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Los Angeles Theater Review: BACKBEAT: THE BIRTH OF THE BEATLES (Ahmanson Theatre)
TALK ABOUT A LONG AND WINDING ROAD So, this cool cat painter, a blonde Frau, and several Liverpool lads named John, Paul, George, and Pete walk into a bar in Hamburg: While this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, it is actually a more accurate description of Backbeat, a bad “musical.” Based on…
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Chicago Theater Review: SOUTHBRIDGE (Chicago Dramatists)
SOMEWHAT SOUTH OF WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE Chicago Dramatists’ world premiere is a tale of murder, spirituality, and heartbreak: A black man named Stranger, after being accused of the murder of his white employer, Widow Luckey, recalls to the town sheriff the events that led up to his arrest. It’s a compelling, complex story…
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Chicago Theater Review: SUNSET BOULEVARD (Drury Lane Theatre)
READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP, MR. DEMILLE From the start it seemed strange that anyone would make a musical out of a movie that embodies its medium so completely. Yes, the film All About Eve deserved to become the musical Applause; both were obsessed with the theater. But Billy Wilder’s consummately cinematic 1950 masterpiece was a…
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Book Review: SHOWBIZ (Dress Circle Publishing)
MOUNTING OLYMPUS Think of it as Twilight for the theater geek or Smash in literary form. You may love to hate it or hate to love it, but Ruby Preston’s new novel Showbiz is an undeniable page-turner: a fabulously fun, fictional glimpse into the drama of mounting a Broadway musical today. Scarlett Savoy is an…
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Chicago Theater Review: SWEET CHARITY (Writers’ Theatre)
SAD TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE It’s like kicking a puppy dog to dislike Charity Hope Valentine. Charity is the cloyingly-named heroine of the 1966 musical by Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Neil Simon, a show once made famous by Gwen Verdon’s slinkiness and Bob Fosse’s choreography. Writers’ Theatre approaches this strange amalgam of high…
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Dance Review: THE JOFFREY BALLET’S LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS (Reconstructed Version at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles)
THE RITE OF JOFFREY One hundred years ago, a new ballet took place in Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This highly controversial work – for both its music and choreography – would revolutionize dance and thrust ballet and classical music into the modern era. As if the avant-garde nature of the dance was not enough to…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: RED, BLACK & GREEN: A BLUES (Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project at REDCAT)
THE COLORS OF OUR LIVES red, black & GREEN: a blues is art at its best and most purposeful; a visceral, engaging narrative that combines theatre, dance, music, spoken word and visual art created and expressed by and for “wonderful human beings” to ask what we are doing to protect and nurture our world and…
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Los Angeles Music Review: LISE DE LA SALLE PLAYS RACHMANINOFF (LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall)
A RARELY HEARD SYMPHONY TRUMPS AN OFT-HEARD RHAPSODY It never makes sense to me why Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3 is still not in the popular orchestral repertoire. Yes, it is approximately 20 minutes shorter than his other Symphonies – No. 1 (1896) and No. 2 (1908) – containing three instead of four movements. It was…
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Los Angeles Music Review: THE INTERRUPTERS (House of Blues)
A WELCOME INTERRUPTION Social Distortion played for over two hours with hardly a break, and sounded better than they did thirty years ago. Eddie Spaghetti of the Supersuckers rasped several songs about smoking and drinking too much. But the story of the night was the aptly-named Los Angeles punks The Interrupters, who opened for all…
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Chicago Theater Review: MINSK, 2011: A REPLY TO KATHY ACKER (Chicago Shakespeare)
A CRY TO CARE The 85-minutes of this electrifying protest play begin with a lone microphone suddenly erupting in an ear-splitting feedback. The noise is intolerable, no less than what it ushers in. After this blast from the other side of the world, individual performer/protesters approach that mike, start to speak, back up and unfurl…
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Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: THE VANDAL (Flea Theater)
FUNNY CONVERSATIONS ABOUT DEATH Hamish Linklater’s very funny, sharp and tender new play The Vandal begins on a cold winter night as a down-on-her-luck middle-aged woman waits for a bus on a deserted street. A skinny high-school boy appears and starts up a conversation. Precocious and lively, he quickly overcomes the woman’s reluctance to participate….
