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Los Angeles Music Review: TCHAIKOVSKYFEST (Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 2; Gustavo Dudamel, Alina Pogostkina & Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra)
THE SIMí“N BOLíVAR SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: A SONIC BOOM The 1812 Overture may be well-known for booming cannons, but conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela really pulled out the big guns when delivering Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 last Friday night. After Alina Pogostkina’s different spin on the oft-played Violin Concerto, the…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: PAINS OF YOUTH (The Cake Shop Theater Company at Access Theater)
THE FRUSTRATED AND THE BORED Watching The Cake Shop Theater Company perform Martin Crimp’s brisk new translation of Ferdinand Bruckner’s sharp 1926 play Pains of Youth, about a group of medical students residing in a boarding house in 1923 Vienna, a thought occurred to me: If the same amount of effort as director Katie Lupica…
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Chicago Theater Review: A TALE OF TWO CITIES (Lifeline Theatre)
FRANCE TRIMS ITS 1% WITH THE GUILLOTINE 2014 has been as good to 1859 as it was to the late 18th century. Christopher M. Walsh’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel’”a saga of unexpected heroism during the French Revolution–is Lifeline Theatre latest page-to-stage triumph. Dickens put faces to history, and in 150 minutes Walsh’s new version…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
STILLED LIFE In 2007, Noël Coward and David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, a somewhat maudlin expansion of the 1936 Coward one-act Still Life, was turned into a stage spectacle by Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre (a production commissioned by Cineworld, David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers). In it, two happily married, middle-class British strangers fall for each other…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: 3 EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCES (L.A. Dance Project at The Theatre at Ace Hotel)
REFLECTIONS ON L.A. DANCE PROJECT The uneven and uninspiring effort presented by L.A. Dance Project last night isn’t bad news; it just means that this nascent company needs to hone its vision if it ever wants to be a world-class company. The perplexing title 3 Exceptional Performances may speak to the company’s ambitions, but the…
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Chicago Theater Review: COCK (Profiles Theatre)
A SEXUAL CAGE FIGHT The punning title’”Cock’”is a heavy clue on what to expect. From the moment you enter, you know you won’t confuse this 80-minute tour de theatre with anything else. Profiles Theatre’s auditorium has been transformed into a cock-fighting amphitheater: Three rows of unpainted wooden bleachers hang above a “cock pit,” one designed…
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Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: BRANCHED, A COMEDY WITH CONSEQUENCES (InViolet Repertory Theater at HERE Arts Center)
A STUMP Sitting through Erin Mallon’s 90-minute play Branched, A Comedy with Consequences, I found myself envying the gentleman who, silently and with the upmost discretion, managed to sneak out of the theater during one of the scene changes; 15 minutes in it is painfully clear that nothing worthwhile will happen on this stage. The…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: VILLON (Odyssey Theatre)
A VILE VILLON MAKES FOR VILLAINOUS VIEWING Art isn’t pretty – and neither is Murray Mednick’s sharp, cynical comedy about the life of the great artistic poet François Villon, who, in 15th century France, wrote some of history’s great romantic poetry, all the while living the life of a boozing, whoring, murderous scoundrel. In the production’s…
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Los Angeles Opera Preview: BILLY BUDD (LA Opera)
THE BLOOMING OF A BUDD IN L.A. Based on Herman Melville’s classic American tale, adapted into a libretto by English novelist E.M. Forster and writer Eric Crozier, Billy Budd tells the story of the persecution and destruction of a pure-hearted sailor by a predatory master-at-arms. It’s a tragedy of “sexual discharge gone evil,” as Forster described it,…
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Chicago Theater Review: BUZZER (Goodman Theatre)
RACIAL PROFILING AND YOU Smoothly staged by Jessica Thebus for the Goodman Theatre local premiere, the blame game reaches Olympic proportions in Tracey Scott Wilson’s wicked two-act troublemaker, Buzzer. Perilously set in a gentrifying neighborhood in New York City, this slick, almost sit-comic, slice-of-change depicts three old friends in dangerous new circumstances. The character contrast…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LOVE, NOí‹L: THE LETTERS AND SONGS OF NOí‹L COWARD (The Wallis)
LOVE WITHOUT THE TRIMMINGS My darling, dearest Noël: It only just occurred to me that I haven’t written you since I saw your play Peace in our Time. Do forgive me, lamb chop. Let me cut to the quick as I write from sun-drenched Beverly Hills and the pool is waiting, even in the middle…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: TIL DIVORCE DO US PART (DR2 Theatre)
LES MS. Conceived, written and choreographed by Ruthe Ponturo, Til Divorce Do Us Part is a collection of musical numbers, each illustrating different aspects of divorce from the point of view of Kate (Erin Maguire), an affluent, white, middle-aged former wife whose husband left her for his young Pilates instructor. Whether or not you enjoy…
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Dallas Opera Review: DEATH AND THE POWERS (The Dallas Opera, screened at the Hammer Museum in L.A.)
