The one and only Billy Shears! Mark Morris’s ‘Pepperland’ at The Wallis

photo: robert torres When I first saw Mark Morris’s bullseye-hitting “Pepperland” oh so many years ago at Segerstrom Center in Orange County, I was so ebullient through the entire thing that after the show, I clambered backstage to congratulate Mr. Morris in person. I don’t typically do that. I’m a dance critic. I felt I ...
Baby-boomer must-see: ‘One to One, John & Yoko’

This poster may only serve to reignite the unsubsiding loathing for Yoko Ono but the documentary, which had musical oversight by the couple’s son Sean, actually counters that view. It reveals an amazingly beautiful relationship between an unlikely pairing, two artists. I recommend it highly. I couldn’t even move from my seat for a good ...
New doc ‘One to One: John & Yoko’ on arts couple’s Greenwich Village life slated to open
Apr
2
2025

We’re seeing it next week. But no harm to view the trailer. “One to One: John & Yoko” concerns an eighteen-month window in 1971 in which the controversial couple, newly arrived in the United States, lived in a tiny apartment in the Village where, among other things, they watched gobs of American television. Living through ...
It’s been ‘a hard day’s night’ — for sixty years!

working like a dog: paul, john, george & ringo What’s amusing about that funny-yet-familiar song title, “A Hard Day’s Night,” is its disingenuity. When the song hit Planet Earth with a sonic boom, the four moptop Beatles, John, Paul, George, and Ringo, delivered their “woooo”s as though they’ve never had a hard day’s anything in ...
I get by with a little help from Gwen Verdon

carol burnett, phyllis diller, bobby gentry, gwen verdon Dateline Nov 20: It’s been a wretched week. A crazy person, with “a little help” from his equally crazy friends, is foisting a coup d’etat on our democracy; the very air of my neighborhood has become a dicey thing to breathe; and the Doris Duke Theatre where ...
Dhani Harrison honors his Beatle dad @ Valley Performing Arts Center 1
Sep
21
2014

It was beyond beautiful, a huge pleasant jolt, in the midst of a wonderful, sold-out “The Fab Faux” Beatles tribute performance last night at Valley Performing Arts Center, when guest artist, Dhani Harrison, pictured at left, took to the stage. The only offspring of ‘the quiet Beatle’ strummed his guitar and honored his father by ...
Welcome Beatles 1964 fifty years later @ Levitt Pavilion

Celebrate 50 years of the Beatles in the U.S. this weekend at Levitt Los Angeles with a unique Beatles retrospective featuring the Omega String Quartet, the same outstanding group that brought the largest show in the history of Levitt — the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Retrospective last summer, 2013. A psychedelic ...