Sometimes the simplest recipes yield the most delicious results. In Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca we have love, lust and murder — a torrid triumvirate of terms cooked up by the marketing department at LA Opera. Yet it describes quite succinctly the dramatic feast that viewers are in for. Just add music and stir.
Puccini based his 1900 [...]
For all you armchair adventurers out there, here’s a tip: sharpen your machete and hack a path down to the Ivy Substation in Culver City. There, the Actors’ Gang is mounting an extraordinary version of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness. Brian T. Finney has adapted the book and performs it as a one-man [...]
One of the pressing tasks of a modern opera company is to figure out how to put younger fannies into their seats as the Geritol generation gradually fades away. In the case of LA Opera, they can’t fail to notice that their elephantine competitor for entertainment dollars across town, Hollywood, has done pretty well attracting [...]
I barely noticed the old man with thinning hair and glasses standing next to me as the introductions got underway at the kickoff of the new Jimi Hendrix exhibit at the Fender factory in Corona. He was dressed in blue jeans, dirty tennis shoes and a beige nylon jacket; the only thing unusual was his [...]
Many Angelenos might be surprised to know that a rich vein of theatrical ore is waiting to be mined amid the malls and casual dining chains of East Pasadena at A Noise Within. The place may be a bit out of the way, but any theatergoers who hesitate to make the trek are doing themselves [...]
High praise is due to the Antaeus Company, L.A.’s award-winning classical theater company, for getting some Kaufman & Hart material in front of modern audiences. George S. Kaufman had many talents, including playwright, drama critic, director and theater owner, although he is perhaps best remembered as wizard of the wisecrack. With a quick and caustic [...]
The new show at the Getty Villa, The Last Days of Pompeii, refers variously to an event, a book, and a rich history of mythmaking. The event, of course, is the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius outside Naples that buried the prosperous Roman town. But if you come expecting to see a display of [...]
In Van Gogh’s famous painting “Starry Night,” a multitude of stars blaze fervidly in the night sky above St. Remy. In Vincent, currently at the VS Theatre on Pico, only one star blazes, but the light seems just as intense and intriguing, illuminating the mysteries inside the life of the great painter.
Vincent has an interesting [...]
More than a century and a half after composition, the operas of Giuseppe Verdi dominate the operatic canon. A half-dozen or so of his operas are among the most widely performed in the world. But Verdi wrote 28 operas, some of which, like The Two Foscari, have languished in obscurity. And one wonders why, when [...]
Theatergoers like surprises, so I was delighted when what seemed to be a rather conventional madcap comedy called By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, currently onstage at the Geffen Playhouse for its West Coast premiere, abruptly shifted gears and fractured into a myriad of perspectives. The result is a much more complex and multi-layered commentary [...]
