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Los Angeles Music Review MARTHA ARGERICH & STEPHEN KOVACEVICH (Recital at Disney Hall)
PRIMO AND PRIMO A strange thing happened on the way to the duo piano recital of the once-married pianists Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich at Disney hall last Saturday. A few minutes before the Debussy-heavy program began, the normal “turn off your cell phones” pre-show announcement (which doggedly refuses to castigate crinkling programs and whispered…
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Chicago Theater Review: BORN YESTERDAY (Remy Bumppo at Greenhouse Theater Center)
“IT’S A FREE COUNTRY!” It’s one of the seven wonders of the American theater: Few sights on stage are as magical as watching Billie Dawn wise up. This dumb-as-a-rock good-time girl slowly warms to the whistle-blowing power that comes when she takes “We the people” personally. Judy Holliday, two years after standing up to Paul…
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DVD Review: THE WEISSENSEE SAGA (German Television Series on MHz Releasing)
A STRONG SAGA OF EAST GERMANY’S STASI & ITS IMPACT ON TWO FAMILIES Set in and around East Berlin between 1980 and 1990, this superior German series is about a family and its involvement with the Stasi, the secret force propping up the dictatorial Communist German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) from 1949…
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Chicago Theater Review: KING OF THE YEES (Goodman in Chicago and Kirk Douglas in Los Angeles)
AN IDENTITY QUEST COMES UP EMPTY As the cops say, “Nothing to see here, folks. Move right along.” Or, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no “there there.” Both cautions apply to Goodman Theatre’s wrongly commissioned world premiere King of the Yees. (produced in association with Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group; the play…
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Chicago Theater Review: FOR PETER PAN ON HER 70TH BIRTHDAY (Shattered Globe Theatre)
DEATH BY ANECDOTE A playwright dredges up her past at her peril. As with Goodman Theatre’s current confusion King of the Yees, Sarah Ruhl’s For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday is a very personal testament, a mirror held up by its author to its writer. Basically a (one) act of remembrance, this Chicago premiere from Shattered…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE ENCOUNTER (Complicite at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
THEATER ON TAPE Once the mainstay of fringe festivals and performance art houses, one-person plays showcasing the likes of James Whitmore and Lily Tomlin became financially viable in the latter quarter of the twentieth century, but they were rare. Given the financial constraints of modern theater, however, solo shows are cropping up like opium poppies…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: GROUNDLINGS SLEEPAWAY CAMP (The Groundlings Theatre)
IT’S TIME FOR S’MORE GROUNDLINGS Who doesn’t love sitting around a campfire scaring the crap outta some brat? Who doesn’t love canoe trips down a rocky brook? Who doesn’t love that first crush on a nubile camp counselor? Who doesn’t love listening to Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”? Who doesn’t love watching a deranged lunatic having his way…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: APOCALYPSE PLAY (Moving Arts at Atwater Village Theatre)
FINAL WEEKEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD If you think the end of the world is scary, how about the end of a run of a terrific new play and you missed it? The Ovation-recommended Apocalypse Play closes up shop this weekend, and you definitely want to be around for the end. I know…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MAN OF LA MANCHA (A Noise Within in Pasadena)
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS As a part of A Noise Within’s 25th Season, co-Artistic Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott helms an extraordinary production of this 1964 hit musical, Man of La Mancha, adapted by Dale Wasserman from his 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was adapted from Miguel de Cervantes’ 1605 Don Quixote. The timeless score…
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Chicago Theater Review: LINDA VISTA (Steppenwolf)
FINDING FOCUS Linda Vista is billed as “an adult comedy about immature behavior.” Surprisingly tender, Tracy Letts’ Steppenwolf stunner examines one man’s mid-life crisis from all sides and, best of all, from inside out. Sardonically struggling against himself as much as the world, Dick Wheeler is Letts’ most developed anti-hero. Named after the San Diego…
