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Broadway Theater Review: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER (Walter Kerr Theatre)
WHAT’S FUNNIER THAN MURDER? As a critic I’m embarrassed to gush but I must confess I gave my first standing ovation last night to honor Jefferson Mays who plays all eight unfortunate members of the D’Ysquith family in Steven Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman’s musical comedy A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Mr. Mays…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: ANTON, NEKO, KURI (REDCAT)
EXPERIMENT SANS CONTROL GROUP In 2012, Tokyo-based company Faifai decided to bring its 2009 movement-and-language assembly Anton, Neko, Kuri to international audiences. In a move she revealingly describes as “marketing,” director Chiharu Shinoda (with the help of stage designer Ayami Sasaki) imposed a huge projection screen dwarfing the four performers, upon which to project animated…
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Chicago Theater Review: POLAROID STORIES (First Floor Theater)
LEGENDS OF THE HOMELESS As the title suggests, Naomi Iizuka’s uncompromising drama exposes snapshots of the urban underbelly. It focuses, so to speak, on homeless kids, prostitutes and hustlers, and the occasional Greek hero or god, such as Orpheus and Eurydice, who wander very plausibly into their midst. As recorded by the playwright 16 years…
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London Dance Review: ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (The Royal Ballet)
BALLET THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Royal Ballet’s first full-length story ballet since 1995, received mixed reviews but was nonetheless an audience-pleasing success when it premiered in 2011. It returned in all its glory this year and a performance from March, 2013 was beamed to more than 500 cinemas…
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San Francisco Theater Review: PETER/WENDY (Custom Made Theatre Co.)
GET THE HOOK The story of Peter Pan, about that mischievous little flying boy who doesn’t want to grow up, has been told in numerous forms since J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play and subsequent 1911 novel Peter and Wendy. The adventures of the Lost Boys and the Darling children was musicalized for Broadway in 1954, with…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WE’RE GONNA DIE (Ivy Substation in Culver City)
TWEE OF KNOWLEDGE New York downtowner Young Jean Lee’s 2011 rock concert-with-monologues We’re Gonna Die begins very well – at Wednesday’s Los Angeles premiere, a horrifyingly sad story had the audience breathless within a couple of minutes. The show ends with a thoughtful flourish, choreographed with disarming physicality by Faye Driscoll and enthusiastically directed by…
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Bay Area Theater Preview: TRISTAN & YSEULT (Kneehigh Theatre Company at Berkeley Rep)
KNEEHIGH RETURNS TO BERKELEY REP I wonder if Bay Area residents know how ridiculously lucky they are to have Berkeley Rep, a regional theater so prestigious that Britain’s Kneehigh Theatre is bringing Tristan & Yseult, their latest hit show from the UK, to the Rep’s Roda Theatre. This ancient tale of forbidden desires, broken hearts,…
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San Francisco and Tour Theater Review: AMALUNA (Cirque du Soleil)
OVER THE MOON A big top with a 13-meter stage, despite its yawning spatial dimensions, hardly seemed big enough to contain the amount of sheer artistry, astounding gymnastic physicality, slapstick humor, mythology, classic literature, contemporary music and dazzling delight that make up Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna, a tribute to the voice and work of women….
