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Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

Hot (A)live theatre at MOLAA

By Greggory Moore The Museum of Latin American Art’s first-ever theatrical event was business as usual for Alive Theatre, who in their short existence have formed a habit of making non-traditional venues fit to their purposes, purposes that have ranged from the high literary to burlesque and camp. On March 29 it was José Rivera’s [...]

“28 Plays Later” = 21st-Century Vaudeville

By Greggory Moore If you happened to check out both the Gazette and OC Weekly reviews of Alive Theatre’s 28 Plays Later, you’re probably very confused. As the Gazette has it, this is maybe the single greatest theatre experience ever, while the OC Weekly wants to warn you off of wasting precious minutes of your [...]

Once Upon a Time and a Very Good Play It Was: Alive Theatre’s “Lucia Mad”

By Greggory Moore (originally published in The District Weekly — www.thedistrictweekly.com) If you are turned off by fictional reweavings of true events, and if on top of that you cut your literary teeth on James Joyce and consider Samuel Beckett a personal hero, aside from running the risk of being accused of pretentious snob, you [...]

An Incongruous Sunday Afternoon at {open}

( Events andMusic andReviews )

by Greggory Moore Here’s yet another installment in the effort to keep you (whomever you are) informed about the kind of thing that goes down in the southern portion of our fair city (or at {open}, at least; I don’t seem to take in a lot of music elsewhere). First up was Pwrfl Power, a [...]

An Open Letter to Long Beach Opera, et al.

To all concerned with Long Beach Opera’s production of Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Orpheus and Euridice”: Greetings. I attended the February 19, 2008, performance “Orpheus and Euridice”. Let me blow right past a heartfelt but admittedly generic “Bravo!” and mention a small number of the specific things for which I’d like to commend you: *The score [...]

Great Music on Fourth Street

( Events andMusic andReviews )

By Greggory Moore Two of my favorite Long Beach bands played within days and feet of each other last week: on Tuesday The Year Zero played at {open}, then on Saturday oto played at Portfolio. As far as I know, The Year Zero have played as everything from a duo to a quintet; and Tuesday [...]

Jonathan Richman Performed at {open}…

…and You Missed It By Greggory Moore I had never heard of Jonathan Richman—by name, anyway (see below)—and dropped by {open} on December 1 really just to say hello. The show had begun promptly at (or near) its scheduled 8 p.m. start time and was already underway as I stepped through the door. Although I [...]

Don DeLillo at the Garage Theatre

( Events andReviews andTheatre )

By Greggory Moore If you’ve been to more than one performance at the Garage Theatre, you know that you never step into the same theatre twice. It’s a close space that is literally transformed specifically for each production that they stage. The seating varies, the stage varies, walls are added or taken away—whatever they deem [...]

Free Moral Agents @ {open} (2226 E. Fourth St.)

( Events andMusic andReviews )

By Greggory Moore May 26 was {open}’s grand opening at its new location. The evening’s official start time was 7 p.m. At that time you couldn’t tell anything had started; there was just a small number of people milling about, hunched over books, etc. But soon DJ Pur One was set up and spinning, and [...]

Score One for the Live Experience — October 19, 2006 @ {open} (144 Linden)

By Greggory Moore A simple concept: sound artists gather to create a live score for short expressionistic films. And that’s all that happened. This will be a short review. This was my first experience of them, but apparently the Brothers Quay are well-known for their stop-action animation work (which has been featured on MTV, among [...]