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Chicago Theater Review: OCTOBER SKY (Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire)
FROM THE MINES TO THE MOON A feel-good story of literal uplift, the new musical October Sky, like the 1999 film, is an anagram of Rocket Boys, the true-life confessional of Homer H. Hickam, Jr. Pushing many buttons, this 150-minute world premiere by Chicagoans Aaron Thielen (book) and actor/composer Michael Mahler (music and lyrics) spins…
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Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: KISS ME OR CUT OFF MY HEAD (Soho Photo Gallery)
ALTRUISM OR ARTISTRY? Margaret’s Safe Place, “a boarding facility that houses the most vulnerable students of The Kibera School for Girls” in Kenya, sheltering girls from domestic sexual violence, will receive 35% of all proceeds’”ticket and beverage sales’”generated by Brooke M. Haney’s Kiss Me or Cut Off My Head. This isn’t a drop in the…
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Chicago Theater Review: THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THE AMERICAN DREAM IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO (Oracle Productions)
WAKING UP FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM The title of Oracle Theatre’s typically invigorating offering, THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THE AMERICAN DREAM IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO, is actually a proposition by the Cambridge Union Debating Chamber (called the “Arena of Ambition”) in February 1965 at England’s famed Cambridge University. Broadcast by National Educational Television…
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Concert Review: ORQUESTA BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (Hollywood Bowl)
A FOND FAREWELL Back in the 1990s, Buena Vista Social Club took the world by storm. The album, inspired by the music played at a Havana members club, both celebrated and cemented the fluid formidability of popular pre-revolution Cuban music performed by Cubans. It sold over five million units worldwide, and notched a Grammy Award…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: SONDHEIM UNSCRIPTED (Impro Theatre at the Falcon in Burbank)
COMEDY TONIGHT More like side-splitting by side-splitting by Sondheim, Impro Theatre–the masters of long-form improvisations in the style of famous authors and genres–are gearing up for an opening night the likes of which you will never see again. Literally. In fact, every night during  the run of Sondheim UnScripted at the Falcon Theater will be opening…
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Los Angeles Art Exhibit Review: THE CLOCK (Christian Marclay at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
TIME, THOU SHALL NOT BOAST Christian Marclay’s 2010 24-hour found-footage movie The Clock really is a clock: The 12,000-clip montage is only shown synchronized to local time, and through September 7 it’s running as an installation during LACMA hours. You can tell time by it. As a philosophical and spiritual reverie, it also tells time…
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Chicago Theater Review: SOUTH PACIFIC (Light Opera Works in Evanston)
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND Whenever it’s revived, it’s hard to imagine a more necessary musical than this 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner. Seventy years after the Japanese surrender, it remains a healing tribute to resilience in adversity and tolerance in the thick of war. Consummate showmen, Rodgers and Hammerstein knew just why Americans need to…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LUKA’S ROOM (Rogue Machine Theatre)
DISILLUSION ON DEMAND In Rob Mersola’s Luka’s Room, Nick Marini plays a blithe, typical, technology-addicted college sophomore who has a rough summer after his father stops paying Arizona State tuition. Luka has to move in with his senile grandmother (Joanna Lipari) and pot-dealer ex-con uncle (Alex Fernandez). The kid’s fall from an upper-middle-class dorm to…
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Cabaret Review: AN EVENING OF CLASSIC BROADWAY (Rockwell Table & Stage)
GREAT, BUT NOT ALWAYS CLASSIC According to Time Out London, the term “cabaret” represents an overlapping group of constantly mutating forms of performance that can’t be pinned down–an art form that borders with everything on the artistic map–cross-fertilizing music, comedy, variety, circus, burlesque, live art, theatre, dance, clubbing, and even cinema (if we look at…
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Los Angeles Dance Preview: THE SEASONS (American Contemporary Ballet premiere at the Farmers and Merchants Bank in downtown)
