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.
This Water Ain’t Flowin’
By Patrick Hurley
In desperate need of human connection, a group of people navigate love, loss and addiction in the surprisingly dated and sluggish Water By The Spoonful, playing now at the Mark Taper Forum. Read more
Big Night = Big Disappointment
By Patrick Hurley
Sophomoric pedantry rises to dizzying new heights in Paul Rudnick’s slog-fest Big Night, which opened last night at The Kirk Douglas Theatre. It is an unfledged, didactic glob of far-left liberal moralizing—fortified with overwrought, yet undeveloped dialogue, spewed by posturing archetypes, so staggeringly far-fetched it’s almost impressive, and then the whole thing is vigorously dredged in puerile saccharine. Read more
Curious Incident is a Theatrical Wonder
By Patrick Hurley
Theatricality and complex narrative have rarely aligned as staggeringly brilliant as they do in the highly sensorial production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on the novel by Mark Haddon. playing now at the Ahmanson Theatre. Read more
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