THOSE SUMPTUOUS STRINGS OF SIBELIUS Fresh-faced and vital, Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program centered on Finland's greatest composer, …
A SPADEFUL OF SUGAR As the supplicating ballad puts it, "Let's hope she will stay." Not just the quintessentially "practically perfect" nanny, Mary Poppins is a kind of cosmic cure. Given th…
260 HOOVES AND 96 FEET Pegasus would be proud: The vast White Big Top commanding the south parking lot of Chicago's Soldier Field barely hints at the $30 million "theatrical adventure" benea…
IT’S WORTH SINGING ABOUT GETTING OLDER Perhaps the only thing worse than getting older is thinking about it. So when a nascent theater company puts on a show"a musical no less"about th…
A LONG RIDE ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In today's world of seeing T-shirts in fancy restaurants, it's almost difficult to envision that, once upon a time, people would dress to the nines for a…
TOIL AND TROUBLE There are no miniaturized marvels, no surprises sprung from trap doors, no white rabbits from a hat. Beyond Caring bears none of Lookingglass Theatre Company's vintage make-…
THIS COMEDY IS TRAGIC Painfully unfunny to the point of torture, Falcon Theatre’s production of The Complete History of Comedy (abridged) puts a nail in the coffin of vaudevil…
THE DANCING ENTRANCES, BUT THE BOOK DOESN’T STAND A CHANCE Back in the era that spawned musicals with tunes by Gershwin, Kern, Porter, and Rodgers, the Broadway Musical Comedy book …
SGT. PEPPER'S AT 50; LET IT RAIN For baby boomers wanting to share their childhood with their kids, for all the true-blue or late-blooming fans of the Fab Four whose great regret is that the…
MORE THAN LAVENDER, BEYOND A RAINBOW Finding another noble excuse to make music, for its fourth concert this season Chicago Sinfonietta offered a sweet salute to a worthy cause. Performed to…
UP ON THE ROOF Tennessee Williams' complete oeuvre went from totally brilliant to completely flat as he evolved in his work, beginning in the early 1940s and ending in the early ’80s. …
TITS AND SASS My only problem with 20 year old acrobats and showgirls is that they’re not going to date me while I’m in Las Vegas to catch a show. The casinos that hire them aren…
WHIPPED INTO SUBMISSION Explaining the creation of his 1924 two-act ballet, Richard Strauss stated, “I cannot bear the tragedy of the present time. I want to create joy.” Thus wa…
GOOD FORM AND OTHERS Most playwrights look like they’d rather kiss an ass than kick it. I like John Pollono because he looks like he came expressly to throw a beating, and so it is fac…
TETZLAFF PLAYS DVOŘÃK There was atmosphere galore in Christian Tetzlaff’s intense interpretation of the Dvořák Violin Concerto last night at Disney Hall, but something was…
COME RIDE THE CAROUSEL The photos are in for Musical Theatre West's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical masterpiece Carousel, which opens tonight and plays through April 9, 2017 …
BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER Having complained more than once that postmodern deconstruction often a) picks on literature that can’t fight back and b) discourages dialogue by speaking in…
A SEASON OF SOAPS IN ONE SHOW An exhilarating, over-the-top, floridly artificial romp, Destiny of Desire is as wonderfully hokey as its title. A Chicago premiere, Goodman Theatre's co-produc…
INTO THE SOUL OF INTO THE WOODS When I first saw Fiasco Theatre’s production of Into the Woods, it was without reservation that I told friends it was worth the drive from Los Angele…
A CAROUSEL FOR THE AGES Concert versions of famous Broadway fare are almost always exciting and delightful. But the Live from Lincoln Center production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's …
DRAMATIZING WHAT CANNOT BE KNOWN Aerobic exercises for the cerebral cortex, Tom Stoppard's daunting dramas (The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love) go for the gray matter. In perpetu…
DEFENSIVE ACTION Richard Brinsley Sheridan learned the consequence of gesture earlier than most of us. At 21, he fought two duels with the same man over the same woman; having once spared hi…
IF ONLY SINCERITY MEANT SUCCESS You really want this play to work. It means so well and maybe so much. But it's hard to find a worthy resolution in a play about repeated, nation-wide violati…
HIT AND MYTH In Sophocles’ Antigone, the titular character has returned to Thebes to warn her brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, about a prophecy that predicts they will kill each o…
IN SEARCH OF A STORY Loved ones seen in stasis are probably truer to most families. No clans are ever collectively happy or purposeful, only the members and not, of course, all the time. But…