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Swan Still Stuns

When art becomes transcendent, it is unlike anything else. There is something sublime, something transportive, as if one is suddenly and rapturously catapulted into a meditative trance, invited into the imaginative rendering of an auteur and his truth. Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake: The Legend Returns, playing now at the Ahmanson, is a work of such beauty that its exquisiteness lies in the sheer audacity of its own existence. The re-telling of the classic ballet through the ingenious queer lens of a master storyteller is awe-inspiring.

A Play is a Poem is A Play about America.

Five short plays, meant to create a pastiche of Americana comprise Ethan Coen’s A Play is a Poem, and it’s having its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum.

Beckett Appreciation 101

Few writers are able to capture the imagination through irony, metaphor, and despair as startling or as vividly as Samuel Beckett. His prose has proven as deeply layered and richly textured as a perfectly aged bottle of wine. And much like wine, it is definitely an acquired taste.

A Lesson in Dramaturgy

The Echo Theater Company is presenting the world premiere of Handjob written by Erik Patterson. In the #MeToo, Times Up, Harvey Weinstein era, this play seems to be positioning itself as a statement piece. It wants to join the conversation, but is it able to? If we break the play down to its most basic dramatic parts, we’ll find the answer.

Smoke & Mirrors Is A Fabulous Allusion.

By Patrick Hurley

Sash Velour, winner of Season 9 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, brings a performance art aesthetic to Drag in her one-queen show Smoke & Mirrors, and the result is a technically impressive blend of camp, memoir, and fabulousness.

Singin’ in the Rain is a Delightful Revisit to A Glorious Feeling.

By Patrick Hurley

There are very few movie musicals that are so well-written, solidly structured and infused with such joy that a mere re-creation on stage almost seventy years later actually works. Singin’ In the Rain, playing now at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, is such a show.

Falsettos Does Set Oh So Typical Standards.

By Patrick Hurley

In the pantheon of Musical theater, where originality has been ebbing farther and farther away from the reboot, remake, revival culture that is Broadway- we find ourselves, quite inexplicably, stranded on the nearly three-hour island that is Falsettos, playing now at the Ahmanson.

Didion’s Search for Meaning Opens a World of Wonder

By Patrick Hurley

The intersection between past and future, between meaning and chaos- all the lingering inertia that implies a sense of false permanence and comfort come together in the telling of Joan Didion’s masterwork, “The White Album,” a seminal essay that deals with the struggles, both visceral and cultural, that defined a generation of Americans, and gives voice to the uncertainty, the freedom, and the impossible thrust toward more progressive modernity. The time was the late 1960s, the place was Los Angeles and the voice was Joan Didion. CAP UCLA in association with Center Theatre Group presents the essay as a performance piece created by Lars Jan/Early Morning Opera.

A Masterful Performance Breathes New Life into Othello

By Patrick Hurley

One could call it an exercise in theatrical scaling-down, as if the piece were literally and figuratively constricting itself and its characters as it moves along, tightening its grip until at last, nearly out of breath, it culminates in a final claustrophobic moment. Shakespeare’s Othello, playing now at A Noise Within, is yet another example of the bard’s brilliance for metaphor and symbolism and is one of his more accessible tragedies.

Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella is a Darkly Beautiful Fairy Tale

By Patrick Hurley

Nearly twenty years after its premiere, Matthew Bourne’s dazzling production of Cinderella once again graces the stage of the Ahmanson theatre. The piece, like the choreographer/director himself, is still going strong, and is a great testament to the power of storytelling.