In ‘jazz quarantine’ with Josh Nelson Trio 2
For jazz musicians and their audience, the spring and summer months of 2020 have been, to paraphrase the rebel leader Don Jose in The Wild Bunch, the months of sadness. Musicians need to communicate, exchange, and create with each other. And most thrive before an audience. As clubs and music spaces shutter due to the ...
From darkness, a new dance film @ Dance on Camera virtual festival 2
Peggy Baker was a memorably striking and unusual dancer during her years performing with Lar Lubovitch‘s company. Tall, powerful, seemingly gawky, with lashing limbs, she was never a pretty figure onstage, but more of an energized force field. After spending most of the 1980s with Lubovitch, she was invited to be part of the unique, ...
Review: ‘West Side’ Video
Shereen Pimentel, Isaac Powell and cast. photo: Jan Versweyveld Broadway’s current revival of West Side Story—the groundbreaking 1957 musical by Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim whose dramatic power has long been associated with kinetic energy and eloquently focused movement opens simply. The Jets saunter to the front of the vast, bare ...
Review: ‘Mack & Mabel,’ reunited, at City Center
Many regular attendees of New York City Center Encores! have been waiting – possibly since the series’ 1994 inception – for Mack & Mabel, a 1974 Broadway flop (it closed after 66 performances) that boasts one of Jerry Herman‘s strongest, most compelling and beloved scores. The invaluable series’ primary mission is to bring back musicals ...
Review: Blue13 Dance Company hits home run at The Wallis 2
Blue13 Dance Company “Diya aurToofan” photo credit: Kevin Parry for The Wallis Last night’s boffo showcase by the 15-year-old Blue13 Dance Company brought great pleasure, including a former secret now in plain sight thanks to presentation by The Wallis: the presence of a real choreographer in our midst. Achinta McDaniel, American-born of Indian descent, along ...
Going goth: ‘Frankenstein’ at The Wallis
Similar to the Gothic novel of the same title, which tells the horror story of the creation of a terrifying artificial man from parts of corpses, the stage play Frankenstein at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills takes fragments from the novel and author’s life to piece together a singular ...
Tanowitz observed: critic’s notes on ‘Four Quartets’ at CAP UCLA
An artsy crowd showed up at Royce Hall Sunday afternoon to see Four Quartets, no doubt because of the rapturous reviews it got in London and New York and because of its heady combination of the arts: literature (TS Eliot’s poem of the title read with earthy finesse by Kathleen Chalfant); modernist painter Brice Marden’s ...
Dad, misplaced: Alfred Molina stars in ‘The Father’
Alfred Molina & Pia Shah in The Father at Pasadena Playhouse. Photo: Jenny Graham To witness the renowned actor of stage and screen, Albert Molina, persuasively morph from an engaging, witty patriarch to a disorganized forgetful dependent is both captivating and chilling. Now at the Pasadena Playhouse the production of Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” in just an ...
Forward-looking, at Rogue Machine
anna khaja, taylor shurte, james liebman, jeff lorch On our planet’s frightening social and political seismographic scale, and by any theatrical measure, “Earthquakes in London” is definitely a shaker, especially if climate change and the human condition concern you. Now playing at the Electric Lodge in Venice, weekends through March 1, the ambitious, edgy Rogue ...
The Cirque*us is in town!
Wow, and wow again! The action-packed Cirque du Soleil production “Volta” just opened under its big top in the Dodger Stadium lot, and it’s worth a multitude of wows. There’s even an act where signs are held up, the word “Wow” on them, in case you miss your cue! As with all Cirque productions (I’ve ...