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Los Angeles Theater Preview: COMPANY (Cabrillo Music Theatre in Thousand Oaks)
IN GOOD COMPANY “It’s a revue, but not a revue,” Stephen Sondheim said about Company when he was interviewed at Segerstrom in 2013. This surprised me because the groundbreaking 1970 musical is a concept musical, meaning that the themes of a show (in this case, marriage and commitment) are woven throughout the play, but do…
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Chicago Theater Review: MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY (Theater Wit)
LET THERE BE DARK In endurance sagas such as Lord of the Flies and The Blue Lagoon, stranded youngsters on deserted islands try to reimagine civilization by mimicking adult classics, or else surrender to the anarchy that underlies’”and undermines’”innocence. A similar phenomenon happens in Anne Washburn’s post-apocalyptic fantasy Mr. Burns, a Midwest premiere from Theater…
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Los Angeles Dance Preview: FUMBLING TOWARDS ECSTASY (Alberta Ballet at Royce Hall, UCLA)
A TAB OF ECSTASY Following Alberta Ballet’s triumphant tributes to the music of Canadian legend Joni Mitchell and England’s international superstars Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, a “pop-fusion” ballet, features the music of Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan, whose melodious music is the inspiration and soundtrack to this beautiful performance. The company…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE ROSE TATTOO (Shattered Globe Theatre at Theater Wit)
CAUGHT IN TENNESSEE’S WALTZ An opera disguised as a play, Tennessee Williams’ 1951 labor of longings The Rose Tattoo is the first and last word on heartbreak. The master made a good choice to tell it through vibrant, hot-blooded Sicilian-Americans living on the sultry Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Mobile. These sometimes stereotypical survivors…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE BOOK OF MERMAN (Pride Films and Plays at Mary’s Attic and Apollo Studio)
SING OUT, ETHEL! What a difference a vowel makes! After his catchy title The Book of Merman, it seems that Leo Schwartz’ delightful world premiere musicale practically wrote itself: You just follow the formula, “Fish Out of Water meets Irrepressible Icon.” Mormon missionaries on a two-year stint to convert more Latter Day Saints, young Elders Aaron Shumway…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: THE WOODSMAN (Strangemen & Co.)
WIZARDLY THEATER THAT COMES WITH A HEART The Woodsman, James Ortiz’s delightful and dark invention, which he stars in and co-directs with Claire Karpen, dramatizes the story of how the Tin Man of the Oz books, who started out human, came to be made of metal. It is a sad and wonderful tale of love…
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Chicago Theater Review: KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (Stage Left Theatre at Theater Wit)
ONE MIRACLE TOO MANY A very righteous offering from Stage Left Theatre, Penny Penniston’s world premiere Keys of the Kingdom is a well-intentioned attempt to build bridges between ideological opposites: a creative lesbian muralist and the self-appointed men of God who run a repressive evangelical megachurch. The play’s point, it seems, is that our humanity’”as…
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Chicago Theater Review: SCARY TALES 2015 (Clock Productions at the Alley Stage)
HIT AND MISS SEMI-HORROR Calling your 75-minute compilation Scary Stories 2015 puts the premium on terror, a concept or condition that’s hard to compete with real life. In the thoughtfully paradoxical style of the dusky Twilight Zone series, which can offer food for fear as much as thought, these eight sketches’”written, adapted and directed by…
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Chicago Theater Review: FATHER RUFFIAN: SHAKESPEARE’S FALSTAFF STORY (City Lit)
FALSTAFF LITE There’s potent psychology operating inside Shakespeare’s two-part Henry IV, the twin tales of a false father and a false son. The latter is Prince Hal, the fiery rebel whose Spartan-pure rage against his father, Henry IV, makes daddy (formerly “Bolingbroke”) wish that the rebel Henry Percy (“Hotspur”) was his son and not Hal, the current Prince…
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L. A. THEATER FAVORITES, 2014
A YEAR OF ECSTATIC MOMENTS Last year, as ever, I missed what I am told was some of the best theater that went up in Southern California. I don’t know what’s Best or Most. I saw shows that knocked me out and shows that didn’t. It is always a profound inspiration to see people do…
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Film Review: FORCE MAJEURE (directed by Ruben Östlund)
