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San Francisco Theater Review: CALL ME MISS BIRDS EYE: A CELEBRATION OF ETHEL MERMAN (A.C.T.)
MAY THIS SHOW NEVER BE FROZEN One of the first rules of etiquette I ever learned was: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Were I inclined to heed that sage advice, my review of Call Me Miss Birdseye: A Celebration of Ethel Merman would end right here. However, as a journalist…
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Regional Theater Preview: THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach)
YOUR PURSUIT IS OVER In writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson borrowed a phrase from 17th century English philosopher John Locke, who spoke of “life, liberty and property,” property perhaps being the key to happiness in the age of servants and nobility. But Locke had plenty to say about happiness in one of his…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
THE DROUGHT ENDS THIS WEEKEND You may know the term “Jukebox Musical” from the ridiculous amount of new Broadway musicals which take previously published songs’”most often popular hits that audiences will recognize’”and squeeze them into a new libretto. The sad truth is that even the dumbest of books is tolerated for rabid fans of the…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga)
THE AMERICANS Tracy Letts wrote a bleak comedy in 2007 that sold a lot of tickets, won a bunch of prizes and ensured his writing career at least a footnote in the big books. August: Osage County is about three generations of a familiarly fucked-up American family – you got your moral weakness, your addiction,…
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Chicago Theater Review: BENT (The Other Theatre Company at Strawdog Theatre)
A DELIVERANCE IN DACHAU Even in the Holocaust’s democracy of death each victim could only die once. But some seem to have died a bit less than others. Remembering the unnumbered thousands of homosexuals killed by Nazi hate more than the six million Jews slaughtered, Martin Sherman‘s still-stirring 1979 drama sums up many losses in…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: LIONEL BRINGUIER CONDUCTS THE LA PHIL (Hollywood Bowl)
THE PYROTECHNICS AFTER THE FOURTH OF JULY As if the blazing heat wave last week wasn’t enough of an indication that summer is upon us, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is opening the first week of its classical season at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s still tough to beat the communal experience of sitting under the stars…
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Chicago Theater Review: VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE (Goodman Theatre)
UNQUIET DESPERATION IN BUCKS COUNTY He’s no longer an angry young playwright and gay avenger, the bad-boy Jeremiah who unleashed scorched-earth provocations (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and Beyond Therapy). The sexagenarian Christopher Durang has momentously mellowed. A take-no-prisoners satirist has softened into a surprisingly kind-hearted and compassionate chronicler of foibles. As…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BEST OF ALBUQUERQUE FRINGE 2025 (Hollywood Fringe Festival)
THE WORST OF THE BEST Let me say that I have no idea what I just saw. Clearly, some very clever folk have come up with the very clever idea to spoof a Fringe Festival, which Fringe Festivals certainly deserve. Two very silly and rarely believable hosts, played by Jacob Smith and Lauren Flans (the…
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Los Angeles Music Review: BIG BAND SWING! (Michael Feinstein and the Pasadena POPS in Arcadia)
IT’S VERY CLEAR, FEINSTEIN IS HERE TO STAY No one can argue that Michael Feinstein has singlehandedly reinvigorated the American Songbook for the 21st century, but this beguiling raconteur is also a consummate showman who is so knowledgeable and adorable that you may just want to pinch his cheeks. This is why he is a…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MAX AND ELSA: NO MUSIC. NO CHILDREN. (Hollywood Fringe Festival)
THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MAX AND ELSA Greetings my lovelies! Garrulous Greta here with some glorious news. You may remember not long ago I received a letter from a fan of The Sound of Music (and who isn’t in love with that glorious 1965 film?’”and if you aren’t we don’t…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: KINKY NEON ROCKER (Hollywood Fringe Festival)
THESE, OUR PLAYWRIGHTS Kinky Neon Rocker is one of those rally-round-the-flag excuses theater people use to put on shows: A beautiful old curved-wood rocking chair, painted in day-glo motley, features six times in six skits. Although six members of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP) wrote a skit each, the writing is fairly consistent,…
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Las Vegas Theater Review: ABSINTHE (Caesars Palace)
DRINK PLENTY OF ABSINTHE BEFORE YOU ATTEND THIS FRAT PARTY Absinthe – an uneasy cross between terrific variety acts and a stag party – takes place near the entrance to Caesars Palace Hotel, in a 600-seat tent; it’s an in-the-round venue that brings viewers close in to the acts (and, for better or worse, to…
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Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: ADA/AVA (3LD Art & Technology Center)
SHADOW (OF A) PLAY Visually striking and radiating love and sincerity, Manual Cinema’s shadow-puppet show Ada/Ava, which attempts to explore septuagenarian Ada’s inner turmoil after the death of her twin sister Ava, leaves one emotionally unsatisfied; for all of the production’s lovely elements the story is dull, the show boring. Ada (Julia Miller) and Ava…
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Chicago Theater Review: MOBY DICK (Lookingglass Theatre Company)
A LEVIATHAN BEACHES ON MICHIGAN AVENUE Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s whale of a tale (or tale of a whale) from 1851, is as unsinkable as its title cetacean. It’s never been more so than in Lookingglass Theatre Company’s summer sensation staged and adapted by David Catlin. In little less than three hours the enthralling panoply…
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San Diego Theater Preview: TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL (The Old Globe)
TWELFTH NIGHT LANDS AT THE OLD GLOBE A comedy’s brewing up in the rehearsal rooms of The Old Globe. Soon, winds will whip, distressed voices will call out and a ship’s timbers will be shivering, cracking, and smashing against a coastline’”all in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre of course. Two castaways’”the lady Viola and the…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE YEARBOOK (Magnum Opus Theatre at the Hollywood Fringe)
MASTERFRINGE THEATRE When Barnaby Hughes reviewed a previous Magnum Opus production of Surf Dogs Unite for Stage and Cinema, he wrote that the show “will leave you doubled over with laughter.” Even knowing my own writers, I somewhat doubted that clichéd statement. But last night, I saw the players take an actual awful screenplay about misfit high…
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Chicago Dance Review: DON QUIXOTE (The Royal Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre)
THE GIFT OF JOY, FROM LONDON TO CHICAGO It’s been 37 years–two generations!–since the Royal Ballet visited Chicago and the Auditorium Theatre. They couldn’t have come bearing a better gift to prove the fondness of absence: Carlos Acosta’s gorgeous, sumptuous, enthralling 2013 staging of one of ballet’s happiest scores and stories. You simply can’t get…
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Tour Theater Review: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (North American Tour)
THE PHANTOM MENACE Last night’s opening of The Phantom of the Opera, a refurbished revival of previous national tours, proves one thing: Since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s baby was born almost 30 years ago in London, the only thing that’s improved is theatrical technology, not aesthetics or storytelling or performers. In an overwrought, overblown production overseen…
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Chicago Theater Review: CITY OF ANGELS (Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire)
STAGE NOIR This non-dancing, Tony-winning, cinematic musical by the terrific trio of jazz composer Cy Coleman, bookwriter Larry Gelbart and lyricist David Zippel brilliantly lampoons Hollywood stereotypes and censorship. It’s a complicated amalgam, skewering the hypocrisy but going soft on the sentiment. City of Angels contrasts a young writer’s film-noir screenplay (“the reality of fiction”)…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MARRY ME A LITTLE (Good People Theater Company at the Hollywood Fringe)
MARRIED TO SONDHEIM When I first saw Marry Me A Little in the mid-1980s, it was a revelation. But not because of the story. This revue uses trunk songs of Stephen Sondheim, songs which–at that time–were relatively unknown (many have since been performed in the show they came from (Saturday Night) or at any given…
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