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Chicago Theater Review: STRAIGHT WHITE MEN (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)
THE URGE TO BE USEFUL Steppenwolf Theatre is great at stirring things up’”on stage and in the minds of its crowds. Nobody does it so well. Exhibit A is their latest offering: There’s good cause for the subversive disruption of Straight White Men. Employing a very generic title to set things apart, hot new playwright…
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San Diego Theater Review: 9 TO 5 (San Diego Musical Theatre at Spreckels Theatre)
I COULD WATCH 9 TO 5 24/7 In 1980, an unlikely film trio, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, was the center of 9 to 5, an amusing feminist romp with lovable characters. Years later, Patricia Resnick took the screen play she co-authored and created the book for the stage version, featuring new music by Parton,…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS (Porchlight Music Theatre at Stage 773)
THE SONGS AND THE FURY Sardonic, ironic, cheeky, subversive’”hip epithets can’t convey the excruciating call-and-response fusion of humor and horror, laughter and tears, that you feel seeing The Scottsboro Boys. It was nervy enough in 2010 for Broadway legends John Kander and Fred Ebb and bookwriter Fred Thompson to create a musical about a travesty…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (Geffen Playhouse in Westwood)
ALTERNATIVE FACTS Eugene O’Neill is one of those gigantically influential artists whom it is often difficult for later generations to enjoy. The innovations he cribbed from Ibsen and Chekhov can feel very dated now; they were a throwback even in 1956, when contemporary critics saw past the mean realism of Long Day’s Journey into Night…
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Chicago Theater Review: DEEP IN THE HEART OF TUNA (New American Folk Theatre at Pride Arts Center)
TAKING OUT THE (WHITE) TRASH Ever since 1981, small-town souls, Dixie doodles and atavistic Red State rednecks have fueled the fun in the Tuna trilogy. It’s a hilarious perpetration by adapter Ed Howard and original author-performers Joe Sears and Jaston Williams: Greater Tuna, A Tuna Christmas, and Red, White, and Tuna delivered laundry-line cross-dressing and…
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Los Angeles Theater Photo Preview: ZOOT SUIT (Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum)
ZOOT SUIT FITTED FOR A NEW GENERATION When Zoot Suit was originally commissioned and developed by Center Theatre Group in 1978, it played for nearly a year in Los Angeles’”first at the Mark Taper Forum, then at the Aquarius in Hollywood. It went on to become Broadway’s first Chicano play, was made into a major motion picture and became…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE BOOK OF JOSEPH (Chicago Shakespeare)
ANATEVKA COMES HOME In this world premiere of a newly commissioned and instantly topical new work, Chicago Shakespeare Theater makes it clear: Karen Hartman’s The Book of Joseph is not just another play about the Holocaust (not that that’s a bad thing). Yes, that once and future horror re-erupts, with painful “new” details confirming a…
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Los Angeles Cabaret Preview: ANDREA MCARDLE: ’70S AND SUNNY (Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood)
GET READY FOR “TOMORROW” The sun will come out on February 13, 2017, when Andrea McArdle lands at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood with her newest cabaret show ’70’s and Sunny. Manhattan in the 1970s was a hybrid of highlights and hedonism. Overrun with sex shops and financial turmoil, the city was at…
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Chicago Theater Review: I LEFT MY HEART: A SALUTE TO THE MUSIC OF TONY BENNETT (Mercury Theater)
HE FOUND HIS HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO (AND MORE) I Left My Heart: A Salute to the Music of Tony Bennett totally earns its title. Created in 2005 by David Grapes and Todd Olson, this warmly wrought and richly arranged tribute to a terrific troubadour chronicles a career that, at 90, is far from over. (Bennett…
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Theater Review: THE BODYGUARD (U.S. Tour at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago)
PROTECTING YOUR ASSET The best thing about The Bodyguard, Lawrence Kasdan’s Oscar-nominated 1992 film, was how it put the late Whitney Houston on the map and in our hearts. Despite zero chemistry, erotic or dramatic, between Houston’s driven diva and Kevin Costner’s title character, Houston’s celebrity survivor scorched the screen, buttressed by Whitney’s terrific breakout numbers….
