Saturday, January 11, 2014
MORE JAZZ, PLEASE Interestingly, the work that opened Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal's program last night at the Bram Goldsmith Theater in the brand new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Perfor…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:11PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 9, 2014
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID The two most important aspects of the right kind of cabaret act are the singer and the songs. But when you go to see Laura Benanti's new cabaret In Constant Search of …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:46PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 8, 2014
TAKE A CHANCE Merrily We Roll Along is a notoriously difficult musical to get right. Even with Sondheim's magnificent score, the nature of the show"its lopsided cynicism and moving-back-in-t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:29PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 2, 2014
AN UNCONVENTIONAL ROMANCE Meet Max, a celebrity novelist who is single, and Trudy, a happily married woman who is working on a new novel. They meet in a writer's room and form a fast friends…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:13PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 1, 2014
MORE LIKE ONE STARRY STARRY STARRY NIGHT If anybody knows how to put together a night of eclectic songs and singers, it's Bruce Kimmel. While he has created some terrific revues, this prolif…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:29PM[SHARE]Monday, December 30, 2013
CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND THEATER LOVERS, UNITE! Remember E. Howard Hunt? This intelligence officer was one of Nixon's White House Plumbers, that clandestine band of operatives who were assig…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:20PM[SHARE]I AM EXHILARATED 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 f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48AM[SHARE]Sunday, December 29, 2013
CABARET SAUVIGNON She received a Tony nomination for both the Broadway revue Swing! and for playing Cinderella in the revival of Into the Woods. She won a Tony for portraying Louise in the P…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:48PM[SHARE]Friday, December 27, 2013
ORACLE’S THE MOTHER GETS A WELL-DESERVED REMOUNT My annual theater sojourn to the Windy City this year was a bit of a let down. Spoiled by previous pilgrimages, in which no less than 5…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:02PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 22, 2013
DRAGULOUS I love The Kinsey Sicks. Is it because I love barbershop quartets? Is it because I love drag queens? Is it because I love community activists? Is it because I love irreverent, chee…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58AM[SHARE]Friday, December 20, 2013
PLEASE MAKE IT STOMP When I first saw the Blue Man Group at the Astor Place Theatre in 1991, it was performance art nirvana. Sadly, what started as a sweet and satisfying event became a corp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:20AM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 17, 2013
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD II COMES TO WESTWOOD Brits had already heard about Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Richard II, directed by Gregory Doran and starring former Docto…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:59PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 11, 2013
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 Holida…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:17PM[SHARE]Monday, December 9, 2013
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 dr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:35PM[SHARE]Friday, December 6, 2013
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 nece…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:16PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 28, 2013
YOU CAN'T TWIN THEM ALL There is nothing more fascinating for this Broadway musical aficionado than a flop"but not for gloating purposes. It's natural to wonder "What were they thinking?" wi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15AM[SHARE]WHIPPED INTO A FRENZY If I had any doubts prior to attending San Diego REP's production of Venus in Fur (an on-again, off-again playwright; two characters; two directors), they were vanqu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:13AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 26, 2013
UPDATING THE OLD, PRESENTING THE NEW As part of the North American tour celebrating its 45th season, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company arrived at Valley Performing Arts Center last Saturday wi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:05AM[SHARE]Saturday, November 23, 2013
A HITCH IN THE BOURNE LEGACY It's a shame that Matthew Bourne's narrative began to fizzle out in the second act of his Sleeping Beauty, for up to then this extraordinarily imaginative and en…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:02PM[SHARE]MUSICAL THEATRE GUILD GOES TO TOWN "Charming" doesn't begin to describe Musical Theatre Guild's offering of the 1953 musical Wonderful Town. Even with a recent 2003 Broadway outing starring …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:04PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 20, 2013
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, politic…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:25AM[SHARE]Saturday, November 9, 2013
ROGUE MACHINE'S PRODUCTION KEEPS SCRIPT FROM FALLING In Deanna Jent's Falling, a mom is reaching burnout: Her 18-year-old autistic son is consuming her time, her marriage is shaky, her mothe…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:06PM[SHARE]Monday, November 4, 2013
A DANCE PIECE THAT'S A KEEPER The frequency of site-specific events continues to grow exponentially in the City of Angels, but Heidi Duckler has been doing it for many years, creating unique…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:47PM[SHARE]HIT THE WALLIS A brand new theater has opened its doors in Beverly Hills, but nothing could have prepared me for its magnificence in contemporary construction and design. The 500-seat Bram G…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:24PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 2, 2013
BALLET SUPERSTAR RETURNS TO SEGERSTROM The title of two world premiere dance pieces at Segerstrom Hall this week could not be more apt: Diana Vishneva of the Mariinsky Ballet and American Ba…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:46PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 27, 2013
A HIGH FLYING, ADORED REVIVAL Composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice released the Evita "rock opera concept album" in 1976, a few years before the first theatrical production…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37AM[SHARE]Friday, October 25, 2013
A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF ACTING Last August, Time's cover story, "A World Without Bees," brought to light a frightening occurrence: In recent years, there have been mass deaths of honeybee…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:55PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 24, 2013
A CLOSED-MOUTH KISS There are so many sexual allusions and situations in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate that it is remarkable the musical came out in 1948. I surmise the reason that Porter got …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:53PM[SHARE]SEEING WHAT’S INVISIBLE In describing Invisible Cities, allow me to paraphrase Gore Vidal's critique of Italo Calvino's 1972 novel of the same name on which this production is based: O…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:23AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 22, 2013
COMPRESSED CRUELTY IN A SMALL STRINDBERG SHOCKER August Strindberg, the "father of modern psychological drama," told his publisher that Creditors, a drama that he prized as much as he did hi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:56AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 19, 2013
PUTTING THE THEATER IN DANCE Living up to its name, Nederlands Dans Theater 1 bounded into Los Angeles last night, showing off the reasons why The Hague-based contemporary dance outfit is kn…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:01PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