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: ONE NIGHT… (Cherry Lane Theater)
NOTHING IF NOT INTENSE The night their shelter burns down, two homeless Iraqi war veterans, Horace and Alicia, both suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, are given vouchers to stay the night in a seedy motel, where they are menaced by past horrors and villains from the present. Such is the premise of Charles Fuller’s…
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Music Preview: ZIMMERMANN PLAYS DVOŘÁK (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
THE WORDS BEHIND THE MUSIC Just like anyone else, I occasionally turn to critics when choosing to attend a particular concert. The reports about German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann playing Antonín Dvořák’s seldom-heard Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last year were so stellar that I have no choice but to see him perform…
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San Francisco Music Preview: NATALIE COLE WITH THE SF SYMPHONY (Davies Hall)
NATALIE CON GUSTO Yes, she’s the daughter of jazz legend Nat “King” Cole, but I’ve been a fan of Natalie Cole’s since she burst on the scene in 1976 with her hit single and album I’ve Got Love on My Mind (her dance song, “Dangerous,” is still on my iPod). She won a whole new…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: TWELVE ANGRY MEN (Pasadena Playhouse)
CHEAPENED BY THIS DOZEN Words such a “tolerance” and “acceptance” are bandied about as America continues a national dialogue on race, oversimplifying the subject of prejudice. Sadly, political correctness has tainted our conversation, and I believe as a white man that the freedom to express my honest feelings on the subject has been restricted, even…
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San Francisco Opera Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE (San Francisco Opera)
STROP THE PRESSES! A NEW RAZOR-SHARP BARBER COMES TO TOWN Gioachino Rossini’s frolicsome 1816 comic opera The Barber of Seville is superbly realized with ebullience and verve in San Francisco Opera’s new production. The first night cast (one of two) was a sparkling SF Opera debut for both Mexican tenor Javier Camarena as Count Almaviva and zesty…
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San Francisco Theater Review: MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (New Conservatory Theatre Center)
A BEAUTIFUL ADAPTATION The British indie My Beautiful Laundrette was praised when it came out for its multi-layered portrait of the immigrant experience, and is now best remembered for Daniel Day Lewis’s screen debut, not to mention putting Channel Four Films and director Stephen Frears on the map. Adapted for the stage by Andy Graham…
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Los Angeles Music Review: BEETHOVEN: PASTORAL HANS GRAF, CONDUCTOR / ALESSIO BAX, PIANO (Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra)
MUSICAL NATURE It isn’t so uncommon when an up-and-coming piano player has all the right moves but has yet to incorporate personality into their work. Making his Los Angeles premiere with the L.A. Chamber Orchestra last night, Italian pianist Alessio Bax demonstrated a youthful command of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, but lacked the oomph…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LOVE ON SAN PEDRO (Cornerstone at LA Mission)
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, SKID You want to hear some of the freshest, funniest dialogue in town? Head over to Cornerstone’s world premiere of Love on San Pedro. James McManus’s script was developed via personal interviews he had with Skid Row denizens, so the stories in the play take place in this one square mile…
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Chicago Theater Review: AUTUMN PASSION (River North Dance Company)
FOR THE RECORD With only a matinee remaining today, it’s soon to be history, but this River North Dance Chicago is offering some stunning steps at the Harris Theater in their annual fall engagement, which includes two world premieres. The first, Get Out The Ghost, with choreography by Ashley Roland, delivers a seemingly chaotic tapestry…
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Los Angeles Music Review: SHOSTAKOVICH FIFTH WITH TOVEY (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
TOVEY SLAMS DOWN THE FIFTH A funny thing happened on the way to witty raconteur and conductor Bramwell Tovey’s presentation of his Songs of the Paradise Saloon featuring trumpet soloist Alison Balsom at Disney Hall last Sunday: I came for this newer concerto but ended up being blown away by his ecstatic interpretation of Shostakovich’s…
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Chicago Theater Review: APPROPRIATE (Victory Gardens Theater)
A NEST OF VIPERS Don’t stop the presses. Yet another blatant spin-off (if not rip-off) of August: Osage County has splattered on the boards. What the world needs beyond peace and prosperity, it seems, is one more dysfunctional drama about a dysfunctional family. (Which is more defective, you may well wonder?) Unsolicited but eager to…
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Los Angeles Music Review: VIENNA PIANO TRIO (The Da Camera Society at the Guasti Villa)
EUROPEAN ELEGANCE IN LOS ANGELES Once while in Salzburg, I happened upon a chamber concert in a private home (well, they called it a home, I called it a tiny palace). Our host explained that piano trios’”compositions for two stringed instruments and a piano’”were designed for intimate spaces such as the luxuriant parlor we sat…
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