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Los Angeles Dance Preview: JESSICA LANG DANCE (The Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre)
LANG LANDS IN LA LA LAND Jessica Lang has no doubt made a name for herself in the dance world as an independent choreographer, but dance patrons in Los Angeles may find this in-demand dancemaker difficult to place. Because the majority of troupes that visit here offer programs by the company’s namesake (Paul Taylor, Lar Lubovitch,…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: DEBUSSY: HIS LETTERS AND HIS MUSIC (Julia Migenes at the Odyssey Theatre)
THE MUSIC AND THE WORDS BEHIND THE MUSIC With astounding chromatic structure and continually shifting tonalities and rhythms, Debussy’s music has always mystified and transported me. Certainly many are familiar with “Clair de Lune” a piece from the piano composition Suite bergamasque; La Mer, a unique mix of tone poem and symphony; and Prélude í …
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Chicago Theater Review: THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES (Raven Theatre)
THE DEAD WEIGHT OF RANDOM TALK Richard Greenberg’s better works’”Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain, The Violet Hour’”stand out by putting enough in play to make us care. Raven Theatre’s distressingly languorous Midwest premiere, Greenberg’s 2013 The Assembled Parties (the title a social and legal pun) spreads, circuitously and discursively, across two decades. Its…
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Los Angeles Theater Feature: 946: THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS (The Wallis)
KNEEHIGH RETURNS TO THE WALLIS I wonder if L.A. residents know how ridiculously lucky they are to have the Wallis Annenberg Center, an outfit so prestigious that Britain’s Kneehigh is bringing 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, their latest hit show, to the Bram Goldsmith Theater. 946 explores everything we thought we knew about the D-Day landings in…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE NETHER (A Red Orchid)
FINDING NETHER-LAND Cryptic and fascinating, Jennifer Haley’s 85-minute one-act The Nether takes its name, if not its inspiration, from an allusion to the afterlife. But, persuasively presented by director Karen Kessler, “The Nether” is in the here and now. It more than rivals reality. A Red Orchid Theatre’s techno-parable reveals the malleability of identity when…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LOST IN THE STARS (Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and CAP UCLA, Royce Hall)
FOUND IN THE STARS Lost in the Stars is quite possibly composer Kurt Weill’s magnum opus for the American Theater. The score is prime Weill, characteristically mixing high operatic style with lowdown showbiz pizzazz. Based on Alan Paton’s poetic and popular novel Cry, the Beloved Country, the piece’”while not considered a commercial success’”had a respectable 281-performance…
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Chicago Opera Review: NORMA (Lyric Opera)
BRAVO FOR BELLINI’S BEL CANTO CONQUEST The second of two bel canto operas performed this season, Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma is a far more satisfying experience than Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor was. For one, the story is more compelling, portraying heroic sacrifice rather than madness. In terms of musical enjoyment, the cast’s finest singer is on…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BEE-LUTHER-HATCHEE (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
WHEN IS FAKING IT OK? If someone should recommend Sierra Madre Playhouse’s production of Bee-Luther-Hatchee to you, they’re not off the mark. My advice would be that you walk, don’t run, to see it. Two main issues keep this from being an impactful evening. One: This isn’t a great play; Act I is all set-up…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LATE COMPANY (Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills)
GUESS WHO’S NOT COMING TO DINNER? At first, we have no idea why a well-to-do couple has invited another couple and their son over for dinner. The hostess Debora (Ann Hearn) is on edge from the start, but her politician husband Michael (Grinnell Morris) appears somewhat laid back. A forced amicability arrives with the guests, Tam (Jennifer…
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Regional Theater Preview: MOBY DICK (Lookingglass Theatre at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
A WHALE OF A PRODUCTION Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s 1851 whale of a tale (or tale of a whale), is as unsinkable as its title cetacean. It’s never been more so than in Lookingglass Theatre Company’s sensation staged and adapted by David Catlin. After an extended sell-out run in Chicago, Catlin now brings this thrilling…
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