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San Diego Theater Review: FIRST DATE (San Diego Musical Theatre at Horton Grand Theatre)
A FIRST DATE THAT GOES WELL The device of having characters receive advice from a conscience or someone from their past is tried and true in musicals: They’re Playing Our Song‘s Vernon’s gets help from his Greek Chorus “boys”; Grease‘s Frenchy is (beauty)schooled by the Teen Angel; and now, First Date‘s Aaron and Casey get input, helpful…
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Los Angeles Music Review: SALONEN & SIBELIUS (Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall)
THOSE SUMPTUOUS STRINGS OF SIBELIUS Fresh-faced and vital, Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program centered on Finland’s greatest composer, Jean Sibelius. I was somewhat concerned since a few separate music lovers I know found last Thursday’s performance, the first of a 3-performance weekend, underwhelming. I admit that there’s…
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Chicago Theater Review: MARY POPPINS (Mercury)
A SPADEFUL OF SUGAR As the supplicating ballad puts it, “Let’s hope she will stay.” Not just the quintessentially “practically perfect” nanny, Mary Poppins is a kind of cosmic cure. Given the state of our disunion, we probably need to swallow helping and heaping spoonfuls of sugar: Disney’s aggressively buoyant movie musicalization cavorts across the…
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Film Review: THE MIDNIGHTERS (directed by Julian Fort)
OLD-SCHOOL OFFBEAT CRIME DRAMAS & YOU In the 1970s, “low-budget movie” was the umbrella term with which TV Guide covered products as disparate as John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. Gene Shalit and Rex Reed used a dozen adjectives between them for the entire New Hollywood…
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Theater Review: CAVALIA’S ODYSSEO (North American Tour Under the White Big Top at Soldier Field)
260 HOOVES AND 96 FEET Pegasus would be proud: The vast White Big Top commanding the south parking lot of Chicago’s Soldier Field barely hints at the $30 million “theatrical adventure” beneath this tent. From the Canadian-based creators of 2011’s Cavalia comes Odysseo, an elaborate extravaganza celebrating the bonds between people and horses. What we…
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CD Review: DREAM AGO (Gabrielle Stravelli)
DREAM-Y Well, it finally happened. After a slew of cabaret CD’s from solo artists that lack distinction, originality, and cool arrangements, I happened upon a rising-star in both the cabaret and jazz worlds. The first thing you will notice about Gabrielle Stravelli is that voice: Unforced, earthy, flexible, playful and unpretentious, her jazzy/cool  spectrum of colors…
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San Diego Theater Review: THE GEEZE AND ME (THE TENTH Avenue Arts Center)
IT’S WORTH SINGING ABOUT GETTING OLDER Perhaps the only thing worse than getting older is thinking about it. So when a nascent theater company puts on a show’”a musical no less’”about the fear and associated feelings regarding aging (and the odds of becoming what is referred to as a “Geeze”), some theatergoers may understandably be hesitant to…
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Los Angeles Opera Review: THE TALES OF HOFFMANN (LA Opera)
A LENGTHY BUT LOVELY OFFENBACH Just as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in the middle of writing his famous Requiem so did Jacques Offenbach die composing his fantastical opera Tales of Hoffmann. Both works have been seen as highly personal compositions: Mozart writing his own requiem and Offenbach standing in for Hoffmann, his protagonist. The similarities…
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San Diego Theater Review: ON THE 20TH CENTURY (Cygnet Theatre Company)
A LONG RIDE ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In today’s world of seeing T-shirts in fancy restaurants, it’s almost difficult to envision that, once upon a time, people would dress to the nines for a 16-hour train ride, being attended to by spiffy stewards, waiters, and chefs. But that’s exactly what hundreds of New York’s elite did…
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Chicago Theater Review: BEYOND CARING (Lookingglass Theatre Company)
TOIL AND TROUBLE There are no miniaturized marvels, no surprises sprung from trap doors, no white rabbits from a hat. Beyond Caring bears none of Lookingglass Theatre Company’s vintage make-believe. In a major departure from the usual grand illusions, Chicago’s relentlessly undefinable troupe is currently exposing Gold Coast audiences to a reality as bleak and…
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