This week in Los Angeles: Jeffrey Sweet\’s play \”The Value of Names\”; \”Death of a Salesman\” at Pacific Resident Theater; Toby Caplan-Stonefield\’s new CD, \”The Spiritual Flute\”; Dan Thorne\’s new art exhibit, \”Tzva\’im Mavrikim — Bright Colors\”; Los Angeles Premiere of Sam Shepard\’s \”The God of Hell\”; Mitch Albom\’s comedic play \”And The Winner Is…\”; Rock musical \”Prime.\”
Can love heal all wounds? Mark Goffman, playwright of \”Me Too,\” has proof that supports this theory.
The world met the Rwanda genocide with almost total indifference and only now is waking up to the horror of Darfur — attitudes which inevitably bring back memories of the Holocaust. The exhibit \”Rwanda/After, Darfur/Now: Photographs by Michal Ronnen Safdie\” documents the tragedies of post-genocide Rwanda.
Monika Hertwig was 1 year old when her father Amon Goeth, sadistic SS commandant of the Plaszow forced-labor and concentration camp, was hanged as a war criminal in 1946. Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig was picked among the prisoners by Goeth as his maid and was brutalized for two years. Now, more than 60 years later, the two women are the unlikely protagonists of the feature documentary \”Inheritance: A Legacy of Hatred and the Journey to Change It.\”
Alfred Uhry\’s \”Without Walls,\” starring Laurence Fishburne, deals not only with race but also sexuality.
Although most music lovers don\’t realize it, a number of prominent conductors were born in Los Angeles. Lorin Maazel, music director of the New York Philharmonic, is an L.A. native, and so is Michael Tilson Thomas, who leads the San Francisco Symphony. And if we\’re not too technical about it, we can also include David Robertson, a rising star now at the St. Louis Symphony. He came of age in Santa Monica.
When Dallet Norris signed on to direct Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber\’s \”Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat\” for the fourth time in his career, he decided that the classic Bible tale turned classic musical needed some updating. So, for the new touring production, which opens at the Pantages Theater on June 20, he cast an \”American Idol\” finalist (Amy Adams from Season Three) as the narrator, gave the characters computers and turned hedonistic Egypt into a South-Beach style party town replete with a sun-glasses-clad Sphinx backdrop — and the brothers use cell phones to call their father, Jacob, and to deliver the news of Joseph\’s fake demise.
For fans craving city-stomping action, \”Godzilla, King of the Monsters\” will rear his scaly head this summer in a rare big-screen appearance, incinerating steel and citizens alike with his nuclear halitosis.
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