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Los Angeles Theater Review: SUNSET BOULEVARD (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
MISGUIDED MELODRAMA Billy Wilder’s 1950 film masterpiece Sunset Boulevard starred Gloria Swanson as the washed-up-actress-turned-cougar Norma Desmond, and William Holden as her prematurely-jaded-Hollywood-writer-turned-boy-toy Joe Gillis. Using the camera as an instrument to capture performances of discomforting intensity, it wove a psychologically intricate tale of seduction, jealousy and betrayal set, of course, in Hollywood. It skirted…
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Chicago Theater Review: THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING) (Theater Wit)
A GREAT PLAY (BASED ON SOMETHING) Though little happens and nothing is resolved in the Pulitzer-nominated Thom Pain (based on nothing), the play is oddly and intensely captivating. Will Eno’s extended monologue wades into an ethereal spot where conscience and consciousness collide, using his everyman Thom Pain as a lens to reveal the gaps and…
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Los Angeles Music Review: MICHAEL FEINSTEIN’S MGM MOVIE CLASSICS (Pasadena POPS)
THE NIGHT THEY INVENTED TINY BUBBLES After Marvin Hamlisch’s untimely passing, Michael Feinstein, who has singlehandedly reinvigorated the American Songbook for the 21st century, took over as principal conductor for the Pasadena POPS. His first concert, Michael Feinstein’s Songbook, saw the beguiling raconteur as a perfect fit for the POPS crowd which, let’s face it,…
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Film/VOD Review: CARTOON COLLEGE (directed by Josh Melrod and Tara Wray)
VAGUE ETCH Cartoon College, a film by Josh Melrod and Tara Wray, chronicles the experiences of a group of aspiring cartoonists enrolled in the selective two-year MFA program offered by the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Featuring interviews with students and a prestigious faculty, it covers ’” loosely ’” one class’s…
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San Diego Theater Preview: COMPANY (Cygnet Theatre)
IN GOOD COMPANY “It’s a revue, but not a revue,” Stephen Sondheim said about Company when he was interviewed at Segerstrom last year. This surprised me because the groundbreaking 1970 musical which opens at Cygnet Theatre this weekend is a concept musical, meaning that the themes of a show (in this case, marriage and commitment)…
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Bay Area Theater Preview: THE WIZ (Berkeley Playhouse)
EASE ON DOWN A fascinating phenomenon has occurred recently in the theater world for this critic. Far and away, my favorite theatergoing experiences have been at revivals of musicals, most of which have been rarely produced. Some were staged concert performances, such as I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Harold Rome’s 1962 take on a…
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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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