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Los Angeles Music Preview: CARMINA BURANA & CHICHESTER PSALMS (Los Angeles Master Chorale on September 23 & 24, 2017, at Disney Hall)
WHERE DO YOU GET ORFF..? There are some entertainments that bear repeating: Los Angeles Master Chorale has visited Carl Orff’s pagan-fest, Carmina Burana, under each of their music directors, but the splendid, massive, exultant and squeaky-clean rendering four years ago under Grant Gershon made me want to toss off my clothes and march triumphantly towards my smoke-filled sky of destiny,…
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Theater Review: BARBECUE (Strawdog Theatre Company at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre in Chicago)
UNDERCOOKED AND INNUTRITIOUS Yes, disruption continues to roil the stage in 2017. Old-fashioned make-believe dwindles into its opposite: dis-illusionment. The latest test case: Robert O’Hara’s determinedly deceptive Barbecue. Its constant joke is on us. This two-act concoction is the kind of treacherous script that puts critics in a bind: To fully expose its sardonic subterfuge, we’d have to…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: RHINOCEROS (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice)
LIFE IS AN ABSURD BUSINESS It’s an absurdist masterwork, yet it is rarely produced in the States. A disquieting parable which warns against herd mentality, Eugène Ionesco’s three-act play is a boiling-hot indictment of fascism, written in 1959 on the heels of WWII and the McCarthy hearings. The denizens of a French town transform one-by-one…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: EMOTIONS (Blind Dance Company)
THE BLIND DANCE COMPANY’S EMOTIONAL VISION Hydeia Muhammad’s Blind Dance Company premiered its first show, Emotions, in the Los Angeles Fashion District to a well-deserved roar of applause. Performed at a building called The Lazarus Experience, the company’s production proved that an all-blind ensemble was no miracle, but rather came to life from CRE Outreach…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE AUDIENCE (TimeLine Theatre Company)
TUESDAYS WITH ELIZABETH IN A NOT SO PRIVATE PALACE Peter Morgan is the proverbial fly on the wall: Commanding the realm of royal fiction and other historical speculation, this British writer has penned the Netflix series The Crown, as well as the astute films The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Last King of Scotland, and The Other Boleyn Girl. The ultimate…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: LA FATE IN ITALIA and DANCES FROM LAKMÉ (World Premiere Ballets from American Contemporary Ballet)
ACB’S MODERN THROWBACK American Contemporary Ballet’s final production of the season reworks an old favorite and breathes life into once forgotten characters from another well-known ballet. The combination of singing and dancing was an innovative conclusion to a trilogy’s worth of education in the classics. Aside from a few logistical problems, the show was very…
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Theater Interview: CLINTON LEUPP (MISS COCO PERU: THE TAMING OF THE TENSION)
SHE WHO CAN’T BE TAMED Clinton Leupp may not aspire to self-help guru status, but his upcoming appearance as Miss Coco Peru in The Taming of the Tension is driven by a definite sense of mission. “I want to unify people,†he says. “We can’t truly get together as human beings until we understand how…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE VEIL (Idle Muse Theatre Company at The Edge Theater)
TOO MANY SAILS AND NO RUDDER How have the mighty fallen! It’s hard to believe that, 17 years after The Weir fascinated Steppenwolf Theatre audiences, not to mention all-absorbing Chicago productions of Shining City and The Night Alive, the passionately poetic Irish playwright Conor McPherson has wrought The Veil. Now at Edge Theatre in a technically polished and competently helmed Midwest…
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Chicago Theater Review: GYPSY (Music Theater Works)
TOUGH LOVE GONE HAYWIRE Some people’”hey, that could be a song title!’”say Gypsy is the greatest Broadway musical ever written. And, calibrators of showbiz greatness, these folks may well be right. It’s not just a stirring story of a prodigal daughter making good or a harridan matriarch morphing into a humble fan (confessing that for 20 years she…
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Chicago Theater Review: HIGH FIDELITY: AN OPERETTA FARCE (ColorBox Theatre at Royal George)
LOVE AS A VERY MOVEABLE FEAST Love may be blind but it can certainly sing up a storm. Not to be confused with the John Cusack film about a Chicago vinyl record shop, High Fidelity: An Operatic Farce is a silly but very melodious two-act confection now in a high-pitched Chicago premiere. The 140-minute trifle blithely interweaves…
