111 stories by "Michael M. Landman-Karny"
BOURNE AGAIN: A MUSICAL RECLAMATION IN GLORIOUS MINOR KEY After a long absence from the West End, Oliver! has returned with the force of a Victorian street gang bursting through fog-shrouded…
WHAT THE FOREST KNOWS: TOTORO AND THE RADICAL ACT OF WONDER There's something profoundly radical about a piece of theatre that trusts its audience to believe in wonder. The Royal Shakespeare…
They Just Keep Moving The Line: Smash Cast Recording Crosses Into Broadway Gold The alchemy has finally occurred. After thirteen years, Smash has completed its metamorphosis from cult televi…
A GIANT PEACH OF AN ANTISEMITE There's something eerily familiar about the way John Lithgow adjusts his cardigan in Mark Rosenblatt's haunting new play Giant, now playing in the West End's H…
THE GYM TOOK OVER ARGENTINA AND NOBODY LOOKED BACK Jamie Lloyd's Evita comes at you like a SoulCycle class that got a state grant for performance art. It's sweaty, shiny, and occasionally sh…
In Praise of a Misjudged Misfit: Mark Brokaw and the Undeserved Fate of Cry-Baby In the wake of director Mark Brokaw's untimely passing at 65 yesterday, I find myself returning not to one of…
THE ODYSSEY, IN ASHES AND UPHOLSTERY The chair will not move. That is how we begin. In Anna Ziegler's The Janeiad, now in a quietly astonishing production at the Old Globe, which produced Zi…
STANDING OVATIONS, INNER DEMONS By the time Jeffrey Seller is having sex in a gym sauna"one of the more unfiltered anecdotes in Theater Kid"it's clear this isn't your typical Broadway memoir…
BROADWAY STARS UNDER THE STARS If you've ever wanted to hear Michael Feinstein conduct an orchestra while a pulchritude of peacocks prance in the background, you're in for one of LA's most d…
Synthwave Romance: The Wedding Singer Grooves on Camp, Chemistry, and Crimped Hair If you still belt out "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" in your car or secretly miss the days when big hair …
St. Clair's Swan Song: Pacific Symphony's Volcanic Verdi's Requiem Last night, the walls of the Segerstrom Concert Hall didn't merely vibrate. They braced. Verdi's Requiem opened not with re…
STERILE STAGING, FEROCIOUS VOICES: LA OPERA'S RIGOLETTO BLEEDS DESPITE ITSELF Let's be clear from the jump: this isn't your Nonna's Rigoletto. No 16th-century Italian costumes, no jester's h…
ECHO: A CUBE WITH BIG DREAMS IN A SHOW STILL FINDING ITS SHAPE It opens with a cube. Glowing, two stories tall, and unmistakably the star of the show, this bold architectural gesture doesn't…
Fractured Reflection: The Chinese Lady and the Cost of Being Seen She doesn't enter. She appears"still as a painting, but alive, watching. In Lloyd Suh's The Chinese Lady, now haunting the C…
Wilde at Heart: The Quiet Theatrics of A Man of No Importance Some musicals don't announce themselves. They drift in quietly, settle beside you, and before you know it, you're sitting there,…
MEMORY LOOPS AND ECHOES IN GARDNER'S THE STAIRCASE Rain doesn't fall in The Staircase. It lingers, heavy and waiting. Like a secret no one asked to hear. Like a mother halfway between a lull…
THE TRUTH IS RARELY PURE, AND NEVER SAFE, IN TASTY LITTLE RABBIT There is a tender brutality in the way Robert Mammana shatters a glass plate negative under his heel in Moving Arts' ac…
REASONABLE DOUBT? NOT ABOUT LEGALLY BLONDE'S PINK POWER Let's get one thing straight. Legally Blonde: The Musical is not highbrow theater. It is not Sweeney Todd with meat pies and too-close…
When There's A Second Knock On The Door: Love and Lockup in Furlough's Paradise In Furlough's Paradise, a. k. payne has crafted something that moves like a whisper but hits like a reckoning.…
END-OF-WORLD TRAGICOMEDY CRACKS, BLEEDS AND THRIVES The end arrives not with a sob, but with a drag queen in a glittering black pantsuit, standing in a celestial spotlight, grinning like the…
IN CORKTOWN '39, THE LIVING ARE JUST GHOSTS WITH BETTER TIMING Mark Mendelson's tightly composed set at The Matrix Theatre is a room cloaked in aging wealth at the Keating family's Philadelp…
A RIOTOUS CARRIAGE RIDE THROUGH TIME Somewhere between empire waistlines and leather harnesses, Regency Girls carves out a raucous, messy, and strangely moving place for itself onstage at Th…
EXIR, PURSUED BY MOVEMENT THAT CUTS DEEP Jealousy doesn't sneak in. It bursts. You can see it take hold of Leontes the second doubt flickers behind his eyes. His body folds in. Hands clutch …
THE FAIRY TALES BREAK" AND THAT'S THE POINT The stories are still here. Cinderella. Jack. Little Red. Rapunzel. A Baker and his Wife, tangled in a curse and each other. Into the Woods has al…
SWINGS BIG, SHINES BRIGHT All Roads Theatre Company just set the bar sky-high with One for My Baby, a slick, jazz-soaked tribute to the music of Harold Arlen. This is old-school showbiz at i…
