Areas We Cover
Categories
-
Theater Review: AN ACT OF GOD (Ahmanson Theatre)
EVEN GOD CAN’T SAVE THIS FROM ITSELF Dear God (if I may quote Alice Walker): What’s going on with the theater these days? Oh, that’s right, you already know. In fact, you’re appearing on stage at the Ahmanson in the guise of TV’s Will & Grace star Sean Hayes, whose name actually is placed over your…
-
Chicago Theater Review: LOOKING OVER THE PRESIDENT’S SHOULDER (American Blues Theater)
PRESIDING OVER HISTORY This is a discovery-rich, impeccably presented journey through our political past: American Blues Theater’s Looking Over the President’s Shoulder takes audiences on an invaluable 80-minute tour of the White House, unlike any we ever could. Smoothly written by A.B.T. artistic affiliate James Still and cogently directed by Timothy Douglas, this one-person one-act…
-
Chicago Dance Review: BOLD MOVES (Joffrey)
FRENZY IN FEBRUARY Detonating across the Auditorium Theatre’s vast stage through February 21, Joffrey Ballet’s Bold Moves has more of the latter than the former stuff. But this kinetic winter program–two favorites and a world premiere’”reprises worthy returns as it showcases a troupe at its top. The overall mood of these pieces is noisy desperation: Couples…
-
Chicago Opera Review: DER ROSENKAVALIER (Lyric)
MAJESKI’S MAJESTIC MARSCHALLIN Lyric Opera’s new production of Der Rosenkavalier is beautiful, charming, and magnificent. It delightfully exceeded my expectations and gave me a new appreciation for the operas of Richard Strauss. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but I’ll admit to being apprehensive. Four-hour operas in German are, well, long, especially on a…
-
Chicago Theater Review: THE EXPLORER’S CLUB (Windy City Playhouse in Irving Park)
TALLY LOW Doggedly determined to fight yesterday’s battles, Nell Benjamin’s chronic farce The Explorers Club manically mocks the heyday of male British explorers. Fuddy-duddy adventure seekers with aboriginal blood on their hands, these intrepid trekkers did a lot more than find the source of the Nile; they blazed a trail for imperialism, colonialism, racism and…
-
Dance Preview: CHORÉ (Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa)
A HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT In 1993, H.R.H. the Princess of Hanover appointed Jean-Christophe Maillot as the head of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Backed by his experience as a dancer under Rosella Hightower and Hamburg Ballet’s John Neumeier, Maillot – the previous choreographer-director of the National Choreographic Centre of Tours – has since…
-
Chicago Opera Review: LA VOIX HUMAINE & GIANNI SCHICCHI (Chicago Opera Theater at the Harris)
A DAMNED GOOD PAIRING What could be a more appropriate title for an opera than La Voix Humaine? What better source material for an opera than Dante’s Divina Commedia? Chicago Opera Theatre combines the two in the unusual pairing of Poulenc’s operatic monologue and Puccini’s one-act Gianni Schicchi. It is a surprisingly successful and enjoyable…
-
Opera Preview: THE MAGIC FLUTE (Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
MAGIC STRIKES TWICE IN THE SAME PLACE In 2013, a new production of The Magic Flute from Berlin’s Komische Oper became a sell-out sensation, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera. Now, it returns to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion starting Saturday, February 13, and then playing for six performances only. Directors Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky…
-
Film Review: HAIL, CAESAR! (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)
SQUINTING AT THE GRANDEUR The champion American auteurs of the last thirty years have made it difficult to accept anything from them but greatness. Of seventeen movies Joel and Ethan Coen have written and directed since 1984, at least ten resonate with extraordinary moral power. Three or four are as good as any movie ever…
-
Off-Broadway Theater Review: I AND YOU (59E59)
I AND THEM The performers’ abundant charm can’t overcome the script’s shortcomings in I and You, Lauren Gunderson’s tedious comedic drama about two high schoolers attempting a class project in which they analyze Walt Whitman’s use of pronouns in Leaves of Grass. The premise of this Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award winner is ripe for failure:…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (Cabrillo Music Theatre in Thousand Oaks)
A FUNNY AND NOT-SO FUNNY THING An irresistible mix of Roman “new comedy,” commedia dell’arte, and vaudeville, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rivals The Producers as the funniest musical comedy ever. Cabrillo Music Theatre’s tame-yet-still-diverting revival is fine for the first-time visitor to this once and future 1962 smasheroo. The gags here are…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: CANDIDE (Beverly O’Neill/Center Theater in Long Beach Opera)
COLORFUL COLORATURA IN A CLUNKY CANDIDE There isn’t much I could say about the musical Candide that hasn’t been written about before. Leonard Bernstein created one of our greatest Broadway scores when he – along with Lillian Hellman (book), Richard Wilbur (lyrics) and John Latouche (additional lyrics) – adapted Voltaire’s 1758 novel satirizing the mores…
-
Los Angeles Theater Preview: Harold Pinter’s THE ROOM (The Wooster Group at REDCAT)
CENSORSHIP COMES TO LOS ANGELES The Wooster Group has let Stage and Cinema know that Samuel French, Inc., which manages the United States rights for Harold Pinter’s work, has banned critics from reviewing (or reviewers from criticizing) the world premiere of Wooster’s production of his The Room at REDCAT, opening next week on February 4, 2016 and running through February 14….
