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Los Angeles Theater Review: ABE LINCOLN’S PIANO (Geffen Playhouse)
SIC SEMPER BORE-ANNUS This solo musical effort by musician performer Hersey Felder has all the trappings of a work that is rich with worthy subject matter and culture. Peppered with songs from what we’d charitably call “the American songbook” (Gershwin, Stephen Foster, Louie Gottschalk), Abe Lincoln’s Piano is Felder’s tightly crafted autobiography, which is somehow threaded…
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Regional / Chicago Theater Review: END OF THE RAINBOW (Milwaukee Rep)
A FOGGY PLAY IN LONDON TOWN Should a play seemingly designed and targeted specifically for Judy Garland devotees have the right to be held to a different standard than a play for the public at large? That’s the question you’ll need to ponder before attending Milwaukee Rep’s production of End of the Rainbow. If you…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: LES BALLETS JAZZ DE MONTRÉAL (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
MORE JAZZ, PLEASE Interestingly, the work that opened Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal’s program last night at the Bram Goldsmith Theater in the brand new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts was “Closer,” a 2006 duet by Benjamin Millepied. This globe-trotting dance-maker is the founding director of our own L.A. Dance Project, that tony,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: BUNK (Son of Semele)
UNFINISHED BUSINESS Son of Semele’s 4th annual Company Creation Festival presents new works by nascent Los Angeles troupes. The festival’s first offering, Bunk, is what you’d expect from such a venue: a lot of youthful energy in service of a promising voice. That the play doesn’t make much sense at this point may be less…
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Los Angeles Cabaret Review: LAURA BENANTI: IN CONSTANT SEARCH OF THE RIGHT KIND OF ATTENTION (Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID The two most important aspects of the right kind of cabaret act are the singer and the songs. But when you go to see Laura Benanti’s new cabaret In Constant Search of the Right Kind of Attention at Catalina Bar & Grill (if you can get tickets to her last performance…
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Chicago Theater Review: GHOST – THE MUSICAL (National Tour at the Oriental Theatre)
PARANORMAL PASSION Love can conquer death. That potent wishful thinking was why audiences gobbled up the popular 1990 film Ghost. It also explains why it was turned into a musical, which has gone from West End to Broadway (Stage and Cinema’s review) to a National Tour. While it is a tepid spin-off, the opening last night…
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Los Angeles/Regional Theater Preview: CHANCE THEATER’S 2014 SEASON (Chance Theater in Anaheim)
TAKE A CHANCE Merrily We Roll Along is a notoriously difficult musical to get right. Even with Sondheim’s magnificent score, the nature of the show’”its lopsided cynicism and moving-back-in-time device’”has hampered every production I have seen. Except one. And while I truly loved Chocolate Factory’s small-scale West End revival, which screened nationwide last October, Chance…
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Los Angeles Concert Review: SALUTE TO VIENNA NEW YEAR’S CONCERT (Walt Disney Concert Hall)
VIENNA SAUSAGE Salute to Vienna is a light-hearted event which reenacts the ridiculously popular New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic (a.k.a. Neujahrskonzert). The inoffensive, fun, and slightly cheesy potpourri includes costumed dancers, opera singers, and an orchestra that plays the waltzes and polkas of Johann Strauss Jr. and his contemporaries. Figures vary, but the…
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Film Review: INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR. (Directed by James Franco and Travis Mathews)
EXTERIOR. NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. The 1980 William Friedkin movie Cruising sent Al Pacino undercover for the NYPD, threatened not by other cops as in Serpico but by the gay S&M scene. The butch detective questions his own persona once he starts identifying with the “other,” providing the story’s real interest within a banal cops-and-robbers framework. …
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Regional Theater Preview: TRUDY AND MAX IN LOVE (South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
AN UNCONVENTIONAL ROMANCE Meet Max, a celebrity novelist who is single, and Trudy, a happily married woman who is working on a new novel. They meet in a writer’s room and form a fast friendship that leads to a complicated affair. In the world premiere of her play Trudy and Max in Love, Zoe Kazan…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: ONE STARRY NIGHT (Pasadena Playhouse)
