WHERE DO YOU GET ORFF..? There are some entertainments that bear repeating: Los Angeles Master Chorale has visited Carl Orff’s pagan-fest, Carmina Burana, under each of their music dire…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:00PMLIFE IS AN ABSURD BUSINESS It’s an absurdist masterwork, yet it is rarely produced in the States. A disquieting parable which warns against the herd mentality, Eugène Ionesco’s thre…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:49PMIT WONDERS ME It’s uncanny that ever since Roger Bean wrote and directed this asinine jukebox musical in 1999, it’s lightweight nostalgia factor and updated arrangements of 50s and 6…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:26AMREDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE OK, let’s get the confusion out of the way. If you’re not at all familiar with the Paramount films Holiday Inn and White Christmas, listening to the just-…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:28AMTHE GLOBE GOES BACK INTO THE WOODS Ken Ludwig is arguably the leading comic dramatist in the American theater, and with Robin Hood! he has fashioned an extraordinary new take on the legend…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:47AMDON’T BE SKIPPIN’ PIPPIN Here’s a can’t-miss opportunity: San Diego Junior Theatre is presenting the perky but dark 1972 musical, Pippin. Don’t be fooled by the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:44PMSEE IT BEFORE THIS PARADE PASSES YOU BY The emotionally pile-driving Parade by bookwriter Alfred Uhry and composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown reprises an ugly and evergreen tragedy. Their…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:45PMA GOOD THING GOING; GOING, GOING… Sondheim on Sondheim, which had a short run on Broadway in 2010, offers both songs and personal musings from one of Broadway’s greatest composer/lyr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:47PMA FEW BLEMISHES CAN’T MAR THIS BEAUTIFUL DOLL It’s amazing. Were this masterpiece from Broadway’s golden age an actual guy or doll, he or she would be scoring Social Securi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMANGELS IN AMERICA APPROACHES In two sprawling works written in the 1980’s, Tony Kushner brought alive the American national scene of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, mixing raw natural…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:34PMOUT OF PLACE Well, that was pointless. Entertaining to a point, but pointless. I had a feeling about two minutes into At the Old Place that something was wrong dramatically. A woman shows up…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:03PMENCHANTED FORGIVENESS Shakespeare Orange County (SOC) has used local community members alongside professional actors to reinvent Shakespeare as a way to offer thoughts about inclusiveness an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:18AMTAKE A GRAND TOUR WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR SEAT Pageant of the Masters, now in its 83rd year, is a singularly unique entertainment that has perfected the art of tableaux vivants (“living pic…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:08PMMARY‘S POPPIN’ OUT ALL OVER Not just the quintessentially “practically perfect” nanny, Mary Poppins is a kind of cosmic cure. Given the state of our disunion, we probably nee…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:36AMTRIPLE-LAYERED CAKE Thirty-something Jen (Shannon Lucio) is torn. She wants her deceased mother’s best friend, Della (Debra Jo Rupp), a talented but struggling baker, to create her we…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:52PMMY DAUGHTER, THE CABARET SINGER This year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival has given me new hope for the art of cabaret: Black and White in Paris offered standards dripping in style; Psych…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01AMAIDA GETS THE AID IT NEEDS There are two beautiful reincarnations with Moonlight’s production of Aida, a 2000 Disney outing that never would have seen the light of day were it not for the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMA VERY GOOD GRIEF This funny but disturbing update of Charles M. Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip first arrived at the Blank Theatre, after which Worst First Kiss Productions wisely util…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:41PMGRILLED TO PERFECTION North Coast Rep’s rendition of James Valcq and Fred Alley’s simple musical The Spitfire Grill demonstrates two things: the redemptive power of acceptance, forgivene…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:03PMTHE WAR WITHIN THE WAR As sturdily written and swiftly moving as it was in 1982, Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play remains an enduring testament to the home front battles that African-Am…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:05PMFREE WILLY Imagine if cast recordings from the fifties and sixties recorded out-of-town tryouts, then changed material, then recorded the Broadway production, then changed material, then op…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:53PMIT’S LIKE REAL LIFE, BUT BETTER About a decade ago, I was having a miserable time dating. The age of electronica was firmly in place, and chat rooms, lengthy bios, and requested cock s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:42PMOOH-LA-LA Where am I? Is this a dream? Just when you thought cabaret in Los Angeles was on life support comes this bar of gold at the Hollywood Fringe. Do not miss this extravaganza of refr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:08PMTHERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT A WARHOL If you thought Pop Artist Andy Warhol only referenced and defined mass culture and consumerism through replicated images of Campbell’s soup cans and Mari…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:18PMFLAGGED DOWN Who hasn’t walked away from some bad dates thinking, “Jesus, that was like being in a play.” Well, now Capital W — a theater company that offers unconve…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:22AMMICHAEL FEINSTEIN! LIZA MINNELLI! STORM LARGE! JOEL GREY! BROADWAY! No one can argue that Michael Feinstein—charismatic, appealing, boyish, excited, and eager to please—has singlehande…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:46PMAN IMAGINARY IMAGINARY Back in March, Roundabout Theatre announced their plans for 2017. After collaborating with Fiasco Theater on their acclaimed paired-down production of Into the Woods …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:53PMSHINE ON, ETERNAL LIGHT In just twenty years of existence, Morten Lauridsen’s gorgeous choral masterwork Lux Aeterna has become one of the most performed works worldwide. Under direction …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:39PMSNOB HIT Well, that was boring. Of all the people on the planet who should understand the difference between theater and an underwhelming fringe entry (low cost and well-meaning with no set…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:58PMA LIMP STIFF Before composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens were, well, the Flaherty and Ahrens who created Once on This Island, Ragtime, Suessical, et al., they were a young up…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:58AMJERSEY CASH COW Jersey Boys, the terrific 2004 jukebox musical inspired by the story of pop sensation Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, is one of the greatest triumphs in Broadway histor…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:54AM