-
Chicago Theater Review: THE MAN WHO MURDERED SHERLOCK HOLMES (Mercury Theater Chicago)
TO BAKER STREET AND BEYOND! Not to give anything away but the title character in The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes is not Professor Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime.” In this life-imitates-art parallel to City of Angels and Six Characters in Search of An Author, a character clashes with his creator. So the villain is…
-
Los Angeles Music Preview: SALONEN & BRONFMAN, MAHLER & BEETHOVEN (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
COME HOLLER FOR MAHLER A pair of mind-blowing works meets a stunning pair of artists when the Los Angeles Philharmonic plays a full weekend beginning Friday night, January 29, 2016. LA Phil Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to Disney Hall to lead Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, with soloist Yefim Bronfman, and Mahler’s First Symphony. Beethoven’s first piano…
-
Chicago Theater Review: VICES and VIRTUES (Profiles)
IF BREVITY WAS THE SOUL OF ETHICS: One of the advantages of one-act plays is that if they’re bad, you don’t have to wait long for them to be over. (I can’t ever remember wishing a good play would go on longer.) Fortunately, Neil LaBute’s Vices and Virtues isn’t at all bad. Some of the…
-
Chicago Opera Review: NABUCCO (Lyric Opera)
STAGNANT STAGING AND CRAZY COSTUMES, BUT THE CAST AND CHORUS CAPTIVATE There’s a good reason why Verdi’s operas are typically described as “grand opera.” They’re big and bold, requiring massive orchestras and choruses. Soloists need strong voices with ample range and power. If this makes them somewhat formidable to produce, then Nabucco has a reputation for…
-
Los Angeles Music Review: JESíšS LÒPEZ-COBOS & GARRICK OHLSSON (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
DREAMY There were some noticeable threads in three seemingly disparate works presented at Disney Hall. The program consisted of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony — one of the great listener favorites in the entire canon of Romantic symphonies; Brahms’ impellent, magnificent, and demanding First Piano Concerto; and the West Coast premiere of Spanish composer Cristóbal Halffter’s Tiento…
-
San Diego Theater Review: WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING (Cygnet Theatre)
WHEN IT RAINS, IT SOARS Let’s start with the unavoidable down-side so we can end with the up-side. While Cygnet Theatre’s When the Rain Stops Falling is spectacular, it is terribly complicated and confusing. It’s challenging enough that the 2008 play time-jumps across four generations, sometimes with different actors playing the same character, but Australian playwright Andrew Bovell purposely holds…
-
Chicago Theater Review: THE HAIRY APE (Oracle)
THE DESCENT OF MAN AS DRAMA Another incendiary offering from Oracle Productions, Monty Cole’s bold take on Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape is pugilistic and powerful. In his athletic tour-de-force, a vibrant sextet stomp, leap, clamber, dangle, and swing like the title from stage-wide scaffolding. For all its force and fury, this latest Ape never…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Find beautiful trendy gowns for girls' special events.
Need to order an essay? Hire our top writers to complete the most challenging papers at an affordable rate.
For professional writing support, hire essay writers at Edubirdie for high-quality help.
Discover top-rated Australian online casinos with fair games, fast payouts, and generous bonuses for every type of player.
Explore the best paying pokies Australia games with high RTP and clear bonus terms
