Newsletter: Essential Arts and Culture: Gehry opens, Dudamel speaks and the hills are alive with...
I'm Kelly Scott, arts and culture editor of the L.A. Times. Our critics and feature writers have been crisscrossing the region to see the plays, concerts and exhibitions that are making for a thoroughly overstuffed fall arts season. Here are some of their critical assessments and sneak peeks in hopes they help you to plan your agenda for the weeks ahead.
Frank Gehry at LACMA
Think of it as a little remodeling: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has tweaked the Pompidou Center's retrospective on Frank Gehry for its run here, in the architect’s adopted hometown. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne notes some improvements — and some lingering deficiencies. As is often the case with such shows, this one feels too close to its subject — too deferential, failing “to confront with any force the weaknesses of the Gehry projects that have slid off track.” On the plus side: Exhibits feel more thoroughly grounded in L.A., and a room has been added to showcase Gehry's current work.
The "Frank Gehry" exhibition at LACMA presents an examination of the architect's work from the early 1960s to the present. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
Dudamel on the offensive, sort of
After facing criticism for his silence on the human rights and free-speech record of the government in his native Venezuela, Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel published an Op-Ed column in the L.A. Times defending his separation of music and state. Then he picked up his baton and let the music be his revolution, kicking off the L.A. Phil’s season — and the “Immortal Beethoven” symphony cycle — with a rousing gala concert. Times critic Mark Swed was on scene to note how the drama unfolded, on and off the stage.
Gustavo Dudamel is exuberant, but nonpolitical, conducting Beethoven during the L.A. Phil’s opening night gala at Disney Hall. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
Crowd pleaser in San Diego
If you need a good reason to check out the new dance musical “In Your Arms,” the Old Globe offers 10: Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Alfred Uhry, Christopher Durang, David Henry Hwang, Nilo Cruz, Douglas Carter Beane, Lynn Nottage, Rajiv Joseph and Carrie Fisher. That’s the roster of writing talent propelling a crowd-pleasing new production that Times critic Charles McNulty found pleasant, if imperfect. The structure of the vignettes prevents emotion from building, McNulty writes, but “theatergoers of a romantic bent will have a hard time resisting.”
Karine Plantadit and Henry Byalikov in Marsha Norman's vignette "Life Long Love," part of the musical "In Your Arms" at the Old Globe. (Carol Rosegg)
A better ‘Sound of Music’?
Rumors had been swirling that Tony-winning director Jack O'Brien was taking a radical new approach to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that premiered on Broadway in 1959 and became a film classic in 1965. Fifty years later, Margaret Gray had to wonder: “What was he going to do to my ‘Sound of Music?’” Never fear, as Gray reports in The Times, the production that just opened at the Ahmanson Theatre is a vibrant and, yes, faithful, version of the original. Perhaps the biggest surprise: the new presence that the nuns lend to the story.
Maria (Kerstin Anderson) center, back row, and the Von Trapp children in "The Sound of Music." (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Courtney Love, opera star?
Times writer Mikael Wood has a sneak peek of "Kansas City Choir Boy," a new musical-theater piece opening soon at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Creator Todd Almond, who refers to the production as an opera, wrote the nearly dialogue-free work and plays the title character. Courtney Love is his girlfriend, who leaves the Midwest to pursue her dreams as a singer in New York. Among the amusements in the interview: Love’s reaction to being asked to fly coach.
Courtney Love and Todd Almond at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
Clifton’s cafeteria redesign: Aggressively nostalgic
Old meets faux old in the new Clifton’s Brookdale cafeteria, the downtown L.A. landmark reborn as a den of carefully layered kitsch. Critic Christopher Hawthorne looks at this architectural equivalent of a handlebar mustache and finds an interesting relationship between the design nostalgia and the design minimalism required by the modern digital world. What does the revamped Google logo have to do with the restaurant’s 40-foot fake redwood tree, taxidermy and other engineered eccentricities?
A stuffed lion stands guard.
A stuffed lion stands guard at Clifton's. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)
More from our team
David Ng has news of Juilliard’s plans to expand in China. If you missed details of this year’s MacArthur “genius” grants, Mike Boehm has the list of arts winners, including the dynamic set designer whose work includes “Appropriate” opening today at the Mark Taper Forum. Writer Deborah Vankin takes a stroll with Jane Pisano, the departing leader who transformed the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. And Carolina Miranda reports on the Getty's acquisition of the earliest known photographs of the ruins of Palmyra in Syria.
Coming up
Look later this week for art critic Christopher Knight's take on LACMA's "New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933," which he calls one of the year's most powerful exhibitions. Theater critic Charles McNulty returns from a Broadway scouting run to review "Appropriate" at the Taper in L.A., and music critic Mark Swed reviews "uCarmen," the South Africa’s Isango Ensemble's take on the popular opera.
Follow me on Twitter at @kscottLATarts.
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