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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE LAST DAYS OF MARY STUART (Son of Semele Ensemble)
AND NOW FOR A BRIEF INTERLUDE What’s hip these days? It’s the old tradition of taking idiosyncratic history or historical figures and putting the stories and details to music. Sufjan Stevens produced albums about the states Michigan and Illinois to wide acclaim in the indie circuit. Electronic duo Neon Neon released Stainless Style, based on…
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Film/VOD Review: HEY BARTENDER (directed by Douglas Tirola)
NEEDS A MIXER Douglas Tirola’s Hey Bartender is an ode to mixology in three parts: one part historical survey, one part character study, and one part massive, unquestioning endorsement. Although it is generally well-put-together, and packed with information about a thriving socioeconomic subculture, this film does not venture far enough outside the realm of trivia…
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Dance Review: LE CORSAIRE (American Ballet Theatre at the Dorothy Chandler)
BEAUTIFUL BOOTY Nearly 200 years ago to the day that Lord Byron published his poem The Corsair, ABT’s monumental 3-act ballet on which it is based came bounding into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Friday, offering sumptuous visuals, an enormous cast and orchestra, and crowd-pleasing virtuoso performances. Le Corsaire (“The Pirate”) premiered in 1856, but…
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Film/VOD Review: MARRIED AND COUNTING (directed by Allan Piper)
LOVE IS ALL AROUND US Stephen Mosher and Pat Dwyer met in undergrad at North Texas State University and have been inseparable ever since. As their twenty-five-year anniversary approaches, they decide it’s finally time to tie the knot. The trouble is, in most states, that decision isn’t theirs to make. Stephen and Pat are gay….
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Los Angeles Dance Review: AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE (Mixed Rep at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
MIXED RESULTS FOR ABT’S MIXED REP As an introduction to American Ballet Theatre’s highly anticipated 4-performance weekend of the full-length Le Corsaire, the company presented a mixed repertory of the old and the new on Thursday. Surprisingly, the results were as mixed as the program itself. As ballet continues to redefine itself in the 21st…
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Chicago Theater Review: BELLEVILLE (Steppenwolf)
ISOLATION AND INSANITY There’s a good reason for no intermission in this devilishly deceptive Belleville. It’s taut to a torque as it depicts a young American couple’s disintegration in an elegant one-bedroom apartment in a cosmopolitan quartier of Paris. Amy Herzog’s 2011 thriller is as powerful in its silences as its speech. Once the laughter…
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San Francisco Theater Preview: THE BOOK OF LIZ (Custom Made Theatre Company)
THE PLAY WITH (CHEESE) BALLS Originally scheduled to close on August 11, the advance ticket sales for The Book of Liz, Amy and David Sedaris’ hilarious comedy, are going so fast for Custom Made Theatre Company that the show has already been extended before opening. This is no doubt because audiences already know that the…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE JUDY SHOW: MY LIFE AS A SITCOM (Geffen Playhouse in Westwood)
IT IS WHAT IT IS Set your “expectation meter” in the mid-range and you will probably enjoy The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom starring comedienne Judy Gold. However, if you enter the theater high on anticipation expecting to be wowed you will more than likely be disappointed. The bottom line is that “it…
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Chicago Theater Review: SIMPATICO (A Red Orchid Theatre)
THE ENSEMBLE IS HOT, THE PLOT IS NOT Sam Shepard loves to level, if not to topple, his characters. In the treacherous course of True West, two brothers exchange identities: The Hollywood hotshot falls into the bottle and his inarticulate loser of a brother gets good fortune from his sibling’s bad karma. (Harold Pinter also…
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Chicago Theater Review: DEATH AND HARRY HOUDINI (The House Theatre of Chicago)
HOUSE THEATRE PULLS A RABBIT OUT OF ITS HAT The House Theatre has, once again, remounted its wildly successful Death and Harry Houdini at the Chopin Theatre – and why not? It’s still as fresh as ever. The death-defying wonders of the world’s most famous escape artist are recreated right before our eyes, and it’s…
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Theater Review: A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice)
IN PLAIN SIGHT Eddie Carbone (Vince Melocchi) is a good man whose frustration at not getting everything he deserves – in this case his adopted niece Catherine (Lisa Cirincione) – costs him his soul. Such is the tale told in 1956’s A View from the Bridge, the play that marks the chronological boundary of “beloved”…
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Bay Area Theater Review: THIS IS HOW IT GOES (Aurora Theatre in Berkeley)
IF ONLY IT WENT LIKE THIS MORE OFTEN I can’t call Neil LaBute’s works timeless, but both his plays and films (In the Company of Men) are a product of our time. As America holds herself to be a beacon of tolerance, LaBute’s inflammatory social commentary, as seen through a moralistic and fairly misanthropic lens,…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE JUNGLE BOOK (Goodman Theatre)
FIRST DISNEYFIED AND NOW ZIMMERMANNED, THIS MUSICAL CAN’T SEE THE JUNGLE FOR THE TREES Not one of the great animations to grace the Disney studio, 1967’s The Jungle Book was certainly a product of its time. Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 collection of quasi-folk tales set in the rain forests of India became a very Americanized adventure…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: RAIFORD ROGERS MODERN BALLET (Luckman Fine Arts Center)
SUCCESSFULLY SIMPLE When the choreographer and Artistic Director of a dance company consciously makes the decision to eschew excess ornamentations such as costumes, lights, and recognizable movement vocabularies, one imagines how you would even go about choreographing a dance piece. I have seen minimalist-inspired pieces that either left me utterly appalled from the work’s pretentiousness…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE BURDEN OF NOT HAVING A TAIL (Sideshow Theatre Company)
THE BURDEN OF NOT HAVING A GOOD SCRIPT Having now seen Sideshow Theatre’s The Burden of Not Having a Tail, I can report that, despite its billing, it did little to prepare me for the apocalypse — but then, it didn’t do much for me at all. It’s founded on an interesting idea: A woman…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: ALCESTIS (Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena)
SELFISHNESS AND SACRIFICE Alcestis is the old Greek story of a man who allows his wife to sacrifice her life for his. As interpreted by Euripides, T.S. Eliot and others, it has much to say on the relationship between the mortal and the infinite. It is a reverie on egotism, love, mortality, personal redemption, and…
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Chicago Theater Review: BIG LAKE BIG CITY (Lookingglass)
BIG LAKE BIG CITY BIG TURKEY Chicago to the broken bricks and bone, playwright Keith Huff was at his storytelling best in A Steady Rain, a big hit about a conflicted cop and his crooked crony at Chicago Dramatists (and a lesser one on Broadway). In Huff’’s taut mix of interrogations turned confessionals, two policemen…
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Chicago Theater Review: TARTUFFE (Court Theatre)
THE IMPOSTER HITS HYDE PARK HARD Because religious hypocrisy — specifically “affected zeal and pious knavery” — never goes out of fashion, Tartuffe is forever. Continuing and completing its Moliere Festival (which ends on Bastille Day), Court Theatre’s second offering is the master’s perennially popular “home invasion” comedy. In this domestic dust-up, the title fraud…
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San Francisco Music Review: HARVEY MILK 2013 (San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus at Nourse Theatre)
COME OUT TO THE SAN FRANCISCO GAY MEN’S CHORUS 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…
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Chicago Theater Review: A CLOWN CAR NAMED DESIRE (The Second City e.t.c.)
SHOOTING EASY TARGETS As is often the case at Second City shows, an early musical number explains the theme of A Clown Car Named Desire. Reality is filled with disappointment, hardship and boredom, so why not live in a dream where you can run away and join the circus? But the latest e.t.c. show could…
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