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Chicago Theater Review: NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT (Theatre at the Center in Munster, IN)
LET’S NOT CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF George Gershwin died no older than the equally immortal Mozart’”and, well, we can’t make or get enough of a Broadway blessing’s too-brief talent for tunes. The sturdy songs from his silly shows have been recently repurposed in Crazy for You, My One and Only, An American in Paris…
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Film Review: WEINER (directed by Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg)
HOW THE SAUSAGE IS UNMADE Upton Sinclair said of industrial meat packers that “[t]hey use everything about the hog except the squeal.” When the press ties a politician to his penis it goes Farmer John one better: the louder the squeal, the higher the ratings. The mechanics of governance gets scant coverage. What politicians do…
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Chicago Opera Review: LA CALISTO (Haymarket Opera)
THE GODS MUST BE ARE CRAZY! It’s not often that one gets to see the same opera twice, especially when the opera in question is a delightful rarity like Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, which debuted in 1651 and remained unperformed for more than three centuries. Fortunately, La Calisto’s popularity is growing; and after seeing Haymarket…
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Chicago Theater Review: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (American Blues Theater)
KILLER CHLOROPHYLL HATCHES A HIT American Blues Theatre seldom does musicals (the last was the wonderful Hank Williams: Lost Highway). Happily, their current triumphLittle Shop of Horrors literally roots their mission’”blue-collar sagas that question and redefine the American dream’”in a perfect choice, an incisive, hilarious rock sermon on the perils of selling out. Its source,…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: A GENTLE REMINDER: MISS COCO PERU’S GUIDE TO A SOMEWHAT HAPPY LIFE (Renberg Theatre)
MAKE SOMEONE SOMEWHAT HAPPY At the risk of repeating myself — oh, wait — I am repeating myself, but it bears repeating. I wrote about the great Coco Peru when she appeared in Miss Coco Peru: She’s Got Balls at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Renberg Theatre. Now, this remarkable entertainer who seamlessly blends the…
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Film Review: BRIDGEND (directed by Jeppe Rønde)
SARACIDE After the picture fades at the end of Jeppe Rønde’s Bridgend a title appears: “From 2007 to 2012 there were 79 recorded suicides in Bridgend, Wales. Most victims were teenagers. They hanged themselves and left no suicide notes. To this day the suicides haven’t stopped.” Mr. Rønde’s narrative feature attempts to delve into the…
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Chicago Theater Review: ONCE IN A LIFETIME (Strawdog Theatre Company)
A CRASH COUSE IN ‘LA LA LAND’ LUNACY Once in a Lifetime, the first triumph of George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (You Can’t Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Royal Family), is a mostly hilarious 1930 “coming of age” comedy. It centers on three Hollywood hopefuls who slam against…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE KING AND I (Lyric Opera)
A ROYAL PRODUCTION The King and I is a rather curious bundle of contradictions and opposites. First, it’s based on a true story, but plays out more like a fairy tale. In fact, it doesn’t seem all that strange that a king with dozens of submissive wives should fall in love with yet another woman,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE BOY FROM OZ (Celebration Theater)
A FRIEND OF DOROTHY’S What makes this boisterous jukebox musical about the life of late music and stage legend Peter Allen (whose songs make up the show’s core) so winning, is the combination of larger-than-life excess and the piquant whiff of melancholy – all of which are frankly irresistible to a wide swath of showtune-loving…
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Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: ORPHEUS DESCENDING (Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival at St John’s Lutheran Church)
WILLIAMS ASCENDING Irene Glezos delivers a lovely, stirring performance as Lady in Austin Pendleton’s staging of Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece Orpheus Descending. A force of nature, Lady says and does things almost in spite of herself. A prisoner of her childlike sincerity, she is at once witty, ironic, funny, melodramatic, all almost without intending to be,…
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Chicago Theater Review: A RED LINE RUNS THROUGH IT (The Second City e.t.c.’s 40th Revue at Piper’s Alley)
SCATTERSHOT SPOOFERY THROWS A LARGE NET OVER A LITTLE SATIRE Alluding to the elevated Chicago subway that courses through the North Side, A Red Line Runs Through It proves a theme as much as wordplay in this 40th revue from The Second City e.t.c. Our evening of comedy sketches begins and ends with passengers in a…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: CAROUSEL (UCLA)
COME RIDE THE CAROUSEL It’s sad, really, that a town crammed with some of the best musical artists in the country has so few musicals produced. And when they are, for the most part, it’s the overblown Broadway tour variety or a one-night-only concert staged reading. Fortunately, colleges continue to offer some of the best productions…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: GROUNDLINGS ACTION PLAYSET (The Groundlings Theatre)
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION For almost 40 years, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang (and creating more Big Bangs than stars; have you ever been backstage during a performance?) Performers showcase material that arises from improvisation…
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Film Review: THE WAIT (L’ATTESA) (directed by Piero Messina)
THE WAIT FOR THIS FILM TO BE OVER Francesco Di Giacomo’s gorgeous cinematography, an excellent cast headed by Juliette Binoche, who delivers an emotionally taut performance, a beautiful old Sicilian villa, a picturesque countryside ’” all these are on offer in Piero Messina’s The Wait, about a mother concealing the fact of her son’s recent…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: GRIEG WITH THIBAUDET (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
GREET A GREAT GRIEG The Grieg piano concerto is one of those works that is hindered by its own popularity. I remember vividly its famous strains played over and over in a 1970s’ commercial for a classical compilation on LP. And Frank Loesser popularized the main theme above concert hall status by adding the famous strain to the song “Rosemary”…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (Norris Center in Rolling Hills Estates)
FINDING THE HEARTBEAT OF FIDDLER “To Life” indeed. There’s a ton of it, not to mention heartbreak and wisdom, in the 1964 Stein/Harnick/Bock musical triumph, Fiddler on the Roof, now receiving a worthy production at the Norris. For all the shenanigans that can come with professional community theater (a little mugging, a few line flubs, some weak…
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Chicago Theater Review: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (Shattered Globe Theatre at Theater Wit)
IN THE HEAT OF THE STORY “They call me Mister Tibbs.” That’s the signature catchphrase from the celebrated 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier (the first African-American male Oscar winner) and rough-riding Rod Steiger, like George C. Scott, as visceral an actor as the screen could contain. Ebony and ivory, against their natures, these seeming stereotypes work…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: STAGE KISS (Geffen)
KISS OFF A backstage comedy with more personalities than Sybil, Sarah Ruhl’s preposterous — and in some ways pretentious — 2011 play was apparently given a boffo treatment at Playwrights Horizon, San Francisco Playhouse, The Guthrie, and more. But not at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, where Stage Kiss had its World Premiere, and certainly not at the Geffen,…
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Chicago Theater Review: A SPLINTERED SOUL (ARLA Productions at Stage 773)
NEVER SAY “NEVER AGAIN” Survivor guilt is supposedly small-scale suffering, compared to the agonies of those who never get the luxury of remorse. It’s a tricky feat to accommodate near evil. Now in a searing Midwest premiere by ARLA Productions at Chicago’s Stage 773, Alan Lester Brooks’s post-war drama A Splintered Soul examines an open-ended…
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Film Review: SHADOW WORLD (directed by Johan Grimonprez / World Premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
SHADOW DOCUMENTARY Johan Grimonprez’s documentary, based on Andrew Feinstein’s 2011 book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, attempts to delve into the murky relationships between politicians and arms manufacturers, proposing that the former are mere representatives of the latter, and that to a great extent war is a manufactured, for-profit enterprise. We get to…
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