Critic’s notes: In Pasadena, Jammin’ with Jelly Roll Morton
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Janaya-Jones-Naomi-C-Walley-and-Cyd-Charisse-Glover-Hill_Photo-by-Jeff-Lorch-scaled-1-606x181-1.jpg)
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
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/S297-606x181-1.jpg)
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
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/diddley-do-606x181-1.jpg)
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 ...
John Waters, son of P.T. Barnum
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/john-waters-2-606x181-1.jpg)
He was irrepressible. In 1959, filmmaker John Waters posted announcements on telephone poles of his Baltimore neighborhood. From the start, he was both a creator and a P.T. Barnum impresario. Culled from the costumes, props, handwritten scripts, correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, film clips, and more, included in “John Waters, Pope of Trash,” the major exhibition dedicated ...
REVIEW: ‘Pal Joey’ presses ahead, at New York City Center ‘Encores’
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/joey-1-606x181-1.jpeg)
My introduction to Pal Joey came at New York City Center in 1995, when the then-new “Encores” series presented the iconic Rodgers and Hart’s 1940 musical with its original Hans Spialek orchestrations restored. The music – which included an old-fashioned overture and a five-minute ballet (a Richard Rodgers specialty in those vintage early musicals) to ...
artsmeme to glimpse CAP-UCLA ‘Nimoy’ the erstwhile Crest Theatre
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/nimoy-theater-606x181-1.jpg)
photo courtesy chris nichols for los angeles magazine Named in honor of artist, actor, director and philanthropist Leonard Nimoy, The Nimoy is a reimagining of Westwood’s historic Crest Theatre, acquired by UCLA in 2018 and since renovated into a flexible 300-seat off-campus performing arts space. The show artsmeme will attend features performances by Grammy Award-winning ...
To the Tetons with Lear: loving memories of Christopher McHale 8
Sep
18
2023
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/christopher-tetons-1-606x181-1.jpg)
It was April 2008, and a glorious time to be in the region of the Grand Teton mountains of Utah. I was there, of course, for the majestic scenery but also to hunker down, indoors, in a dark theater, watching my longtime friend Chris McHale (1954-2023) scale his own high peak playing the titular role ...
A ‘Hungry Ghost,’ satiated, at Skylight Theatre
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Jenny-Soo-and-Ben-Messmer_Photo-by-Grettel-Cortes-606x181-1.jpg)
It’s everyone’s nightmare … to have a very weird white man, a hermit who lives in the woods, pry apart your sliding-glass doors and invade your crib, your private space, your digs, your boite, your last-ditch barrier of bricks-and-mortar against … people like him. And yet, that’s exactly what happens in Hungry Ghost, a new ...
Adieu to two valiant dancing women of Los Angeles arts: Deborah Lawlor & Flip Manne 2
![](https://artsmeme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/lawlor-manne-bar-606x181-1.jpg)
Fountain Theatre co-founder Deborah Lawlor, who died May 2, 2023, began her career in the ’60s as a dancer, choreographer and actor in New York, where she was a member of the Judson Church/Caffe Cino scene in the Village. She moved to South India in 1968, there pioneering Auroville, a 12-square-mile utopian international community created ...