WARMTH FROM SNOW A photogenic family on a skiing holiday makes a terrible discovery during an avalanche, when one of the parents reveals a potentially dangerous lack of character. The kids are traumatized, and the family undergoes a crisis of faith. The shamed one and the frightened partner are counseled if not comforted by friends…
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Los Angeles Opera Preview: ¡FIGARO! (90210) (LA Opera at Barnsdall Park in Hollywood)
¡FIGARO! ¡FIGARO! ¡FIGARO! An updating of The Marriage of Figaro took New York by storm in 2013. Taking the debate over immigration reform, a multi-cultural English/Spanglish adaptation by Vid Guerrerio turns the title character into an undocumented worker at a present-day Beverly Hills mansion owned by a slimy real-estate tycoon. Having been given concert and…
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Event Preview: KODO ONE EARTH TOUR: MYSTERY (North American Tour)
A POUND OF CURE Ever since man could bang a stick on a rock, percussion has been a way for humans to express themselves. From your teenager’s bedroom to the battlefield to the theater, percussion has evolved from communicative and ritualistic purposes into an art form. We take for granted the use of percussion as…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: DANIIL TRIFONOV & GIDON KREMER IN RECITAL (Disney Concert Hall)
TRIFONOV MAKES DISNEY HALL DEBUT All it took was one performance from 23-year-old Daniil Trifonov to resoundingly validate why he is the current Big Thing of the piano world. The Liszt-like master’s rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Hollywood Bowl (followed by a jaw-dropping encore of Stravinsky’s Firebird for piano) convinced me…
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Film Review: GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (ADIEU AU LANGAGE) (Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)
EVERYTHING NEW WAVE IS OLD AGAIN I have never enjoyed watching a dog roll in shit as much as I did in the middle of Goodbye to Language. Every other time, I’ve been as horrified as any anal retentive bourgeois. But this Jean-Luc Godard essay, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and the National…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: BEETHOVEN’S MISSA SOLEMNIS (Michael Tilson Thomas and the LA Phil)
THE GREATEST PIECE NEVER HEARD Missa Solemnis is one of Beethoven’s last works, and one of his greatest. He labored over it for four years (the most time he ever gave to composing), and then wrote on the completed score, “From the heart, may it go further to the heart!” While the epic Solemn Mass…
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Regional Music Preview: AUGUSTIN HADELICH & TCHAIKOVSKY’S VIOLIN CONCERTO (Pacific Symphony in Costa Mesa)
HOT AUGUSTIN NIGHT In the past five years, I have encountered only a handful of fresh-to-the-scene classical soloists who completely enraptured’”those who combine the old-school magnetic quality of superlative technique with energetic experimentation, soul, and discovery. Among the electrifying performers that have made me literally lean forward in my seat are cellist Alisa Weilerstein and…
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Film Preview: THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO (Arena Cinema in Hollywood)
BETTER THAN 3-D Racking up an impressive 92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, Ian Cheney’s The Search for General Tso is arriving steaming hot in limited release on Jan 2. This mouthwateringly entertaining film travels the globe to unravel a captivating culinary mystery. General Tso’s chicken is a staple of Chinese-American cooking, and a ubiquitous presence…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: PACIFIC TRIO (Le Salon de Musiques at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
PACIFIC TRIO AND TWO U. S. PREMIERES Le Salon de Musiques’ fifth season’”the “Masters Rediscovered” series’”continues in the new year with the Pacific Trio. Having just returned from performances in Europe and Russia, Edith Orloff (piano), John Walz (cello), and Roger Wilkie (violin) will play two Léon Boëllmann U.S. premieres and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Trio…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH PINK MARTINI (Disney Hall)
HERE’S YOUR NEW YEAR’S EVE COCKTAIL Last year, Pink Martini’”having brilliantly executed an extended song list covering at least a dozen styles of music sung in eight different languages’”turned the Hollywood Bowl into a festive party which involved the audience dancing in one giant conga line. With a clever, daring, delightful, masterful, and sophisticated concoction…
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