MORE LIKE ONE STARRY STARRY STARRY NIGHT If anybody knows how to put together a night of eclectic songs and singers, it’s Bruce Kimmel. While he has created some terrific revues, this prolific producer, playwright and performer has been the driving force behind cast albums, vocal albums, and (a personal favorite of mine) an original…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SUNNY AFTERNOON (Gangbusters Theatre Company)
CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND THEATER LOVERS, UNITE! Remember E. Howard Hunt? This intelligence officer was one of Nixon’s White House Plumbers, that clandestine band of operatives who were assigned to fix any of those nasty little security “leaks” emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Hunt, along with G. Gordon Liddy, plotted a burglary at the Democratic National…
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CD Review/Original Cast: I AM HARVEY MILK (San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus)
I AM EXHILARATED In 1978, on the night of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone’s assassinations, an unprecedented candlelight march brought mourners to San Francisco’s City Hall. The newly formed San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus canceled a rehearsal for their upcoming debut concert and opted to perform at the makeshift memorial service. It was there…
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CD Review/Cabaret: IN CONSTANT SEARCH OF THE RIGHT KIND OF ATTENTION: LIVE AT 54 BELOW (Laura Benanti)
CABARET SAUVIGNON She received a Tony nomination for both the Broadway revue Swing! and for playing Cinderella in the revival of Into the Woods. She won a Tony for portraying Louise in the Patti LuPone revival of Gypsy. She soloed in Andrew Lippa’s world premiere of the song cycle I Am Harvey Milk. Recently, she…
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San Francisco Theater Review: STOREFRONT CHURCH (SF Playhouse)
DIME STORE PROPAGANDA One of the problems with watching a play that has an agenda, political or otherwise, is the difficulty of enjoying with a good conscience even those parts that work; knowing the playwright’s intentions to be dishonest (in that he’s serving up propaganda as art), one feels foolish being affected emotionally, as though…
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Los Angeles Theater Commentary: BEST OF LOS ANGELES THEATER, 2013
MY FAVORITE NIGHTS Looking back over a year’s playgoing, it’s every bit as easy to be jaded about little broke theaters as it is about big grant-eaters. Little broke theaters are constant trials of inconvenience for an audience member – you share a bathroom with the cast; you’re confused by the stage-house configuration; you have…
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Chicago Theater Remount: THE MOTHER (Oracle)
ORACLE’S THE MOTHER GETS A WELL-DESERVED REMOUNT My annual theater sojourn to the Windy City this year was a bit of a let down. Spoiled by previous pilgrimages, in which no less than 50% of the theater I saw astounded me, this trip yielded scant results (excepting a few great musical revivals). The final show…
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CD Review/Pop: LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY (Alexis Gershwin)
ISN’T IT A PITY? Alexis Gershwin not only comes from a family of Show Biz royalty, but royalties: The song catalog of her uncles George and Ira Gershwin’”according to Los Angeles Times’”generates about $8 million a year. The treasure-trove of tunes created by the Gershwin brothers between the early 1920s and 1937, when George died,…
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Los Angeles Music Review: A SWINGIN’ CHRISTMAS (The Count Basie Orchestra)
IT’S CHRISTMAS, CATS Since its inception in 1935, the Count Basie Orchestra has not just outlived the era in which it was spawned, but has remained a well-oiled machine of Big Band jazz, even after Basie’s death in 1984. After a bit of a sputter with sound issues and energy, their holiday concert last night…
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Los Angeles Music Review: LE SALON DE MUSIQUES – GLIÈRE & GRIEG (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
A STUNNING PREMIERE OF A GLIÈRE QUARTET I’ve had ravishing experiences before with Le Salon de Musiques, the premium music outlet which presents sterling chamber music concerts, but the two String Quartets on December 8 offered the most transporting, pleasurable, awe-inspiring, invigorating, relaxing, emotional and meditative experience I have had all year. Founding artistic director François…
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