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Los Angeles Theater Review: BYE BYE BIRDIE (Glendale Centre Theatre)
A BIRDIE THAT TAKES WING Having no intention of reviewing, I bought a couple tickets to a non-union production of Bye Bye Birdie, but the entire affair had me so damn giddy that I can’t be quiet about it — and you have until April 1 to catch it. It’s as welcome as flowers that bloom in…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE COLUMNIST (American Blues Theater at Stage 773)
THE SOUR SMELL OF SUCCESS Never confuse fear with respect. During the Cold War, when the Russians were less deniably our enemies, op-ed tyro Joe Alsop rivaled gossip czar Walter Winchell in gaining the ears of politicians’”and, sometimes, as with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, other parts as well. For better and for worse, Alsop is the…
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Theater Review: THE ILLUSIONISTS – LIVE FROM BROADWAY (North American Tour)
MATURE MAGIC No spells get cast here, no phantoms materialize. There is no mystical suspension of the laws of physics, just our disbelief. Now in a too-short stop at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre, the national tour of The Illusionists is an awe-striking evening of artful dodging (notice it’s not titled “The Magicians”). This kleptomaniacal bonanza comes rich with the kind…
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Theater Review: FUN HOME (National Tour)
IN AND OUT AT HOME The Tony-winning 2013 coming-of-age memory play/chamber musical Fun Home’”based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 semi-autobiographical graphic novel’”is a worthy coming-out tale. We get the inside portrait of a lesbian daughter who learns more than she wanted from her gay dad. With music by Jeanine Tesori (Caroline. or Change, Shrek) and lyrics and…
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Theater Review: FINDING NEVERLAND (National Tour at the Hollywood Pantages)
NEVERLAND MORE LOST THAN FOUND Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie “the man who was Peter Pan.” If so, it was an author’s compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was a shy Scotsman, awkward and diffident in public with an extroverted artistry to compensate for self-effacing insecurity. In the 2004 tearjerker motion picture…
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Chicago Theater Review: UNCLE VANYA (Goodman)
SINKING INTO THE STEPPES Running invisible endurance feats, the characters of Anton Chekhov expose what Henry David Thoreau called “lives of quiet desperation.” When the good doctor’s creations, compassionately but uncompromisingly presented, break loose from boredom and emotional paralysis, it’s only to crash into unrequited love. Like T.S. Eliot’s forlorn J. Alfred Prufrock, they measure…
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Theater Review: PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE (The Old Globe in San Diego)
THEATER’S BLUE PERIOD Steve Martin wrote Picasso at the Lapin Agile in 1993. The offbeat meta-theatrical play opened at Chicago’s Steppenwolf, went to Los Angeles’s Westwood (now Geffen) Playhouse, and ended up in New York for a relatively successful run at Off-Broadway’s Promenade Theatre. The story (well, not “story” really; it’s more of an idea) concerns two…
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CD Review: THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM (2016 Off-Broadway Cast on Ghostlight Records)
A SCALED-DOWN ROBBER BRIDEGROOM STEALS YOUR HEART ON CD It will always remain one of the great unsolved mysteries in Broadway history. Composer Robert Waldman and librettist and lyricist Alfred Uhry took Eudora Welty’s 1942 novella, “The Robber Bridegroom”, and turned it into a musical that Clive Barnes called “a sort of country and western fairy…
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Chicago Theater Review: MY BROTHERS KEEPER–”THE STORY OF THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS (Black Ensemble Theater)
THIS BROTHERS IS A KEEPER This winner really is a blast from the past. Celebrating America’s most explosive and enthralling tap-dancing team, My Brother’s Keeper’”The Story of the Nicholas Brothers is Black Ensemble Theater’s latest reclamation jamboree, a loving tribute to two brothers who made it big and kept it fun. It’s also a tour de…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: 33 VARIATIONS (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
MORE THAN JUST VARIATIONS ON A THEME “Why did the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven write 33 variations on a trivial little waltz by a mediocre amateur composer?” On the surface, the question itself may seem trivial, but playwright Moisés Kaufman expands the mystery of the 33 variations into a drama that makes us…
