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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE QUEEN FAMILY’S VERY SPECIAL HOLIDAY SPECIAL (The Actors’ Gang)
A HIT-AND-MISS HOLIDAY HYBRID IS AT LEAST MORE HO HO THAN HO HUM Silliness and charm reign supreme in The Actors’ Gang’s original Christmas show, The Queen Family’s Very Special Holiday Special. As with their Atomic Holiday Free Fall (2011), the troupe has created a framing narrative to loosely lace together a series of musical…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PETER AND THE STARCATCHER (Ahmanson Theatre)
FROM THE DECK OF THE H.M.S. CYNIC Remember when George Lucas took the awesome, mystical enigma of The Force and shrank it to the antiseptic science of midi-chlorians, essentially just a kind of microbe? A similar literalism has infected J.M. Barrie’s Never Never Land. Fairy dust has been replaced by star stuff, a sort of…
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San Francisco Dance Preview: XXMAS: THE CHRISTMAS BALLET, 2013 EDITION (Smuin Ballet)
THIS SEASON, SMUIN IS A SHOO-IN It’s such a beautifully simple idea that I often ponder why great dance companies don’t offer a seasonal treat as the Bay Area’s Smuin Ballet does. Instead of the same yearly program (you know, that Tchaikovsky chestnut), Michael Smuin created The Christmas Ballet, a changeable program which is divided…
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Chicago Theater Review: AN INSPECTOR CALLS (Remy Bumppo at Greenhouse Theatre Center)
CONSCIENCE KEEPING IN A CRACKLING PLOT Taut, true and richly wrought, this 1945 potboiler by unashamed socialist playwright J.B. Priestley remains, three generations later, a clarion call to a new century. Juicy with relentless revelations about a patrician clan who rule provincial Brumley, England, it’s just as much a wake-up call for social responsibility and…
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Regional / Los Angeles Music Preview: THE MANHATTAN TRANSFER HOLIDAY CONCERT (Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa)
MANHATTAN TRANSFERS TO ORANGE COUNTY FOR THE HOLIDAYS When it comes to vocal power, the jazz-pop quartet consisting of Alan Paul, Janis Siegel, Tim Hauser and Cheryl Bentyne, better-known as The Manhattan Transfer, have certainly set the industry standard for tightly wound harmonies. The amazing part is that as they approach their 40th anniversary (Bentyne…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: LESLIE JORDAN: SHOW PONY (L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Renberg Theatre)
JOCKEY-SIZED JORDAN REMAINS A COMICAL CLYDESDALE Have you ever been to a sultry party that has the oppressive feel of a languid, humid day in the Deep South, only to have the energy shift dramatically when a raconteur blows in like a refreshing breeze off the Gulf Coast? Usually, it is someone who can recount…
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San Francisco Dance Preview: THE NUTCRACKER (San Francisco Ballet)
SUPPORTING TRADITION Whereas other major companies trot out their tried-and-true but tired old annual cash-cow renditions of The Nutcracker, San Francisco Ballet’s version is a gift that makes me anticipate the holiday season. With no shortage of overblown and underwhelming productions of this holiday chestnut, SF Ballet, the country’s oldest professional ballet company and the…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: KURT WEILL AT THE CUTTLEFISH HOTEL (Santa Monica Pier)
OVER THE DARK HARBOR WATER Walking a cold, mostly deserted Santa Monica Pier on the way to this show, I passed a photographer’s booth blaring the Azealia Banks song about “cunt getting eaten.” A Brechtian juxtaposition: the family-friendly commercial beacon of the Pacific Park Ferris Wheel, reduced to a giant neon vagina inviting and enveloping…
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Chicago Dance Review: THE NUTCRACKER (Joffrey Ballet at Auditorium Theatre)
JOFFREY’S JOYOUS JEWEL Now in its 26th annual presentation, the late Robert Joffrey’s evergreen staging of Peter IlyichTchaikovsky’s beloved Christmas ballet blesses both the Auditorium Theatre and the dance pilgrims who flock to it, eager to be astonished. Still sumptuous with Oliver Smith’s lavish and fast-paced scenery, based on the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PARFUMERIE (Bram Goldsmith Theater in Beverly Hills)
EXPENSIVE VANILLA-SCENTED PERFUME For its inaugural stage dramatic production at the glittering new Bram Goldsmith Theater, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is presenting a charming candy box of a play that seems as much as an audition piece for the venue as it is a night of stagecraft in its own right. …
