Posts by Bondo Wyszpolski
Anything Goes [THEATER REVIEW]
This is the other splashy musical that takes place aboard an ocean liner – the one that doesn’t strike an iceberg. In case a reminder is needed as to why Cole Porter was one of the great 20th century songwriters, we don’t need to wait long once the lights go down and the band strikes…
Read MoreOther Desert Cities at the Mark Taper Forum [THEATER REVIEW]
Bombs aren’t just going off in Baghdad; there’s a big one set to explode in Palm Springs, year 2004, in Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, “Other Desert Cities.” At the Taper through Jan. 6, this internecine drama revolves around the one family member who is not present while bearing down on the daughter who…
Read MoreA Photograph in Wonderland- Down we tumble, Alice-like, into the artistic vision of Janet Milhomme
The photographs of award-winning photographer Janet Milhomme were shown last year in Manhattan Beach and this year at The Loft in San Pedro, Cannery Row in Redondo Beach, and currently at the Palos Verdes Art Center.
Read MoreThey Took off Their Clothes [EASY WEEK]
And Like Angels They Danced Gayle Goodrich and “Tango Desnudo” at Flazh!Alley “…and so things just kind of evolved over the years where I would photograph dancers or the female nude,” says Gayle Goodrich, “and ‘Tango Desnudo’ came about two years ago when I was at an Argentine tango social dance at the San Diego…
Read MoreSome Enchanted Evening: Diane Lauridsen and South Bay Ballet
Home to South Bay Ballet for the past 13 years, the dance studio on Sartori Avenue in Old Torrance is in a building with a long and storied past. It may have been a bank, says the company’s founder and artistic director Diane Lauridsen; it was probably several different clothing stores; and it was a…
Read MoreIrving Berlin’s White Christmas” sleds into the Norris Theatre
One could say it began with a magic lamp and perhaps a flying carpet or two. James Gruessing and Randy Brenner perform in the musical spectacular “Aladdin” at the Hyperion Theater in Disneyland. In real life (or is it the other way around?), Gruessing is the executive director of the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills…
Read MoreDrama and Devotion [Art review]
“Drama and Devotion: Heemskerck’s ‘Ecce Homo’ Altarpiece from Warsaw” Ten years ago, in connection with the Getty Center’s exhibition, “The Sacred Spaces of Pieter Saenredam,” I journeyed by rail to Utrecht and looked at or wandered through several of the churches that Saenredam documented through his meticulous paintings in the early- and mid-1600s. In a…
Read MoreThe Last Hurrah! [Cannery Row Studios]
“It’s the last show,” says Richard Stephens; “I’m not going to produce shows anymore.” A silence fills the room as the interviewer stammers: “Wh-wh-what do you mean?” “I gave Johnny Cantu three shows to produce at the shop [that’s slang for Cannery Row Studios]; we’re gonna start in January. I’m stepping back; he can take…
Read MoreA Cinematic Breath of Fresh Air: South Bay Film Society lands Stephen Farber’s “Reel Talk”
The acclaimed film series, “Reel Talk with Stephen Farber, is headed to the South Bay starting January 30, and will run for four consecutive Wednesdays through February 20 with screenings at 7 p.m. Tickets are on sale, and they will go fast. Movie-goers who attend “Reel Talk with Stephen Farber” see exciting and often thought-provoking…
Read MoreNov. 23: “Celebrating Life” art show, Turkey Hop in Redondo Beach, Miracle On 34th Street in El Segundo
Talk about colorful Jeanne Zaske and Lynnie Sterba are mother and daughter artists whose show, “Celebrating Life,” is on view through Saturday (tomorrow) at Cannery Row, 604 N. Francisca Ave., Redondo Beach. They both have a distinctive style, with colors that are truly passionate. (888) 366-1988. This turkey’s hopping The 13th annual “Turkey Hop” takes…
Read More“Under the Influence” art show at El Camino College: Do the things we gather and keep play a role in the creative process?
The students at El Camino College who step into the campus art gallery are being exposed to an alternative and non-academic approach to making art. The traditional view may be along the lines of the artist sitting on a bluff and painting the sunset or arranging alligator pears on a table cloth, or finding a…
Read MoreNowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide: “The Last Days of Pompei Decadence. Apocalypse. Resurrection.”
“Pompeii is as much the name of an event as a place,” we read in the catalogue for the current exhibition at the Getty Villa. “It is the most famously dead of all ancient cities, yet the one that comes most vividly alive to us today.” Our fascination is more of a fixation, which is…
Read More“Seminar” [THEATER REVIEW]
Theresa Rebeck is a smart, hip writer, with an ability to create ensemble pieces á la “Carnage,” as we previously witnessed in “Poor Behavior” and now in “Seminar.” What all of these works depict, in a kind of high-brow soap opera-ish manner, are alert, with-it and well-to-do people being tested and coming apart at the…
Read More“Celebrating Life” opens at Cannery Row in Redondo Beach
Five years ago, when he was still an idealistic young man, Richard Stephens presented a mother-daughter show at Cannery Row Studios. He’d met Jeanne Zaske through Wilfred Sarr and took a class from her. “I learned to not be so critical of other artists or to belittle their attempts at art,” he recalls. “‘Speak from…
Read More“A Strange Magic: Gustave Moreau’s Salome”
Situated in one of the many hearts of Paris, the Musée Gustave Moreau was the family home and studio of the painter Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), and it contains some 14,000 watercolors and drawings, plus 1,000 paintings. It was bequeathed to the French nation one year before Moreau’s death, and this reviewer well remembers the rainy…
Read MoreHairspray plays Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center
Based on the colorful and over-the-top movie by John Waters, the brash and bold musical “Hairspray” is something we’d have expected from James Blackman and the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities. But now they are gone, seeking to establish footing in San Pedro’s Warner Grand Theatre, and stepping into the local picture is…
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