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Los Angeles Opera Review: THE ELIXIR OF LOVE (Pacific Opera Project at The Highland Park Ebell Club)
ELIXIRICIOUS At first it seemed as though a tragic circumstance had befallen Pacific Opera Project’s production of The Elixir of Love last night. One hour before the show, at the height of a heavy storm, a transformer blew in front of the Highland Park Ebell Club; there would definitely be no electricity for the show. A stroke of…
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Chicago Theater Review: A WONDER IN MY SOUL (Victory Gardens Biograph Theater)
A SOUTH SIDE WEAVE The setting is a beloved beauty parlor on Chicago’s South Side. It’s seen better times and may soon see none. Hanging over the storefront is a gallery of famous female African-American singers and pioneers from Rosa Parks to Beyoncé. Instantly we’re more at home than at shop. Playwright Marcus Gardley (The…
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Regional Theater Review: FLORA & ULYSSES (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
SUPER SQUIRREL Flora & Ulysses, the best play I’ve seen all year, begins when Flora Buckman, a ten-year-old self-proclaimed “natural-born cynic”, saves the life of a squirrel using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. You see, the squirrel had been sucked into a neighbor’s Ulys ses Super-Suction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner. When the squirrel is revived, it has been blessed with both human thought…
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Theater Review: CIRCUS 1903 — THE GOLDEN AGE OF CIRCUS (National Tour)
COME JOIN THE CIRCUS As if to compensate for the unpopularity of animal acts, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus began to beef up their productions in recent years, but that lack of intimacy kept the show from being as thrilling as it used to be. (And can we talk about the clowns? The…
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Los Angeles Theater Feature: DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! (Celebration Theatre in Hollywood)
SHE’S BA-A-A-CK AND SHE’S FA-A-A-ABULOUS Charles Busch’s Die, Mommie, Die! is equal parts comic melodrama, Greek tragedy and Hollywood kitsch’”and all campy noir classic in the vein of 1960s gothic horror films like Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. I saw the first production at the Coast Playhouse back in 1999 starring the playwright, the great Wendy Worthington,…
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Chicago Theater Review: LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST (Chicago Shakespeare)
NO ADO ABOUT LITTLE Never has a lesser comedy enjoyed a lovelier setting: Embraced by a Rococo balustrade, staircase, and pastoral backdrop worthy of Watteau or Boucher, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Courtyard Stage is dwarfed by a huge oak tree in autumnal glory, discretely dropping selected leaves. It’s an apt backdrop for a Mozart opera; indeed…
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Chicago Opera Review: CARMEN (Lyric Opera)
MORE BULL THAN BEAR, BUT NOT MUCH Because Bizet’s Carmen is so well-known, from the exuberance and buoyancy of the overture to the singalong Toreador Song, it’s hard to put together a production that is going to please everyone. One way to make things more interesting for the audience is to switch out some of…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: FOR PIANO AND HARPO (Falcon Theatre in Burbank)
A GUY WALKS INTO A CUCKOO’S NEST… Jazz pianist, TV personality, actor, author, film composer and arranger Oscar Levant (1906-1972) was quite possibly one of the quickest wits on record. His sophisticated and often vicious put-downs (a style made famous by members of the Algonquin Club), whether self-deprecating or shot bow-and-arrow style at others, were a…
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Theater Review: EVITA (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
AND EVITA KEEPS ROLLING IN That great balcony scene is back. No, not R&J. It’s the one with Eva Duarte Perón’s valedictory aria “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina.” As this princess of the pampas in a prom dress chokes, then belts out, the second-act opening of the 1978 musical, all the right buttons get pushed: The…
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Los Angeles Theater: CUISINE & CONFESSIONS (The 7 Fingers at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
WORKING UP YOUR APPETITE Bringing the aesthetics of classical theater to the realm of the contemporary circus, the fearless performers of The 7 Fingers (also known as Les 7 Doigts) explore life’s big questions while preparing food on a set equipped with a functional kitchen. I first reviewed this astounding troupe’s Traces back in 2011….
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