Pages Tagged “Kelson Reviews Theater”
Reviews
- Astra Lumina
- Beauty and the Beast (2010 Tour)
★★★☆☆
San Diego, 2012
The simpler staging & costumes work well enough, but the big numbers suffer from the smaller cast. - Beauty and the Beast (3D Theatricals)
★★★★★
Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 2016
An elaborate production by a local company with great performances from the leads, and a surprise understudy. - Belle’s Dreams of Adventure I never thought Belle gave up her dreams of adventure. I figured she had one, and gained the opportunity to have more. That’s why I hate the song ‘A Change in Me.’
- Chess in Concert: Post-Cold War Edition
The cold-war musical Chess works surprisingly well set in the present day. - Cirque du Soleil: Iris ★★★★★ Cirque’s acrobatics are always impressive, but IRIS’ focus on early cinema makes the clowns’ story is just as enjoyable, and video effects give it an entirely new look.
- Cirque du Soleil: Kooza ★★★★★ Impressive acrobatics as always, contortionists, extra clowns, a rainstorm and the Wheel of Death (really).
- Equivocation
Geffen Playhouse, 2009
Can Shakespeare discover the truth about the Gunpowder Plot? And if so, can he afford to tell it? Political intrigue, terrorism and torture (plus plain old personal conflicts) make for a compelling story. - Frost/Nixon
★★★★★
Ahmanson Theater, 2009
Gripping play about the negotiations behind David Frost’s famous TV interviews with ex-President Richard Nixon. - The Glass Mendacity
This spoof of Tennessee Williams’ most famous plays is funny on its own, but even funnier if you know the source material. - Ordinary Days
A slice-of-life musical about four people living in New York, their paths intersecting. - Ragtime
Ragtime has even more emotional impact on stage than the songs do alone, and the historical themes resonate strongly with the present day. - Xanadu (Stage Musical)
★☆☆☆☆
Segerstrom Center, 2009
The stage musical of Xanadu is a silly, self-aware parody that revels in its camp. I really liked about 10% of it. The rest, not so much.
Les Misérables
- Review: Les Misérables 25th Anniversary Stage Production Overall the new staging works very well, though the barricade sequences suffer from the loss of the rotating stage. Musically, the show feels rushed.
- I Watched Three Les Mis Parodies Last Night A Youtube binge got me watching Sesame Street's Les Mousserables, Animaniacs' Les Miseranimals, Forbidden Broadway's extended take(that), and On My Phone.
- A Visit to Thénardier’s Inn A local theater company transformed the musical into a fun, immersive cabaret-style parody of the show.
Writing
- I Know Them So Well
- Pomona A high school drama class has trouble producing a play.
- Without the Process
Blog Posts
- Theater for Nobody
This is fascinating: A college theater production of Sophocles’ “The Women of Trachis,” a rarely-performed Greek tragedy, was interrupted by the pandemic. It’s been transformed into a one-night only automated performance featuring video clips of the actors (each sheltering in place at home), collected by TikTok and iMovie and assembled by the director to be […]
- Lack of Audience
Back in my college theater days, I remember one of the teachers remarking that what sets theater apart from other types of events is the audience. A sporting event with no one watching still counts for the rankings and records. A play without an audience might as well be a dress rehearsal. Well, sporting events […]
- Chess in Concert: Post-Cold War Edition
The cold-war musical Chess works surprisingly well set in the present day. UCI Drama’s production is a concert staging of the show, with the orchestra and choir onstage, and the actors carrying handheld microphones with minimal props. It works well, especially for the more 80s-pop numbers like “Nobody’s Side” and the big ensemble songs like […]
- Symbolic Costuming: Stage vs. Screen
We took the kiddo to see his first live theater play today, A Year With Frog and Toad. It’s a children’s musical based on the Frog and Toad books, with each song adapted from one of the stories. The costumes in this production tended toward symbolic representation rather than realism. Frog and Toad themselves just […]
- They Didn’t Know What They Were Getting Into: the Woods
A surprising number of people who reviewed the movie on IMDB didn’t know it was going to be a musical or a darker, complex take on the stories.
- Going “Into the Woods” on Stage & Screen
I finally saw a stage version of the Sondheim/Lapine musical just a few weeks before the movie came out. Thumbs up to both!
- I Finally Saw “Ragtime”
Ragtime has even more emotional impact on stage than the songs do alone, and the historical themes resonate strongly with the present day.
- Surprisingly Popular Song
I was mostly ignoring the music until my brain latched onto a familiar sequence of notes. That couldn’t be a dance mix of Popular from Wicked…could it?
- Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
Photos: Not long after graduating with my drama degree, I found myself in London for a few days. I had to visit the reconstructed Globe Theatre.
- LA Music Center at Night (Photo) & The Glass Menagerie
On Saturday we went the the Mark Taper Forum to see The Glass Menagerie. It seemed an appropriate night for a “little silver slipper of a moon.”
- Arcadia & Orange Moon Over LA
A trip to the theater, then an unexpected bonus: A view of a deep orange half-moon above the distant LA skyline.
- Stars & Lightning with Cirque du Soleil
A trip to see Kooza near a giant orange balloon, during a thunderstorm.
- Equivocation in Westwood
After a Friday spent relaxing at home (no after-Thanksgiving Day sales, unless you count skimming the recommendations at Amazon), we drove up to LA to see the play Equivocation at the Geffen Playhouse. The drive was astonishingly fast (everyone must have been either at home or at the mall!), so we had plenty of time […]
- SCR at Night
Photo of South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, early in the evening.
- Planning for 90s Nostalgia
One day, someone will take a collection of popular songs from the 1990s and turn it into a nostalgia musical. Update July 2016: I was wondering if this had happened yet. I suppose you could count “American Idiot,” but apparently the album was intended to tell a story, so it’s not quite the same as […]
- Noises Off at SCR
Saw Noises Off at South Coast Repertory. Hilarious. Also brings back memories from high school and college productions.
- La Mancha
Home from seeing Brent Spiner in Man of La Mancha. Very good. Update: Here’s a friend’s review of the production.
- School of Night
Just got back from seeing “The School of Night” in LA. Good play. Awful drive. Must sleep.
- The Singing Fly
The latest newsletter for the Center Theatre Group includes a mention of The Fly: The Opera. Yes, The Fly, based on the sci-fi film about a scientist who gets combined with a housefly in a teleportation accident. And its remake. As an opera. 😯 Plácido Domingo conducts the U.S. premiere of the LA Opera-commissioned opera […]
- Frozen Shows
I ordered tickets for an upcoming production of The Phantom of the Opera (the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical) and something occurred to me: In all likelihood it’s going to be an exact replica of the 22-year-old London production (with a few concessions to the realities of touring). When did this start happening? Most of the […]
- Wednesday in San Diego
We made it to San Diego after a longer than expected midday drive. (Traffic between Carlsbad and the San Diego city limits was a nightmare.) After checking into the hotel, we stopped for a snack and then headed out to the convention center to pick up our badges for Comic-Con. It went a lot more […]
- Watching Evita: Deja Vu
The production of Evita was based on the original staging, just like the one I did in college. Also, musings on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s story structure.