Posts by Bondo Wyszpolski
“Marilyn Forever” – Long Beach Opera at the Warner Grand, 3/21 and 3/29
What’s Marilyn Monroe thinking? Maybe we should ask her… This Saturday at 8 and next Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Long Beach Opera will present the U.S. premiere of “Marilyn Forever,” a chamber opera by English composer Gavin Bryars. Along with such musical luminaries as Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, and Michael Nyman, who also came to…
Read More“Taking Sides” – Life in the Third Reich
Patrick Vest may want to consider hiring a bodyguard. The actor who plays Major Steve Arnold in Ronald Harwood’s “Taking Sides” (onstage at Little Fish through April 4) is near perfect as a detestable son-of-a-bitch – an aspersion seemingly seconded by a woman in the audience who declared at intermission that she was ready to…
Read More“Carrie: The Musical” – Brady Schwind’s new concept
Theater is collaborative, but the best theater always has someone at the helm with the foresight and the ambition to go an extra inch or an extra mile, either with provocative, little-seen work, or with innovative staging and an astute eye for casting. In the South Bay, two people spring to mind who came and…
Read MoreSouth Bay Arts Calendar 3/13/15-3/17/15
Friday, March 13 Dressed to the nines Last fall it was Macbeth, not it’s Millie. Redondo Union High School presents the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” directed by Justin Baldridge, this weekend and next in the RUHS Auditorium, 631 Vincent Park, Redondo Beach. Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. as well as Sunday, March 21, at…
Read MoreBreathing Life into An Empty Space
2-D and 3-D work by 4-D artists in Manhattan Beach Paintings and sculptures aren’t usually called upon to go head-to-head with one another, but that seems to be an underlying focus for “Post-Medium,” a four-person exhibition that opens tomorrow evening at the Manhattan Beach Art Center. The work of Walpa D’Mark, David Festa, Rema Ghuloum,…
Read MoreIn Search of Hope and Tolerance
Jerry Prell directs “The Laramie Project” at El Camino College It was one of those tragedies that could have slipped away from the headlines and into obscurity. But in 1998, after Matthew Shepard – a 21-year-old student who lived in Laramie, Wyoming – was beaten up and left to die because he was gay, playwright…
Read MoreA Short Distance, But a Long Way
Artist Richard Stephens has found his little Santa Cruz Where’s Richard Stephens, the guy who used to run Cannery Row in Redondo Beach? Let’s follow the trail of dripping paint. There he is, in his new, intimate studio at Destination Art, a stone’s throw from Old Torrance and an easy lob from The Depot. …
Read MoreSoaking up a little “Inherent Vice” – novel and film
Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is up for Best Adapted Screenplay (as well as Best Costume Design), but the film pretty much came and went and is unlikely to become a mainstay of cinematic history. Nonetheless, its South Bay connection is important, and that, at least, will persist. During the…
Read More60 Shades of Burton Gray – post-abstract surrealist painter
You’ve taken your four-year-old son to church or to choir practice and you want him to sit still and somehow not be bored, so what do you do? Burton Gray’s mother handed him a pencil and a pad of paper. He was still too young to write his memoirs, but old enough to start drawing.…
Read MoreThe Living Storybooks of Cornelia Funke
Mirada and ESMoA and the MirrorWorld experience Cornelia Funke has authored many books for children and young adults, including the novels Reckless and Fearless, part of her enchanting MirrorWorld series. However, this latter series is now even more enchanting due to the ingenuity of a company based in Marina del Rey. Funke (pronounced “foon-ka”) remembers…
Read MoreSurveying the South Bay’s art shows of the year gone by
As we emerge from the darkness of 2014 it’s become something of a habit to turn around and, like Orpheus, reach out to Eurydice just before she vanishes for good. And so with the visual arts: What was cool and what was a gruel over the past 12 months? This is my own glimpse back,…
Read MoreArt is an experience and an adventure at ESMoA in El Segundo
In 2014, artnet named ESMoA (the El Segundo Museum of Art) as one of the top ten privately-owned contemporary art museums in America. ESMoA’s rise has been rapid. Just two years ago, as we were writing in advance of the opening exhibition, we were wondering just how well an experimental “art laboratory” (which is what…
Read More“The Ghosts of Versailles” – opera, hauntingly majestic
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York to commemorate its 100th season, “The Ghosts of Versailles” arrived seven years too late. Nonetheless, this “grand opera buffa,” as composer John Corigliano describes it, is a formidable work in every sense. Accompanied by William M. Hoffman’s witty and intelligent libretto, “The Ghosts of Versailles,” which premiered…
Read More“Mrs. Parliament’s Night Out” – but is she coming back?
Norm Foster’s “Mrs. Parliament’s Night Out” is a humorous spin on one woman’s midlife crisis, which kicks in when her husband forgets all about their 32nd wedding anniversary. Presumably he remembered, or at least acknowledged, the 31 that came before. As presented by the Torrance Theatre Company and directed by local stage veteran Perry Shields,…
Read MoreWhen We Clamor for Glamour
Krisjan Klenow’s Steeling Pompeii fashion show on Saturday night Men can dress up for weddings and funerals and concerts at Disney Hall, but they’re unlikely to play dress-up the way that girls and women can. So when Krisjan Klenow says “Fashion is fantasy,” it’s rather clear that it’s the fairer sex she’s referring to. “I’m…
Read More“Thérèse Raquin” – carnal crisis at Long Beach Opera
In 1999, while the world was looking forward to the new millennium, Tobias Picker was gazing back more than a century, to the novel Thérèse Raquin that Émile Zola had written in 1868. Picker had already composed the operas “Emmeline” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox;” Zola would go on to write Nana, Germinal, L’Assommoir, and several…
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