TIS THE SEASONS Not unlike Timothy Leary and LSD, I have been turning people on to ACB for similar reasons. In an increasingly complicated world, one needs a stimulant to reinforce a sense of what is important. American Contemporary Ballet’”with its original programming, live accompanying chamber music, sterling dancers, and the best corps de ballet…
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Theater Review: UP HERE (La Jolla Playhouse)
THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON UP HERE It’s an idea whose time has already come this summer, and with far superior results. In fact, the character of Lindsay, a t-shirt designer who has fallen for the analytical nerdy computer whiz Dan, mentions on their first date the enormously successful Disney’¢Pixar film Inside Out, which chronicles the…
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San Diego Theater Review: BASKERVILLE: A SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY (The Old Globe)
YOU CAN GO HOLMES AGAIN It turns out that you can teach an old dog new tricks, proven by The Old Globe’s contemporary stage-spoof treatment of the classic 1901 Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Longtime fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literature need not be skeptical: While Ken Ludwig’s adaptation’”in which three…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: REPLICA (Urban Theatre Movement at Asylum Lab)
REAL THING I hate it when people talk about the need to “support” a good cause. Guilt is simply bad salesmanship. It kills it for me. It killed Save-the-Whales, and it sure didn’t work in time for Cecil the Lion. I heard part of a KPFK pledge-drive recently that demanded a weep-track to underscore its…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE BOY FROM OZ (Pride Films and Plays at Stage 773)
RISING UP FROM DOWN UNDER 23 years ago, mega-entertainer Peter Allen died of AIDS. But The Boy from Oz is the story of a survivor. The self-made star refused to be stifled by the Australian country town of Tenterfield or a drunk, suicidal dad. Encouraged by an unconditionally loving mom, the gay, blond singer-composer moved…
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Los Angeles Music Review: JAMIE CULLUM/SOULIVE/ LISA FISCHER (Hollywood Bowl)
UNWIELDY TRIAD The trifecta of performers at the Hollywood Bowl last night was given a strange reaction by the well-attended crowd. Whether it was during the sets of soulstress Lisa Fischer, funk/jazz trio Soulive, or big-band innovator Jaime Cullum, the inordinate amount of talking, moving, boisterous, and cell-phone playing patrons astounded me. I think that…
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Tour Theater Review: KURIOS (Cirque du Soleil)
CIRQUE DU FIN DE SIÈCLE This is a snazzy and pizzazz-packed blast from the past: Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities draws its whimsical magic from the “steampunk” style that melds Victorian design with intricately elaborate (and often useless) industrial gadgetry of the Rube Goldberg persuasion. To this all-morphing mindset, everything can become a machine–the pulleys and fly…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Independent Shakespeare Co.)
AND NOW, WITH FURTHER ADO: Not only is it one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but Much Ado About Nothing contains a favorite character: Dogberry. This bumbling constable arrives much later in the play than the famous sparring couple’”Beatrice and Benedick’”and adds an enormous amount of comic energy to a play that is already awash…
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Chicago Theater Review: SUBURBIA (Level 11 Productions at the Athenaeum Theatre)
THE NEW DEAD-END KIDS It’s easy to hate the surly slackers in subUrbia, Eric Bogosian’s slice of strife. In this 1994 play, they infest the parking lot of a 7-Eleven’”now changed to a Quickie Mart’”in the bedroom burg of Burnfield, the “pizza and puke capital of the world.” (I guess the mall is too genteel.)…
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Theater Review: ALWAYS…PATSY CLINE (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
A FINE CLINE Patsy Cline couldn’t be more fondly or accurately recalled than by Cori Cable Kidder in Robert Marra’s production of Always…Patsy Cline, the oft-produced 1990 paean to the once and future crossover country icon who made audiences “fall to pieces.” Written and originally directed by Ted Swindley, this tribute—equal parts play, concert and…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT (Hollywood Bowl)
THE HOLY GRAIL OF SILLINESS It’s been 40 years since the release of the landmark comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail and 33 years since the British sketch comedy troupe recorded Live at the Hollywood Bowl. The two events collided last night when the 2005 Broadway musical Spamalot, which original Python member Eric Idle “lovingly ripped…
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