Thursday, March 31, 2016
NOT YOUR AVERAGE VIOLINIST; NOT YOUR AVERAGE TANGO Coming up on April 15 and 16, 2016, in Irvine and La Jolla, acclaimed violinist Augustin Hadelich will be joined by dazzling pianist Joyce …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:08PMMonday, March 28, 2016
KEEPING THE DREAM(GIRLS) ALIVE Dreamgirls opened on Broadway in 1981, won six Tony awards, and ran for nearly four years. Since then, the Michael Bennett musical has been revived, presented…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:25AMThursday, March 24, 2016
ALMOST 70 YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN, PREVIOUSLY UNHEARD VERNON DUKE MUSIC IS ORCHESTRATED AND RECORDED For over half a century, record companies have given the studio treatment to long-shu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:44PMSunday, March 13, 2016
THERE WILL BE BUZZ ABOUT THIS PLAY, BUT IT’S ALL STING AND NO HONEY As honey bees gather pollen and nectar for their survival, they pollinate crops such as cranberries, melons and broc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:10PMThursday, February 18, 2016
SOMEWHAT FORCED, WE STILL GET THE GLORY OF WEST SIDE STORY Strangely enough, West Side Story feels more dated than Romeo and Juliet, its 500-year-old inspiration. Compared to Shakespeare…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:36AMTuesday, February 16, 2016
WRAP YOUR BRAIN AROUND A NEW A NEW BRAIN When A New Brain opened at Lincoln Center in 1998, I couldn’t understand why the reviews were so higgledy-piggledy. True, I hadn’t actually seen …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:13PMONE NERDY, ANAL AND SINGULAR SENSATION The first two weeks of June, 2001, was a very good time to attend Broadway shows. On one day alone, I saw The Producers at 2:00, The Rocky Horror Show …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:13PMSaturday, February 13, 2016
EVEN GOD CAN’T SAVE THIS FROM ITSELF Dear God (if I may quote Alice Walker): What’s going on with the theater these days? Oh, that’s right, you already know. In fact, you&…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:49AMMAGIC CAN STRIKE TWICE IN THE SAME PLACE In 2013, a new production of The Magic Flute from Berlin’s Komische Oper became a sell-out sensation, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera. Now, it re…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:49AMTuesday, February 9, 2016
A HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT In 1993, H.R.H. the Princess of Hanover appointed Jean-Christophe Maillot as the head of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Backed by his experien…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:34AMA FUNNY AND NOT-SO FUNNY THING An irresistible mix of Roman “new comedy,” commedia dell’arte, and vaudeville, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rivals The Producers as th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:02AMFriday, January 29, 2016
COLORFUL COLORATURA IN A CLUNKY CANDIDE There isn’t much I could say about the musical Candide that hasn’t been written about before. Leonard Bernstein created one of our greatest Broadw…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:41AMThursday, January 28, 2016
CENSORSHIP COMES TO LOS ANGELES The Wooster Group has let Stage and Cinema know that Samuel French, Inc., which manages the United States rights for Harold Pinter’s work, has banned cri…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:24PMSaturday, January 23, 2016
THE TROCKS ROCK! As part of their worldwide tour, one of the most original troupes on the globe is coming to Carpenter Center in Long Beach this weekend. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Car…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:51PMFriday, January 22, 2016
A MUSICAL THAT REACHES FOR NEW HEIGHTS Built during the Depression between 1930 and 1931, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest office building—surpassing the Chrysler…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:39PMSaturday, January 16, 2016
YOUR PAL IS COMING TO TOWN Sassy and brassy Pal Joey is a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. As part of its Reiner Staged Reading Series…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:13PMFriday, January 15, 2016
THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT IS When the meek and paranoid everyman Winston Smith scribbles “Down with Big Brother” in his journal, he soon blossoms into a determined and impassioned…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:50PMSaturday, December 19, 2015
WHAT/EVER Saved from total disregard by a libretto that occasionally manages to engage with humor and knowingness, this brave attempt to examine the subject of fate versus choice utterly fai…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:05PMCROSSFIRE Between religious zealots, especially those who use the word of God to control the populace rather than to create peace, and the liberation of a new world—gay marriage, Roe v. Wa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:05PMTuesday, December 15, 2015
ME SO FELIZ A friend mentioned that three comediennes–a Cuban American from Miami, a Mexican American from Texas, and the daughter of an “over-dedicated Mexican mother and a co…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:14PMSunday, November 29, 2015
APOLLO EARTHBOUND; SHOSTAKOVICH SOARS Rollicking, mysterious, and adventurous may be attributes of Britten’s Young Apollo,but these adjectives also describe the outcome, respectively…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:13AMTuesday, November 17, 2015
DO I FEAR A WALTZ? Musicals are generally “lost” for any one of a number of reasons: the libretto may be filled with once topical socio-political humor now meaningless to contemporary au…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:22AMMonday, November 16, 2015
IF STORYTELLING’S YOUR THING, SKIP SCOTCH French poet and essayist Charles Pierre Péguy wrote, “It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.” Yuval Sharo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:20PMMonday, November 9, 2015
FALLING IN LOVE WITH LAUGHS AND LEAPS Sadly a review of record, but this experimental, eclectic mash-up from Chicago looks to have a life beyond its short runs in the cities of wind and ange…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:24AMSunday, November 1, 2015
HOW BROWN WAS MY VALLEY? The San Fernando Valley has always creeped me out. My family moved from Anaheim to Canoga Park (now West Hills) in 1971 (two weeks before the earthquake, thank you).…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:40PMWednesday, October 28, 2015
NEED TO KNOW MORE Since moving into my six-unit apartment eight months ago, I have encountered the loveliest neighbors a man could hope for. But just two weeks ago, a tall, gangly, middle-a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:00PMMonday, October 26, 2015
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN OPERA IS HERE I shudder when the time comes to see a “New American Opera.” The majority of new works are frustratingly inaccessible. Instead of reinventing opera, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:02PMSHORT ON WICKED; SHORTER ON LIT While Knott’s Scary Farm has been doing it for decades with its haunted mazes, interactive theater is gaining ground nationwide as a way to address dwindlin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:14AMSunday, October 25, 2015
GOD HE’S GOOD A belated but welcome revue, Sondheim on Sondheim offers both songs and personal musings from one of Broadway’s best composer/lyricists. This inside look is rich wi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:55PMFriday, October 23, 2015
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE ALIVE AND WELL AND WAITING FOR GODOT Rajiv Joseph’s surprisingly complex and touching two-hander concerns a couple of guards assigned to stand watch at the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:28PMThursday, October 22, 2015
COME YE TO THE FAIR…LADY, THAT IS I’m rather certain one cannot visit enough productions of My Fair Lady. The 1956 musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, tells the tal…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:48PM 
