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Chicago Opera Review: ROMEO AND JULIET (Lyric)
UNEVEN PRODUCTION COMBINES CARNIVAL AND ROMANCE As part of Chicago’s yearlong celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, Lyric Opera has mounted a production of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. One of the French composer’s finest works, and an excellent example of French opera, it successfully debuted in 1867. Although the plot needs…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: DANIIL TRIFONOV IN RECITAL (Disney Hall)
TRIFONOV’S DEBUT RECITAL AT DISNEY HALL All it took was one performance from Daniil Trifonov (dan-EEL TREE-fon-ov) to resoundingly validate for me why he is the current Big Thing of the piano world. The Liszt-like master’s rendition of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (followed by a…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE MYSTERY OF LOVE & SEX (Mark Taper Forum)
TOWARD A SAFE THEATER In 2015 Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love & Sex opened to mixed notices Off Broadway, which seems to be the exact pipeline for shows to get produced at L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum a year or so later. It fits the bill for new-millennial regional theater production in pretty much every way:…
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Chicago Theater Review: A LOSS OF ROSES (Raven)
THIS LOSS IS OUR GAIN William Inge knew the human heart better than a surgeon. In Bus Stop, Picnic, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Dark at the Top of the Stairs, this closeted author exposes our secret selves: With the emotional acuity of his cohort Tennessee Williams, Inge imagines and invents needy, lonely, and thwarted…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PAST TIME (Sacred Fools at The Lillian Theatre in Hollywood)
CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE STAGE Every time I see Leon Russom I wish I had his body. Lean like a dancer, he uses the solidity of his shoulders, the slimness of his hips to create character and emphasize moment. The Coen Brothers like to cast him as movie cops, but I first saw him onstage…
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Chicago Theater Review: ZIRYAB: THE SONGBIRD OF ANDALUSIA (Silk Road Rising)
MEETING IN MUSIC In the basement of the Chicago Temple, playwright/actor/musician Ronnie Malley displays his electric affinity for and considerable fluency in a dozen musical tongues. In 75 minutes this Chicago performer takes us back to the ninth century and deep into our own. On Yeaji Kim’s magic-carpet set, strewn with exotic musical instruments and…
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Chicago Theater Review: COCKED (Victory Gardens Biograph Theater)
PLAY CONTROL A clumsy comedy about our gun-crazed nation, Cocked packs heat but no warmth. Glib, slick and slippery, Sarah Gubbins’ world premiere from Victory Gardens Theater proves there are worse things than ignoring the arming of America. Far more bogus is to trivialize the subject by reducing it to a screaming sitcom. Cocked (its…
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San Diego Theater Review: THE LAST MATCH (The Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre)
WHOOSH! “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare memorably said. “And all the men and women merely players.” In a world premiere at the Old Globe, Anna Ziegler’s new play The Last Match successfully plays off the Bard’s famous monologue, equating tennis with life, athletic striving with human struggle, and delivering a deft, luminous play. Dueling it…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: POCATELLO (Rogue Machine at the Met Theatre)
TAKE A TRIP TO POCATELLO Since this is a Samuel D. Hunter play, its setting is a nondescript town in Idaho whose business district is beseiged by big-box stores and chain restaurants — in this case a pre-fabricated eatery laden with temperamental technology. But unlike his previous studies in isolation, this group portrait of hinterland culture represents the author’s…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: STORM LARGE AND LE BONHEUR (The Broad & Haugh Performing Arts Center)
A STORM IS BREWING Singer, songwriter, raconteur, author, actor, playwright, and powerhouse performer Storm Large is on tour with her band Le Bonheur and they’re coming to the L.A. area for two shows only. The only difference in venues here is that her appearance at the Broad in Santa Monica (February 26) is pricier than…
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Chicago Theater Review: 2666 (Goodman Theatre)
LIFE IS TOO SHORT WHEN ART IS THIS LONG A dozen years ago, dying at 50, Roberto Bolano left his unfinished 2666 as his valedictory. It was, quite simply, the swan song of a spellbinding creator of worthy works. As this massive five-part, farewell epic confirmed, the Chilean novelist had a sweeping imagination. His probing…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
THE CRASH OF SYMBOLISM As part of its City of Light: A Century of Music From Paris series, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is presenting Debussy’s one-of-a-kind opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, in its entirety. Helmed by the rightfully popular Esa-Pekka Salonen, the LA Phil and Los Angeles Master Chorale will be joined by Kate Burton as the narrator, Stéphane…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: BURIED CHILD (The New Group at The Pershing Square Signature Center)
BURIED BETWEEN THE LINES In Scott Elliott’s surefooted staging of Sam Shepard’s imperfect Buried Child, watching Ed Harris sitting on a raggedy couch under an old blanket in front of a little TV while audience members shuffle into the house and settle in their seats is worth the price of admission. Mr. Harris melts into…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WEST SIDE STORY (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
SOMEWHAT FORCED, WE STILL GET THE GLORY OF WEST SIDE STORY Strangely enough, West Side Story feels more dated than Romeo and Juliet, its 500-year-old inspiration. Compared to Shakespeare’s dedicated tragedy, the musical is less violent, claiming only three lives to the Bard’s five (although, in the second act, one character barely escapes being raped). And while these juvenile delinquents are…
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Chicago Theater Review: IN A WORD (Strawdog)
THE LOSSES THAT GROW Only 75 minutes long, this slice of loss by Lauren Yee–a “rolling world premiere” from the National New Plays Network–charts one mother’s tailspin after the sudden subtraction of her 7-year-old son. Darkly poetic and packed with occasionally irritating word play (a “tree of absence” becomes quite literal), twisted logic, free association…
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Los Angeles Theatre Preview: A CLASS ACT (Musical Theatre Guild at the Alex in Glendale)
ONE NERDY, ANAL AND SINGULAR SENSATION The first two weeks of June, 2001, was a very good time to attend Broadway shows. On one day alone, I saw The Producers at 2:00, The Rocky Horror Show (with Dick Cavett, Lea Delaria & Raúl Esparza) at 5:00 and The Music Man (with Eric McCormack, the greatest…
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CD Review: A NEW BRAIN (2015 New York Cast Recording on PS Classics)
WRAP YOUR BRAIN AROUND A NEW A NEW BRAIN When A New Brain opened at Lincoln Center in 1998, I couldn’t understand why the reviews were so higgledy-piggledy. True, I hadn’t actually seen the production, but the original cast recording had me hooked. William Finn, composer/lyricist of the quirky, poignant Falsettos and the light-hearted The…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE FLICK (Steppenwolf)
THE SILVER SCREEN IS NOT A MIRROR At three hours long, The Flick takes its’”and our’”time to not tell a story. Almost all atmosphere (more specifically, totally character), Annie Baker’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner is a rare bird: This play perversely mimics the tedium and routine of work (and, it implies, life) by cloning them…
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Los Angeles Concert Review: JOHN WATERS, THIS FILTHY WORLD: FILTHIER AND DIRTIER (Luckman)
JUST ADD WATERS It’s edifying how much of practical value you can learn at the theater. I found out last night, for example, that if John Waters invites you over, you’ve got some work to do first: “You’re not taking a shit at my house. Dinner guests should eliminate before arriving. I don’t want you…
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Chicago Theater Review: FAR FROM HEAVEN (Porchlight Music Theatre at Stage 773)
THE HEART KEEPS ITS REASONS Starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, Todd Haynes’ 2002 film Far From Heaven told a tale timeless as Romeo and Juliet. But its glimpse of hearts out of sync with their time and town was very time-specific. Haynes’s work is the kind of fiction where what might have been is…
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