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 05:16PMThursday, 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 think…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15AMWHIPPED 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 01:13AMTuesday, 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 11:05AMSaturday, 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 an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:02PMMUSICAL 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 s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:04PMWednesday, 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,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:25AMSaturday, 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 m…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:06PMMonday, 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 uniq…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:47PMHIT 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 03:24PMSaturday, 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 03:46PMSunday, 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 produc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37AMFriday, 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 ho…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:55PMThursday, 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 go…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:53PMSEEING 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 base…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:23AMTuesday, 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 di…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:56AMSaturday, 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 04:01PMTuesday, October 15, 2013
CIRQUE’S PERKS What’s a circus without lions, tigers, and elephants? In the case of Cirque du Soleil’s Totem, their eleventh major production in 26 years, it’s a marked imp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:00AMSITE-SPECIFIC IS NOT SO SPECIFIC La Jolla Playhouse supported the trend of site-specific and immersive theater by presenting a four-day program of over 20 different performances in and aroun…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMMonday, October 14, 2013
STOPPARD AND GO Tom Stoppard’s brilliant Travesties (1974) is literate and fiercely crafted, tackling ideas of love, wit, politics, art, theater, literature, intellectualism and whatever e…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:09PMSaturday, October 12, 2013
NO HALLELUJAH FOR THE LAST GOODBYE No one can deny why Jeff Buckley has achieved cult status. The coffeehouse-rock singer brought an aching, wrenching, ethereal and vulnerable quality to bot…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:44AMTuesday, October 8, 2013
TOO FEW Samuel D. Hunter’s slice-of-life one-act, The Few, returns to familiar territory for this up-and-coming playwright. As in his previous plays, Hunter takes us to small-town Idaho; t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:11AMTuesday, October 1, 2013
RELATIVITY, STAGED A trusty theater friend witnessed Einstein on the Beach at BAM in New York last year, and she told me it was not just one of the greatest theatrical experiences of her li…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:51PMSunday, September 29, 2013
MY KINGDOM FOR A TRANSLATION In the “What Were They Thinking?” Department, the Broad Stage has brought in a magnificently acted, thrillingly staged and cleverly edited version of Shakesp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:21PMFriday, September 27, 2013
SAFETY IN NUMBERS The production of Carmen that opened this week at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion has been seen before. Emilio Sagi’s production originated at Madrid’s Teatro Rea…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:09PMTuesday, September 24, 2013
THE HEART OF THE MATTER Larry Kramer’s blistering condemnation that chronicles the early years of the AIDS epidemic has arrived with an intimate production that highlights the urgency of t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:30PMSaturday, September 21, 2013
THEY COULD HAVE DANCED ALL NIGHT Once a month at the Fountain Theatre, Deborah Lawlor presents Forever Flamenco!, an assemblage of the greatest flamenco artists anywhere. Programs change eac…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:59PMFriday, September 20, 2013
NO HEART. NO BRAIN. NO NERVE. STAY HOME. Just short of insulting, a Broadway Machine-styled version of the iconic film, The Wizard of Oz, opened at the Pantages this week. Instead of writing…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:41PMTuesday, September 17, 2013
THERE IS NOTHING EITHER GOOD OR BAD, BUT CASTING MAKES IT SO Can it really be twenty years now that I have admired Lisa Wolpe’s work? Time and again, the actress has impressed me with her …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:58PMSaturday, September 14, 2013
DOMINGO DAZZLES What do world-renowned singers do once they have reached the age of retirement? On the strength of their name, they fill cabarets and concert houses across the land with nost…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58AMThursday, September 12, 2013
NOT MUCH LIFE IN DEATH The miracle of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is that it contains so many themes relevant to today’s world—the American Dream, the disconnect of father and …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:35PM 