THERE’S NOT AN APP FOR THAT Enough already. First, I applaud The Dallas Opera for taking a chance on Tod Machover’s new experimental opera Death and the Powers, as well as the diligent cast and crew. I also commend Los Angeles’ cool new opera company, The Industry, for presenting the “world’s first live interactive opera,” and…
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San Diego Opera Review: THE ELIXIR OF LOVE (San Diego Opera at the Civic Theatre)
THIS ELIXIR IS A TONIC FOR WHAT AILS YOU Some artistic works are such a product of their time that it is difficult for later generations to understand them without spending a considerable amount of time studying the work’s context. Others are immediately recognizable because they resonate easily with contemporary audiences. Gaetano Donizetti’s The Elixir…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: GOING TO ST. IVES (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
A BLESSING FROM BLESSING Playwright Lee Blessing has done a gutsy thing. He puts himself in the head and heart of the mother of a ruthless African dictator who murders and tortures his compatriots with horrifying abandon. Though supremely talented, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Blessing is, after all, a white American far from the horrors that…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HENRY V (Porters of Hellsgate in North Hollywood)
A HAPPY FEW, A HAPPY MANY Just about every Shakespeare production runs the risk of getting a packed house of high school students at least one performance in the run. This situation is always touch-and-go. On a bare black stage with a few chairs, as the Porters of Hellsgate often serve up their war stories,…
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Chicago Theater Review: INTO THE WOODS (The Hypocrites at Mercury Theater)
WHEN PLAYTIME IS OVER Somewhere between “Once Upon a Time” and “Happily Ever After” there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agency; or as a baker’s wife sings in Into the Woods, “If you know what you want, then you go and you find it,…
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Chicago Theater Review: RUSSIAN TRANSPORT (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)
NASTY NESTING DOLLS In Steppenwolf’s new show, it’s the specifics that startle. There’s enough grit here to repave Chicago’s countless February potholes. But, despite its well-rooted situations, Russian Transport could be any immigrant family facing hard decisions between Old Country corruption and an unfulfilled American Dream. A Chicago debut, Erika Sheffer’s disturbed and disturbing two-act…
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San Francisco Theater Review: JERUSALEM (San Francisco Playhouse)
PATOIS, DIALECTS AND DELIVERY LEAVE US IN THE WOODS Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, currently making a West coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse, presents a darkly comic tale from the fringes of society, involving squatters and dope-taking teenagers who are up against soulless cogs in the local government’s bureaucratic wheel. Director Bill English’s ambitious production is…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE UGLY ONE (EST/LA at the Atwater Village Theatre in Glendale)
RICH AND BEAUTIFUL I like a play that vacuums the audience in the wake of its rocket so that we tumble after, happy travelers grateful for the bruises. We bounce and roll along, too ecstatic to imagine stopping as the play flashes and bangs in our guts, in our faces. But we can’t keep up…
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