh) has to find a pretty, psychotic damsel (Jodie Comer) before she wipes out most of Europe with her gleeful killing spree. In addition to some extraordinary writing, directing, and…
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Opera Review: IDOMENEO (Lyric Opera of Chicago)
IDOMENABLE After nearly a week of striking musicians and cancelled performances, Lyric Opera is now back on schedule and giving audiences what they want. With Mozart’s Idomeneo, audiences are more likely getting what they didn’t know they wanted because they’ve never experienced this opera before. Last performed at Lyric during the 1997-98 season, Idomeneo is…
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Theater Preview: THE SEAFARER (Laguna Playhouse)
THE DEVIL’S AT THE DOOR “He knows not Who lives most easily on land, how I Have spent my winter on the ice-cold sea Wretched and anxious, in the paths of exile Lacking dear friends, hung round by icicles While hail flew past in showers:” From the medieval poem The Seafarer translated by Richard Hamer…
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Theater Review: FRANKENSTEIN (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theater Wit)
MARY SHELLEY’S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FRANKENSTEIN’S TRICK IS OUR TREAT Creating a Halloween story for all seasons in a novel that launched a terror genre, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley named Dr. Victor Frankenstein the “modern Prometheus” (the monster, among other deprivations, has no name). It’s a sardonic slam at this very debatable benefactor for making this re-animator…
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Dance Preview: SUTRA (Alonzo King LINES Ballet at the Wallis in Beverly Hills)
DANCE & MUSIC ROYALTY: KING/HUSSAIN Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain is drenched in Eastern Classicism, yet looks to Western influences to explore and experiment. Meanwhile, choreographer Alonzo King combines principles of transcendental Eastern thinking with the foundation of Western ballet’s classical forms and techniques. Over the past two…
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Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)
THIS TURKEY IS SO SCARY, YOU HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING TO YOURSELF, “IT’S ONLY A PLAY… IT’S ONLY A PLAY…” There’s a glaring contradiction in It’s Only a Play: Written by the usually crafty Terrence McNally, a 20-time Broadway playwright, this two-act love letter to Broadway theater and its “plays of fools” — depicted in full…
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Music & Dance Preview: ROMEO AND JULIET (LA Phil and L.A. Dance Project at Disney Hall)
A WHOLE NEW DANCE PROJECT WITH LA PHIL Romeo and Juliet is probably Prokofiev’s best dramatic work (I say “probably” because “hearing” the duck being eaten by the wolf in Peter and the Wolf nearly traumatized my childhood). Arguably, it’s his best orchestral work. Positively, it’s his most lyrical, emotional, and deeply moving work. Yet…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: EMMA AND MAX (Todd Solondz World Premiere at The Flea Theater)
CASTE ASIDE Todd Solondz, one of the most profound filmmakers working today (Happiness, Welcome to the Dollhouse), begins his first play Emma and Max — which he also directs — with a scene right out of a Todd Solondz movie: An affluent white couple, Brooke and Jay, sit uncomfortable and tense in their living room opposite…
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