An aural ‘fountain of tears’: ‘Ainadamar,’ soon at L.A. Opera
Ainadamar, in Metropolitan Opera production, year, photo: It’s special if only because it will be conducted by Lina González-Granados, who will lead the LA Opera Orchestra premiere of the Grammy Award-winning opera Ainadamar by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The opera, dating from 2003, traces the life and work of poet-playwright Federico García Lorca (a trouser role by mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack), ...
Out of the blue, an accident: Margot Rose’s ‘Unconditional’ at Skylight Theatre
Melina Young, Margot Rose – photo: Sherry Ryan Barnett for SPLASH Some people transmit their profound life experiences in autobiographies. Others, in memoirs. Playwright/performer Margot Rose has fashioned a proprietary genre, a “musical memoir,” as a live-theater experience. The one-act show’s title, “Unconditional,” ostensibly refers to the quality of unbound love that she tapped, in ...
‘Once Upon a Mattress’ at Ahmanson: from Carol Burnett to Sutton Foster
Dec
22
2024
Well, she certainly passed OUR “sensitivity test.” The adorable, kooky, brave and prodigiously talented triple-threat performer, Sutton Foster, commandeered the barn-like Ahmanson Theatre from a royal roost atop twenty mattresses in Once Upon a Mattress, a vastly entertaining re staging of the goofball classic musical-comedy treatment of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, “The Princess and ...
To historic Sierra Madre Playhouse, for ‘Bob Baker’s Nutcracker’
We’re heading into the beauty time in Southern California, the holiday season when the air grows nippier, the sun seems more yellow and warming than ever, and white caps of snow decorate the San Gabriel Mountains as you venture east toward the desert. And what better stopover than the charming Sierra Madre Playhouse, where this ...
REVIEW: Teatro Grattacielo’s operatic ‘Beyond The Horizon,’ angst by Eugene O’Neill
photo credit: amanda vaill BEYOND THE HORIZONOpera in Three ActsMusic by Nicolas FlagelloLibretto by Nicolas Flagello and Walter SimmonsOrchestration by Anthony SbordoniPresented by Teatro Grattacielo at LA MAMA Shares, 66 East 4th Street, New York NYSunday, September 15, 2024 Eugene O’Neill is the most operatic of American playwrights — think of those conflict-ridden families, those ...
‘Slow down the clock’ … chants Timur in nightmarish ‘Black Lodge’ @ CAP-UCLA
For a few years after COVID, I had no patience — squirming in my theater seat and super judgy at things that did make immediate sense. Often walking out! But somehow, I anticipate that in the dark confines of the very cool United Theatre on Broadway, the 1,600-seat legacy movie palace which, for an extended ...
Critic’s notes: In Pasadena, Jammin’ with Jelly Roll Morton
Janaya Mahealani Jones, Naomi C. Walley, Cyd Charisse Glover-Hill Jelly’s Last Jam / photo by Jeff Lorch It doesn’t get more rollicking than the scene in the photo above, a trio of triple-threat red-hot mamas bumping and grinding in their bawdy-house skivvies in Dell Howlett’s well-crafted choreography for Jelly’s Last Jam, now on at the ...
Key ingredient in Ebony Rep’s STEW? Family!
Mar
12
2024
She’s equal parts Mildred Pierce, Julia Child, and Danai Gurira. She’s in her muu-muu with house slippers. Her hair is wrapped, and she’s cooking. She’s Greta Oblesby, playing “Mama,” in a marvelous, alive production of Zora Howard’s Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted play, STEW. Newly produced by Ebony Repertory Theater and directed by Jade King Carroll, it’s now ...
A still-timely revisit to TMB’s ‘Tiny Little Town’
Feb
7
2024
When I saw it in a workshop production in July 2022, I immensely enjoyed “Tiny Little Town, A New Musical” by the witty folk who comprise Theatre Movement Bazaar. A thinly veiled allegory to our own society’s serious malaise rendered laughable in the guise of theater, the show gives a reprieve by hinting that our ...
