Areas We Cover
Categories
-
Chicago Opera Review: ORPHÉE ET EURYDICE (ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE) (Lyric)
ON AND ORPH The promising 2017-2018 season-opening production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, featuring a welcome collaboration with Chicago’s own Joffrey Ballet, simply does not live up to the hype, hope, and expectation it has generated since being announced earlier this year. Gluck’s 1774 French version of his earlier 1762 Italian opera is…
-
San Diego Theater Review: FATHER COMES HOME FROM THE WARS, PARTS 1, 2 & 3 (Intrepid Theatre)
A HERO’S JOURNEY FROM 1862 SPEAKS VOLUMES FOR OUR TIMES Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 first played in 2014 at NYC’s Public Theater, yet Suzan-Lori Parks’ play presciently anticipated the media focus that racism would receive throughout 2017. With the conversation on race being a headline story this year,…
-
CD Review: THE DARK TOWER (Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tom Holkenborg)
DARK AND TOWERING, BUT TRUNCATED AND CLICHÉD At turns surreptitious, ethereal, creepy, bold, spidery, wistful and dystopian, Tom Holkenborg’s soundtrack to The Dark Tower mixes traditional filmic orchestrations with an electronica edge, always offering an astoundingly moody, evocative, dramatic soundscape. There are no keyboardists or percussionists listed among the 88 orchestra players, so credit the four orchestrators—Jonathan…
-
Chicago Theater Review: FUN HOME (Victory Gardens)
MORE “FUN” THAN THE FIRST TIME AROUND Wise and warm, the 100-minute family memoir Fun Home charts the twisted courses of two generations of the Bechdels—a self-shaming gay father and a self-affirming lesbian daughter—from her coming out to his suicide. Based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic novel, this intimate 2015 Broadway one-act chamber musical, winner of five…
-
Los Angeles Music Review: CAMERATA PACIFICA (Season 28; Concert 1)
A HARBISON OF THINGS TO COME Well, lightning can strike twice in the same piece. Three years ago, the glittering Santa Barbara-based chamber music ensemble Camerata Pacifica premiered its commissioned String Trio by John Harbison. That, and the stunning Harmonia Mundi CD recording, cemented this awesome work as a major addition to the already limited…
-
CD Review: WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (Soundtrack by Michael Giacchino)
THE HEART OF THE APES Composer Michael Giacchino is back with another Planet of the Apes installment and his insistent, encroaching, otherworldly, tribal soundscape is awesome. But unlike his first, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which certainly captured the darkness, mystery, and potency of the popular movie series, War for the Planet of the…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: HEAD OF PASSES (Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum)
GOD THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER OF ALL GODS I will remember Phylicia Rashad’s performance in Head of Passes until the day I die. She is an emotional hurricane, often still, even funny’”while in the eye of the storm’”but then raging and howling with a pain rooted so deeply inside the love and bondage of…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: THE DANCE OF DEATH (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble)
MISERY LOVES COMPANY In referring to August Strindberg’s 1900 play The Dance of Death as a foreshadowing of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, director Ron Sossi is on firm ground. Strindberg’s mordant characters (Alice, a former actress, and Edgar, an artillery captain) are certainly waltzing to the same music as George and Martha….
