Author Archive

Culture with a Side of Popcorn

James Corden and Suzie Toase in “One Man, Two Guvnors,” at the National Theatre in London, and onscreen at a theater near you. Photo by Johan Persson

When the hit comedy “One Man, Two Guvnors” comes to Broadway this spring, I’ll be able to say I saw the London [...]

Jonathan Foer’s ‘New American Haggadah’: Extremely Similar and Incredibly the Same

The haggadah, the user’s manual to the Passover seder, might be the world’s oldest annually practiced ritual, and the story of the Jews’ freedom from slavery in Egypt is, Jonathan Safran Foer said recently, “the best-known greatest continuously read story” in book form. And yet, just like there isn’t a singer who doesn’t think he [...]

Demjanjuk’s Just Epitaph

The recent death of John Demjanjuk, 91, in a nursing home in Germany, brings to a close one of the most extensive and most contested Nazi war crimes prosecution in history, a process that began in the United States in the mid 1970’s and was ongoing at the time of his death [...]

Looking at Clouds from Both Sides Now

I listen to music all day, in my car, in my office, at the gym, while walking the dog or taking a hike. Most of what I listen to I don’t have to pay for; some of it I do. There are so many ways to discover new music or find old favorites that I [...]

Art + Fashion = Life by Design for L.A. Couple

Artist Moshé Elimelech and his wife, fashion designer Shelli Segal, at their Burbank home and studio. Photos by John Hough
Cubes of color intersected by bands, which the viewer can manipulate into arrangements within a grid framing the work; watercolors of narrow striations, punctuated by colors and shapes, transform abstraction from cool cerebral to emotional landscapes. [...]

Have a Fantastic Klezmatic Hanukkah!

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From left: Frank London, Matt Darriau, Lisa Gutkin, Lorin Sklamberg, Paul Morrissett. Photo by Joshua Kessler

On Dec. 19, as part of their 25th anniversary tour, the Klezmatics will perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall for a Chanukah concert featuring both their well-known and new repertoire. On the program are songs by the [...]

A Danielewski Halloween

On Halloween this year, instead of being the best sugar pusher in the neighborhood, or following your inappropriately costumed progeny as they amass their candy fortunes, or abandoning your own hard-earned dignity for a night of brew-fueled revelry, let me steer the adults amongst you to REDCAT, the CalArts downtown theater [...]

Lost & Found: What Wasserstein Hid, New Bio Reveals

When the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein - beloved for her plays “The Heidi Chronicles,” “The Sisters Rosensweig” and “Isn’t it Romantic?” - died in 2006 at age 55, Broadway dimmed its lights in her honor. Five years later, Julie Salamon’s page-turning biography “Wendy and the Lost Boys” (The Penguin Press: $29.95) sheds [...]

How LA Grew its Art

From left: Edward Kienholz, “Walter Hopps Hopps Hopps,” 1959; photo by Susan Einstein. Wallace Berman, “Untitled (Faceless Faces with Kabala),” 1963-70; photo by Ellen Labenski. Larry Bell, “Untitled,” 1969.

For those of us who are not native to Los Angeles yet live here (some for more of our lives than anywhere [...]

Every Picture Tells a Story

For 30 years, Michael Schwartz has owned and operated Galerie Michael, an art gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, building, in his own words, “museum-quality collections, one work at a time.” Works by Picasso, Dali, Goya and Miró adorn the walls for the current exhibition on Spanish masters.
With a staff of 24, many of [...]