O. C. LIVE : WEEKEND : 'Ballad of Yachiyo' Haunts

L.A. Times Archives

Jan. 19, 1996 12 AM PT

THEATER: “Ballad of Yachiyo,” Philip Kan Gotanda’s haunting drama based on his own family history, traces the life of a young girl who becomes entangled with a potter and his wife in early 20th century Hawaii. Sharon Ott’s evocative staging can be seen at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. . . . A perfectly scathing, expertly played production of “Tartuffe,” Moliere’s satire of religious hypocrisy, can be found at A Noise Within in Glendale.

* MOVIES: “French Twist” is a French sex comedy (remember those?) about a lesbian (played by writer-director Josiane Balasko) whose van breaks down in front of the home of a married couple (Victoria Abril, Alain Chabat). In the way it suggests fluidity in sexual orientation--and in its success in producing laughs--it brings “La Cage Aux Folles” to mind (Edwards Town Center, Costa Mesa). . . . A couple of screenings of note tonight: at Newport Harbor Art Museum, it’s “High Noon,” the 1952 classic starring Gary Cooper, playing at 6:30 p.m.; over at the UC Irvine Student Center at 7 and 9:30 p.m., it’s “Toto the Hero,” a 1991 European film about a man whose boyhood dreams of being a secret agent aren’t quite fulfilled.

* MUSIC: Opera Pacific will present five performances of Verdi’s “Otello,” beginning Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Vladimir Atlantov will sing the title role. Kallen Esperian (Story, F30) will sing Desdemona. Robert McFarland will be Iago. Stage director is Mario Corradi. Steven Mercurio will conduct. Performances will continue on Wednesday, Jan. 27 and 31 and Feb. 4. . . . Violinist-conductor Diana Halprin and members of the Orange County Chamber Orchestra will play music by Ravel and Schubert on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. . . . Mariss Jansons will lead the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in works by Weber, Bruch and Dvorak on Sunday at 3 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center. Pamela Frank will be the soloist in Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The program is sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. . . . Lucinda Carver conducts and appears as piano soloist with her Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, Saturday night at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. . . . Veteran violinist Isaac Stern, who turned 75 in July, returns to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in recital Sunday at 7:30 p.m.

* DANCE: Making its first Greater Los Angeles area appearances, the 14-member Toronto Dance Theatre (Story, F30) will dance works by company artistic director Christopher House and David Earle on Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. . . . Kathak dancer Anjani Ambegaokar will honor her guru Pandit Sundarlaljee Gangani with a program of his works on Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Campus Theatre at Fullerton College. Dancers will include Ambegaokar, her daughter Amrapali and members of Ambegaokar’s company and students. Harish Gangani, Sundarlaljee’s son, will be the tabla player. The concert is sponsored by the Sundar Kala Kendra Foundation.

* JAZZ: Horace Tapscott, a serious keyboardist who uses the piano to create detailed settings and character sketches, teams with powerful bassist Roberto Miranda on Sunday at Spaghettini in Seal Beach. . . . Vocalists Mark Murphy, Sue Raney, Bill Henderson and Ruth Price team with pianist Alan Broadbent in a fund-raiser dubbed “To Johnny Mandel With Love,” Sunday at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City. Mandel is expected to be in the audience. . . . The Zawinul Syndicate, led by keyboardist Joe Zawinul, brings its mix of world-beat rhythms and synthesized technology to Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood tonight through Sunday.

* ART: Responding to a 1991 call for proposals, 100 artists from the U.S. and Europe devised serious and silly ways of salvaging and transforming the remaining Socialist-Realist monuments in Russia. “Monumental Propaganda,” opening Saturday through Feb. 25 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, presents sketches, collages, photographs and proposals by such prominent artists as Carl Andre, Mark Tansey, Komar & Melamid and Joseph Kosuth. . . . This is the last weekend to see the paintings and collage works of Los Angeles veteran Llyn Foulkes at the Laguna Art Museum. The retrospective “Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place” ends Sunday. And while you’re in the neighborhood, the work of another California master, Peter Voulkos, the ceramist who made modern pottery into art, can be seen just up the road at the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

POP: Country star Vince Gill is joined by Patty Loveless on Sunday at the Pond of Anaheim. . . . Extra Fancy, a band that’s making noise on the L.A. scene, plays Dreams and Spaceland in Silver Lake tonight.

* FAMILY: Two of the top acts in children’s music appear in concert this weekend: Folk-inspired Red Grammer will present his family sing-along at Haugh Performing Arts Center at Citrus College in Glendora on Saturday at 2 p.m., and rock-’n’-rollin’ Craig & Co. will perform songs from its Disney albums and a new release at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza’s Forum Theatre tonight at 5 and 7 p.m.

O. C. LIVE : WEEKEND : ‘Ballad of Yachiyo’ Haunts

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