So Cal Arts & Entertainment

Extra time on your hands? Now’s your chance to catch up on movies and books. Sunday afternoons in quarantine are a lot more fun now that I can look forward to my friends Ben Model and Steve Massa host the Silent Comedy Watch Party on YouTube (streamed live at 3pm...

The Coach House in San Juan Capistrano calls itself Orange County's Premiere Concert Venue. To me they fail the acid test of a venue worthy of that label—good acoustics. The Irvine Barclay Theatre, that modest little auditorium on the UC Irvine campus, isn’t perfect...

How do you make art from Awkward with a capital A, an unusually difficult and sometimes tragic adolescence? See the groundbreaking Lisa Kron-Jeanine Tesori musical “Fun Home” (playing through Mar. 1 at the Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills) and find out. This...

  South Coast Repertory can never be accused of staging plays primarily for white audiences. They do an exemplary job of offering works by and about ethnic minorities, of which they can justly be proud. In the case of plays focused on African Americans however shows...

“The Ed Sullivan Show” was “a really big show” in its day, as its host often boasted, a television program that could propel little known talents to the forefront. Talents such as Borscht Belt ventriloquist Rickie Layne and his Yiddish-accented dummy Velvel, and a...

Spike Jones had his offbeat version of “The Nutcracker Suite,” Duke Ellington had his elegant variation. Tchaikovsky’s beloved holiday treat swings into Orange County Dec. 15 when the Duke Ellington Orchestra—the only ensemble continuing the tradition of the...

An invitation from a friend to join him for a multiplex showing of “Joker” last week met with little enthusiasm in these quarters. My contributions to the coffers of creatively bankrupt Hollywood these days are few; I’ve had enough of the superhero and comic book...

Had I read a synopsis of Julia Cho’s “Aubergine” (at South Coast Repertory through Nov. 16) and realized it focused on a dying parent I might have chosen to skip it, having lost both parents this past summer. And I would have missed one of the best plays I’ve seen in...

If it goes without saying South Coast Repertory is among the most consistent purveyors of high quality theatre in So Cal, not every offering meets expectations—at least mine, which may be different from yours. Adam Bock’s “The Canadians,” the latest SCR-commissioned...

Wacky, whimsical, wonderful…and forgotten. That would be Charley Bowers. Haven’t got a clue? Never mind, drop everything and avail yourself of Flicker Alley’s two-disc Blu-ray collection of newly restored films by the animator-comedian while you have a chance. You...