Following last summer’s successful run last summer of the original San Diego-centric show “The Good, the Bad and the I-5,” La Jolla Playhouse has announced the return of the renowned Chicago- and Toronto-based The Second City. On tap this time is The Second City’s Nut-Cracking Holiday Revue, running Nov. 28 to Dec. 21 in the Mandell Weiss Forum. For better or worse, The New York Times has called The Second City a “comedy empire,” as it’s built an enormous brand in improv-based sketch performance. Premiering in 1959 with not much more than a few props and a hat to pass, it now has 11 touring companies, a corporate communications division and film and TV operations. And it’s apparently not afraid of the political climate – Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley joked that the troupe roasted San Diego so relentlessly last summer “that our mayor resigned at the end of the run.” Meanwhile, the Playhouse calls the holiday show “the perfect antidote to the annual office part.”
Tickets are available only with a subscription purchase by calling the Playhouse’s Patron Services Department at (858) 550-1010 or online at visiting LaJollaPlayhouse.org. For more on The Second City, see secondcity.com. Princes of Denmark The Danish String Quartet has reached incredible heights in the course of its ten years, having just won the 11th London International String Quartet Competition – and you can hear it for yourself as La Jolla Music Society welcomes the quartet to the Sherwood Auditorium at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15, for a program of quartets by Haydn, Nielsen and Beethoven. The evening is part of the society’s Revelle Chamber Music Series. Tickets are $30, $55 and $80 and available at (858) 459-3728 or ljms.org. Thea-tah near and far I attended The Old Globe Theatre’s Globe for All Free Shakespeare Tour production of “All’s Well That Ends Well” at Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation Celebration Hall on Nov. 2. The fact that artistic director Barry Edelstein himself staged the work with USD/Old Globe MFA recent graduates (and guest actors from the community) gives some sense of the new program’s quality and purity of purpose. The little boys sitting adjacent to me were rapt. One of the moms, who spoke more Spanish than English, told me they were drawn by a school flyer telling of the performance at Jacobs Center. Excited kids and parents mobbed the young actors following the performance.
“All’s Well,” the initial production of Globe for All, played at community centers, homeless shelters, senior centers, military bases, a correctional facility and the Central Library through Nov. 9, giving underserved communities a chance to experience Shakespeare, something Edelstein says is the birthright of every citizen. Bravo!
If you want to see the current USD/Globe MFAers in action, they present “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” in the Globe campus’ Sheryl & Harvey White Theatre Saturday, Nov. 15, through Sunday, Nov. 23.
Meanwhile, the Globe’s wonderful casting of Southern California/San Diego familiars in this year’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” makes the veteran salivate. Twelve-time director James Vasquez, who agrees with my “Wow!,” says, “Yes, it’s pretty dreamy.” The company includes Steve Gunderson as Old Max, Robert J. Townsend as Papa Who, Bets Malone as Mama Who, Geno Carr as Grandpa, and his wife, Nancy Snow Carr, as Grandma. The Who ensemble features such luminaries as David Kirk Grant, Jill Townsend and a host of talented others. It should be wondrous indeed. Previews begin Saturday, Nov. 15. New Green Guy Burke Moses lights the Globe’s Copley Plaza Christmas tree at 6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16. “Grinch” continues through Dec. 27. www.theoldglobe.com. Baseball fans Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, for whom Jake Heggie (“Moby-Dick” and “Dead Man Walking”) is writing his new opera “Great Scott” (announced for the 2016 San Diego Opera season) sang the National Anthem Wednesday, Oct. 29 at the final game of the World Series. It was almost enough to make this adopted Californian root for the Royals. The news reports that DiDonato, who recovered with aplomb, took a bullpen tumble following her stellar performance. So did the Royals. “Great Scott,” with libretto by Terrence McNally, concerns a famous opera singer who returns to her hometown to perform in a new opera, which opens the same evening as the baseball team’s World Series game. Corner of 6th and Pennsylvania The critic attended the world-premiere workshop of Glenn Paris’ “Grove” at ion theatre’s Urban Center for the Arts, and was requested not to write a review, mostly because “Grove,” like the other three original plays in ion’s “Out of the Box” 2014-15 season, is changed almost nightly according to audience feedback. For instance, Paris made brave changes between an observed early reading and the world-premiere turn, seen Thursday, Oct. 30. This play in ion’s departure season no doubt underwent further changes before it closed Nov. 8. Subscribers have access to both a reading and a workshop performance. All are followed by discussion. Then, one of the four plays is chosen to go off-Broadway during the summer and returns full-blown to ion in September. Dyed-in-the-wool theatergoers may wish to avail themselves of this fascinating process and give voice to their own opinions, kindly and constructively, of course. Check it out at iontheatre.com. Meanwhile, next door at BLKBOX, New Fortune Theatre presented its inaugural production, “Henry V,” garnering critical praise, starring co-founder Richard Baird (remembered from the late, beloved Poor Players) in the title role and Matthew Henerson as Fluellen, the Welsh battlefield commander. The production continued through Nov. 9. I attended a reading of Baird’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray.” La Jolla Music Society’s president and artistic director Christopher Beach was there, too, because two LJMS employees – Marcus Overton and Vanessa Dinning – were among the readers. See more at newfortunetheatre.com.