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Opera Review: THE MAGIC FLUTE (1927 Theatre Company and LA Opera)
AN ANIMATED AND LIVELY FLUTE The Magic Flute was written specifically for the common man, and thus was structured as an exaggerated amusement so that special effects could be employed. Mozart’s accessible music is among the most popular in the repertoire; it’s youthfully melodious yet stretches for transcendent classicism. Emmanuel Schikaneder’s libretto is known as…
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Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (…blessed unrest…at the Interart Theatre)
A LOVELY INNOVATIVE STAGING OF AN OLD FAVORITE Theater artistry overcomes budgetary constraints in Jessica Burr’s delightful and poignant staging of A Christmas Carol, from Matt Opatrny’s admirable adaptation of Dickens’ novella. Six actors play over seventeen characters in this classic tale of redemption, in which Ebenezer Scrooge, a lonely old miser, is shown the…
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Chicago Music Review: MAKING SPIRITS BRIGHT (Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus)
A GAY CHRISTMAS ALL OVER CHICAGOLAND In a major first, the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus just performed its Christmas concert at the prestigious Harris Theatre at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. You can’t get more visible or prominent than this’”and it ain’t over yet. Today the CGMC moves to the ‘burbs to sing at the…
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San Francisco Theater Review: THE GOLDEN GIRLS: THE CHRISTMAS EPISODES (Trannyshack at the Victoria Theater)
THANK YOU FOR BEING A DRAG QUEEN Now at the Victoria Theatre, Trannyshack’s drag version of classic holiday-themed The Golden Girls episodes seems to grow in popularity every year. Since its inception in 2005 when it was performed for a select crowd of friends, it has outgrown the living room and two subsequent South of…
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London Dance Preview: THE NUTCRACKER (Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House; screened nationwide by NCM Fathom Events)
A BEAMED DREAM As with most fairy tales, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), has some gruesome aspects. With a freakish, seven-headed Mouse King, his squished mother, and frightening violence inflicted upon an infant, young Marie Stahlbaum’s adventures with her beloved Christmas toy can easily be viewed as a nightmare….
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Los Angeles Theater Review: DALLAS NON-STOP (Playwrights’ Arena at Atwater Village Theater)
WOULD YOU LIKE COFFEE, TEA OR THE AMERICAN DREAM? Sometimes we take a short vacation just to get away from it all. A few days. No big tourist attractions or monumental natural sites are necessary. Just a pleasant little excursion with the benefits of some local color, even in a far-off land, where you can…
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Chicago Theater Review: WE THREE LIZAS (About Face Theatre at Stage 773)
SOME SOULS THWART SAVING We Three Lizas, last year’s in-your-face gay holiday hit, is back with a purportedly new book and an expanded score. Relocated from the Steppenwolf Garage to Stage 773 (where the inferior acoustics of this unmiked show take their toll), it’s as iridescent as a migraine and unstoppably funky. Doggedly insistent on…
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Chicago Theater Review: SANDYLAND (MCA)
TO KNOW, KNOW, KNOW HER: Singer, comedienne and anti-glam diva Sandra Bernhard thrives on delightfully toying with her adoring throngs. I remember the first time I saw her on the David Letterman show when she snarled into the mic: “It’s that time of the month again.” When the audience responded with nervous titters, she nailed…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: NUTCRACKER ROUGE (Minetta Lane Theatre)
A BEAUTIFUL SHELL WITHOUT A NUT A show can be forgiven many things when its characters are compelling and its dramatics are solid; if the audience is emotionally involved in the fate of the personages, they won’t notice or won’t so much care about the little problems, the little mistakes. Conversely, if we have nothing…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: STAGE AND CINEMA’S TOP FIVE HOLIDAY CHORALE CONCERT PICKS, 2013
A CULLED CORRAL OF CHORALISTS You think that deciding which Nutcracker to see this holiday season is daunting? Selecting which vocal concert to attend is an even tougher nut to crack. Whether amateur or professional, containing sacred pieces or hummable traditionals, accompanied by orchestra or just piano, the list of worthy contenders in the Los…
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