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Chicago Theater Review: MACHINAL (Greenhouse Theater Center)
MURDER—A REFUSAL TO SUBMIT? You could call Machinal a nightmare under stage lights. Still potent after nearly ninety years, Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 drama can’t be dismissed as a victim’s vindication or as the proto-feminist defense of an angry housewife’s license to kill. It goes beyond blame-throwing and special pleas: Treadwell’s 90-minute indictment, here revived in a powerhouse…
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Chicago Theater Review: SHOCKHEADED PETER (Black Button Eyes Productions)
SCHADENFREUDE GETS ITS SHOW We learn from fear, even if it’s the wrong lessons. Well before Mark Twain’s “Slovenly Peter,” let alone Edward Gorey, Roald Dahl or Tim Burton, there was Heinrich Hoffmann. Written in 1845, his sardonic masterpiece Der Struwwelpeter was a children’s book meant to scare little readers into good deeds’”or at least into phobias…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HONKY TONK LAUNDRY (Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Hollywood)
THE HARDEST WORKING GALS IN SHOW BUSINESS One thing is clear: If Bets Malone and Misty Cotton ever choose to sell themselves as an actual country music recording duo, they will be a smash. The intensity and quality of the singing is wonderful. Their blend is perfect, haunting and smooth, most notably on “Heaven, Heartache,…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: PINK MARTINI WITH CHINA FORBES & STORM LARGE, AND CHARO (Hollywood Bowl)
PINK MARTINI—I SAY “YES”! The last time I saw Pink Martini play the Hollywood Bowl, I was already wired after hearing them brilliantly execute an extended song list covering at least a dozen styles of music sung in eight different languages. But then this everlasting gobstopper of music turned the Hollywood Bowl into a festive…
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San Diego Theater Review: EVITA (San Diego Rep)
DON’T CRY, BUT SEE ARGENTINA The crime of being a legend is to be simultaneously loved and hated, while the truth will always be a matter of perspective and interpretation. Eva Duarte, later Eva Perón, was just such a figure. Both adored and reviled, the life of the grandiose first lady of 1940s’ Argentina makes…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV & RACHMANINOFF’S THIRD CONCERTO (LA Phil, Krzysztof Urbański conductor, at the Hollywood Bowl)
DO NOT MISS BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL THIS WEEK Pianist Behzod Abduraimov is coming to the Hollywood Bowl this Tuesday August 15, 2017, so prepare yourself for one of the world’s greatest pianists. In fact, the in-demand, rightfully popular 26-year-old Uzbek pianist, who was born in Tashkent in 1990 just before the collapse of…
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CD Review: TULIP FEVER (Soundtrack by Danny Elfman on Sony Classical)
DIM BULB I’m a big Tom Stoppard fan, so I was thrilled to hear that he adapted Deborah Moggarch’s novel Tulip Fever, and that it was set to be filmed. But that was 2004. Then after plenty of stops and starts and recasting and studio changes, filming finally wrapped on the historical drama, directed by…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: FANTASM–”ODYSSEY OF DREAMS (Bellydance Evolution at The Ford Theatres)
FANTASM’S FANTASTIC FORAY INTO BELLYDANCING Bellydance Evolution’s Fantasm’”Odyssey of Dreams is a well-interpreted and abridged re-telling of One Thousand and One Nights, the Arabian tale that combines the legend of Queen Scheherazade with her stories about fictional celebrated sailor Sinbad. Portrayed by a multi-cultural cast assembled by choreographer Jillina Carlano, the ensemble successfully brings the story-telling aspects of bellydancing…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
IT WONDERS ME It’s uncanny that ever since Roger Bean wrote and directed this asinine jukebox musical in 1999, it’s lightweight nostalgia factor and updated arrangements of 50s and 60s tunes keeps packing them in from coast to coast. Since The Marvelous Wonderettes was clearly designed to appeal to an older crowd seeking sentimentalism (a…
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San Diego Theater Review: PUMP UP THE VOLUME: A 90S PALOOZA (San Diego Musical Theatre)
THE 90s ARE BACK AND SOUNDING SWEET While the nineties might not sound that long ago to an older crowd, when was the last time you thought about Lorena Bobbitt? Or tamagotchis? Or wondered who was paging you? Yep, the 90s are already ripe for nostalgia and San Diego Musical Theatre is on target for…
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