Posts by Bondo Wyszpolski
Johanna Day and Reg Rogers star in Theresa Rebeck’s “Poor Behavior” [REVIEW]
Here we go, another tragicomedy about marriages careening and possibly flipping over the guardrail. And so we may ask ourselves, How much resilience does a marriage have? How many fissures can it endure? How long should someone fight for or hold onto a marriage before the chill of death is irreversible? In Theresa Rebeck’s “Poor…
Read More“Trojan Women (after Euripides)”
My kingdom for a horse and my horse for another opportunity to sit beneath the stars on a warm, late summer evening to enjoy an ancient Greek or Roman play in the amphitheater at the Getty Villa. This year the New York-based SITI Company, directed by Anne Bogart, presents their adaptation (by Jocelyn Clarke) of…
Read MoreGreen Roast Coffee is good to the very last drop
Hand pours and fine art at Green Roast Coffee An exquisite cup of coffee can be a work of art in itself, or can surely complement one: It enhances our reading pleasure or revives us during intermission at the theater. In his collection of short stories, All Fires the Fire, Julio Cortázar wrote that “the…
Read MoreWater Sports and Film Shorts
In which we paddle out for a conversation with Barry Hatchett “The official title is Beach Shorts Film Fest. My name is Barry Hatchett… like Bury the Hatchet.” I didn’t want to be the first one to bring that up. “No, no,” Hatchett replies with a big smile. “Everyone’s always said that my whole life.…
Read MoreFlag Stop pulls into Torrance for the Labor Day Weekend
Having an art show at a high-end car dealership doesn’t seem like a recipe for a marriage made in Heaven, but Flag Stop and Lexus are at least holding hands – and there’s every indication that the three-day event (Sept. 2-4) will be rewarding and memorable. The committee that conceived and organized Flag Stop took…
Read MoreKhatia Buniatishvili, “Franz Liszt” (Sony Classical)
On this, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, we have an album calculated to make a splash. And why not? Liszt was an innovator, a Romantic right up there with Chopin, Berlioz, Schubert and Wagner, but also perhaps the world’s first Rock Star. Ken Russell didn’t title his bio-pic “Lisztomania”…
Read MoreThe Hanging Gardens of Riviera Village
Cathie Goldberg and Larry Lubow have provided the finishing touch Sometimes you see it, but you still don’t know it’s there. Sculptor Larry Lubow and garden designer Cathie Goldberg have beautified Riviera Village in Redondo Beach. What they’ve done is in plain sight, but chances are very few people have taken notice, and certainly not…
Read MoreZola Moon: The Last Waltz?
Often compared with Janis Joplin and Big Mama Thornton, singer Zola Moon has described herself as a postmodern blues artist. She is also something else, a South Bay institution, an integral part of the local music scene since at least the mid-1980s when she and Barry Levenson fronted The Automatics, and then for the past…
Read MoreOut of Africa comes Khaira Arby, the Nightingale of the North
Thanks to an admirer, one of Mali’s finest performs Thursday, July 21 at Saint Rocke She’s been called the Nightingale of the North, but Malian singer Khaira Arby was a caged songbird for much of her life. Born in Abaradjou, just north of Timbuktu, Arby’s Berber father forbade her musical aspirations, as did her first…
Read More“Les Misérables”
Based on the 1862 epic novel by Victor Hugo, the musical version of “Les Misérables” unfolds like a Wagnerian opera – dark, foreboding, larger than life, and sailing straight for the shoals of its tragic destiny. It’s been 30 years since Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil brought their work to the stage, and it can…
Read MoreWith Flying Colors: Singer Guitarist Joe Cipolla
Guitarist Joe Cipolla is retired, but you’d never know it For Joe Cipolla, known around Hermosa Beach as Singing Joe, it was an easy transition. “Right before I retired,” he says, “I walked into the Mermaid [just as] a kid walked in with a guitar on his back. And I said, ‘Do you play?’ He…
Read MoreGuitarist Joe Cipolla is retired, but you’d never know it
For Joe Cipolla, known around Hermosa Beach as Singing Joe, it was an easy transition. “Right before I retired,” he says, “I walked into the Mermaid [just as] a kid walked in with a guitar on his back. And I said, ‘Do you play?’ He goes, ‘Well, mister, I’m taking lessons.’ ‘Okay. Do you mind…
Read MoreConcert review: the Asian American Symphony Orchestra
It was the last concert of the season for the Asia America Symphony Orchestra, and one that marked the orchestra’s 50th anniversary – having originated in 1961 as the Japanese Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles. The music was performed in front of an appreciative audience last Friday at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates,…
Read MoreFraming What She Sees: Gloria Plascencia is the catalyst for Hermosa Beach photography show
Gloria Plascencia is the catalyst for a photography show that opens in Hermosa Beach “It’s been a little hobby of mine for years.” But now it’s more than just a hobby. “It is. Now it is my career; it is my life.” Gloria Plascencia didn’t become a photographer and a curator overnight, but this Friday…
Read MoreMidnight at the Oasis: breaking into the Manhattan Beach Creative Arts Center at 3 a.m.
In which the intrepid Count Eugène de Panthémont urges his friend to break into the Manhattan Beach Creative Arts Center at 3 a.m. so that they can contemplate the photographs of Laura Orr “Don’t worry about the broken glass,” said Count Eugène de Panthémont, calmly brushing aside cobwebs and dust. “One of my bodyguards will…
Read MoreAlone in the Moonlight: Portraits of the Muse [PHOTOS]
Alone in the Moonlight: Portraits of the Muse opens Friday, June 10 in the Creative Arts Center, 1560 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Manhattan Beach. The photographers include Niki B., Melanie Shatto, Alison Walker, and Bob Witte, who came later to the project, as well as Don Adkins, Joelle Adkins, Annie Appel, Bob Barry, Paul Blieden, Amy…
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