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Los Angeles Theater Review: CASSIOPEIA (Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena)
IN THE SHADOW OF STARS David Wiener’s ten-year-old, never-before-produced play Cassiopeia needs work. As usual at Boston Court, this experimental piece has received a production so grand that it more than warrants seeing. Also typical of Boston Court, this challenging show is so sharp that it highlights the weaknesses of its script, such that Mr….
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New York Opera Review: RIGOLETTO (Metropolitan Opera)
A GAMBLE WHICH DOESN’T ALWAYS PAY OFF Flashing, fluorescent lights, glitzy blazers, showgirls galore, and an immodest display of drama and decadence are the background for… wait… is that Dean Martin? No, the handsome and rakish would-be villain of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, played rapturously by tenor Piotr Beczala, is the Duke of a casino. Set in…
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Chicago Theater Review: LUTHER (Steep Theatre)
PUPPET SHOW Ethan Lipton’s Luther received rave reviews when it premiered in New York last June, yet it enjoyed only a brief run. So it makes sense that Steep Theater would want to try out the dark satire on Chicago and see if it sticks. Unfortunately due to an unfocused script and misguided direction, it…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WALKING THE TIGHTROPE (24th STreet Theatre)
WALKING THE TIGHTROPE STRIKES A PERFECT BALANCE AND SOARS TO THEATRICAL PERFECTION Lab24, the resident experimental theater company of the 24th STreet Theatre [sic], has scored a stupendous success with their debut production Walking the Tightrope. Based on a lyric poem by Mike Kenny, director Debbie Devine has transformed the ode into a highly stylized…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LOVESICK (LOFT Ensemble)
GOTH MEETS GIRL During the first five minutes of Lovesick I was beginning to think I had ended up at a school play. The acting was highly exaggerated, the props looked like elementary school paper-mache and the dialogue was doggerel verse. Fortunately, it got better. I wish I could say it got a lot better….
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Los Angeles Theater Review: ABSOLUTELY FILTHY (Sacred Fools Theatre)
A RAUCHNY REUNION FOR THE PEANUTS GANG Set at Charlie Brown’s funeral in modern-day Los Angeles, Brendan Hunt’s raunchy parody, Absolutely Filthy, is an admirably smutty comedy which imagines a dysfunctional reunion of the Peanuts gang, now all grown-up, cocksure, and full of middle-age disgruntlement. Under the fluid comedic direction of Jeremy Aldridge at Sacred…
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Chicago Theater Review: HAPPY NOW? (Shattered Globe at Stage 773)
A DAISY CHAIN OF DEAD ENDS MAKES FOR INVIGORATING THEATER Shattered Globe Theatre has uncovered yet another tailspinning drama to live up to its name. British playwright Lucinda Cox shows a strong good grasp of dead ends, whether in conversations or in characters. In this sardonic black comedy – with the ironic and accusatory title Happy Now? –…
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Film Review: BETTING THE FARM (directed by Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann)
MERCIFULLY, A DOCUMENTARY WHICH IS NOT MILKED FOR SENTIMENT Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann’s superb documentary focuses on a group of Maine organic dairy farmers who are unceremoniously dropped by their distributor (H.P. Hood, the off-camera villain of the film). The farmers decide that rather than let their lives be ruined by this arbitrary outside…
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San Francisco Theater Review: 4000 MILES (A.C.T.)
GROWING UP AND GROWING OLD Engaging, comfortable, realistic, gripping, and heart-tugging – all these tags apply equally to story, language, script and performances in American Conservatory Theater’s 4000 Miles, graciously directed by Mark Rucker. Billed as a “comic drama,” 4000 Miles is indeed an engrossing human drama spiced with down-to-earth humor. 21-year-old Leo arrives unexpectedly…
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