News And Blogs

Forget about show-stopping finales. In Jersey Boys, the smash-hit musical about the rise and fall of The Four Seasons, the pinnacle of excitement comes about 45 minutes into the first act. That’s when back-to-back presentations of three of the group’s biggest hits—Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, and Walk Like a Man—are greeted with enough th...

What Really Happened—Rick Elice Talks about the "Jersey Boys" Phenomenon

No one needs to tell a native Angeleno that car culture is rooted deep in Los Angeles. As immortalized in George Lucas’s American Graffiti, cruising is forever enmeshed with youth culture and music. Inspired by the cruisin’ oldies of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons—and Bob Gaudio's red "Caddy" convertible—in Jersey Boys (onstage at the A...

Top Five Cruising Boulevards of L.A.

It’s pretty easy to identify a boy band. Are five guys between the ages of 13 and 30 standing near each other, wearing matching outfits, and harmonizing? Are they wearing a lot of hair gel? If the answer to all of these questions is a yes, chances are, you’ve spotted a boy band. In honor of the arrival of our favorite boy group—Frankie Valli...

Boy Bands to Swoon Over from the 1960s to Now

Look, I’d do anything for a sandwich because I know what a sandwich is, one poor, hungry man tells another in Rajiv Joseph's Archduke (onstage at the Mark Taper Forum through June 4, 2017). In Joseph's darkly comic take on the origins of World War I, global history hinges in part on three young Serbs' desire for sandwiches. Will they assassinate...

Five Serbian Sandwiches Worth Going to War For

Archduke, which plays the Mark Taper Forum through June 4, 2017, takes place in the days and hours before the event that is widely regarded as the beginning of World War I—the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Playwright Rajiv Joseph hopes that the play will get audiences thinking about World War I as not so distant or forei...

Wonder Woman, Uncle Sam, and ‘Archduke’

Dry Land is such a beautiful play. And what I think it does really well is that it captures—in this subtle, insightful way—the pain and vulnerability of being a young woman in America, said Alana Dietze of the work she is directing at the Kirk Douglas Theatre as part of our inaugural Block Party, onstage through May 21, 2017....

Finding ‘Dry Land’ with Alana Dietze & Block Party