Watching Dancing With the Stars has been my guilty pleasure for years. I never thought I’d be interested in anything having to do with ballroom dancing but, like millions of viewers, I find the show irresistible. Plus, I’m enamored with Val Chmerkovskiy.
It’s only fitting that Come From Away, the new world-premiere musical opening the season at the La Jolla Playhouse, made its debut the week before this year’s Tony Awards. Featuring a moving book, haunting rock/Celtic score and powerhouse performances, there’s no doubt this triumphant production is destined for that same stage.
As I sat on the edge of my seat, biting my nails and shaking my head, at a screening of San Andreas in San Diego the other night, one thought kept going round and round in my head: Why the hell did we ever move to California?
Blythe Danner makes me believe it’s possible to age gracefully. In I’ll See You In My Dreams, she plays Carol, a 70-something widow who lives with her beloved old lab, Hazel. Her friends try to convince her to move to their retirement community but she’s comfortable in her home, in her routine, in her skin….
What’s truly amazing about this documentary is that, even as you watch Caroll Spinney painstakingly don the 4000 feathers and all the accompanying regalia necessary to become the iconic character, it’s still virtually impossible not to believe that Big Bird is real.