-
San Diego Theater Review: BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL (San Diego Musical Theatre and California Ballet Company at Spreckels Theatre)
TOO BIG FOR ITS BRITCHES With his touching screenplay as a basis, Lee Hall adapted the 2000 indie Billy Elliot for the stage, setting his moving lyrics to Elton John’s music. There’s a lot to like in Billy Elliot the Musical: The tale of a boy overcoming judgment and following a dream ran for over 1,300…
-
San Diego Theater Review: BENNY & JOON (The Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage)
WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL ADAPTATION MADE EVEN BETTER BY BRYCE PINKHAM It’s tricky turning a movie into a play, given that without the auteur’s camera gimmicks and edits, it can be harder to convey mood and emotion. When adapting to a musical, however, songs can create an indelible emotional connection with a character. Not every tune…
-
CD Review: SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME (Ella Fitzgerald with the London Symphony Orchestra)
ELLA REDUX When a new Ella Fitzgerald CD arrived, I ripped it open and started listening to what I believed was a re-mastered version of an album that I didn’t know existed (I own almost 30 of her recordings). The first track of Someone to Watch over Me (on CD and streaming September 29, 2017)…
-
Los Angeles Theater Preview: STUPID KID (Road Theatre Company in North Hollywood)
STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES The Road Theatre Company, one of L.A.’s most dependable companies for original material, amazing casting, steadfast directors, and terrific production values, presents the first show of its 2017-2018 season, Stupid Kid, which plays September 22 through November 12, 2017 at Road’s Magnolia Boulevard location. This world premiere, written by one of…
-
Theatre Review: THE TOAD KNEW (James Thiérrée’s La Compagnie du Hanneton at Chicago Shakespeare)
MORE PLAYS ON THE PIER Tuesday night’s “consecration of the house,” attended by Chicago’s Mayor Emmanuel, was a celebration that this care-ridden city badly needed. The big news is the grand opening of The Yard, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s state-of-the-arts third theater on Navy Pier. (Its magnificent make-believe replaces the underused, open-air Skyline Stage where Cirque Shanghai…
-
Chicago Theater Review: A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (Goodman Theatre)
UNSTOPPABLE AND UNSPARING This week Goodman Theater’s season-opener, a landmark drama from 1955, exploded into relevance. A rarity worth a return, Arthur Miller’s original 120-minute, one-act Broadway version of an inevitable domestic tragedy focuses more on the family than the neighborhood (and shortchanges Beatrice’s anguish over her husband’s self-destructive passion for his niece). But the…
-
Chicago Theater Review: THE REMBRANDT (Steppenwolf)
A PAINTING IS A PORTAL Art is never still, not just still lifes but landscapes, genre scenes, even abstract configurations and, especially, portraits. Every painting is a time capsule that absorbed everything that was going around it as it was created—and since too. Multifaceted Rohrshack tests of perception, intuition, associations and imagination, they paradoxically measure…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: LA RAZÒN BLINDADA (24th Street Theatre)
AN EXTRAORDINARY FIVE-COURSE MEAL Course One (Primer Plato): The Story. Two unnamed political prisoners, languishing in an Argentine maximum security prison, are allowed only one hour each Sunday to congregate: the inmates make use of storytelling, specifically Cervantes’ Don Quixote, as a means to find solace under great duress. This course feeds the spirit, for it…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: BIG NIGHT (Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City)
A STAR IS BORN Paul Rudnick’s bright new comedy takes place on Oscar night. Michael (Brian Hutchison) is a journeyman actor with a career and life-changing Best Supporting Actor nomination. After years of steady theater work and occasional television guest shots, he is on the verge of becoming a star. His trans nephew Eddie (Tom…
-
Los Angeles Music Preview: 100: THE APOLLO THEATER CELEBRATES ELLA’S 100TH BIRTHDAY! (Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood)
OH, SWEET AND LOVELY Ella Fitzgerald’s history with Harlem’s Apollo Theater dates back to the fall of 1934, when she won the opportunity to compete in Amateur Night. The teenager went to the Theater planning to dance, but when the Edwards Sisters closed the main show, Ella changed her mind. She performed her rendition of…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: WALKING TO BUCHENWALD (Open Fist at Atwater Village Theatre)
‘SELF DEPORTATION’ OR SIX STAGES OF AMERICAN GRIEF Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In life, death, and in playwright Tom Jacobson’s world view, these familiar five stages to acceptance are missing the one that is most important for survival: Laughing. Life is funny. People are funny. If God exists, He, She, They, or It…
-
Chicago Theater Review: 1984 (AstonRep Theatre Company at The Raven Theatre)
ORWELLIAN OR TRUMPIAN?: 1984 MEETS 2017 Everything evil is new again: What George Orwell wrote 69 years ago still remains ahead of our time—but, with a President in power who purveys “alternative facts” and denounces “fake news” (that he can’t use), it’s not nearly as much as it should or used to be. However accurately Robert Tobin’s…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Find beautiful trendy gowns for girls' special events.
Need to order an essay? Hire our top writers to complete the most challenging papers at an affordable rate.
For professional writing support, hire essay writers at Edubirdie for high-quality help.
Discover top-rated Australian online casinos with fair games, fast payouts, and generous bonuses for every type of player.
Explore the best paying pokies Australia games with high RTP and clear bonus terms
