Birdland Blue at The Los Angeles Theatre Center

Birdland Blue

The Los Angeles Theatre Center
514 S. Spring St. Los Angeles

Birdland Blue is a behind-the-scenes look at Miles on one evening that August. He flirts with a beautiful reporter for a jazz magazine. He copes with division within his ranks, as two of his musicians (Julius "Cannonball" Adderley and John Coltrane) are on the verge of leaving the Sextet to start their own groups. He deals with substance abuse problems, his own and that of one of his musicians. He argues with the club owner/manager over proper compensation. His biggest challenge may be coming from a violent, crooked, racist cop.

Thru - May 12, 2019

Price: $35

Show Type: Drama

Box Office: 866-811-4111

www.thelatc.org

Birdland Blue Reviews

Average Rating based on 3 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Theatre Spoken Here - Highly Recommended

"...As the leader of his sextet he must deal with five rebellious musicians, a devious club owner, a smirking racist cop, drugs galore, and a shapely young woman journalist who is not averse to discarding her objectivity and flirting with a legendary genius. Still, when the sextet finally plays its promised set the club reverberates with a nostalgic reminder of the time when jazz was the ultimate musical trip."

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- Morna Murphy Martell

Stage Raw - Highly Recommended

"...The story of Randy Ross's Birdland Blue is truly powerful, exploring how members of the Miles Davis Sextet struggled to coexist with the rest of 1959 society, while also detailing the events of one extraordinary night at the legendary Birdland nightclub in New York City. The production, smoothly directed by Ben Guillory, also highlights the brilliance of Sextet at the height of its glory, as well as the turmoil its musicians found themselves in. As portrayed here, the famed members of the Sextet are gracious and dynamic and, while working in such a conflicted time, feel strikingly authentic."

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- David Cruz-Chevez

Peoples World - Somewhat Recommended

"...All through the play, music is performed live by percussionist Ricardo Mowatt, bassist Marion Newton, and saxophonist Randy Ross, the playwright himself. When they are not playing, cues come up of recorded music from Kind of Blue to set the tone of each scene. The actors mostly imitate playing their instruments in synch with the recorded sound. There are moments, I have to say, when the music obscures if not overpowers the dialogue, but perhaps that in and of itself is a metaphor for the dialectic between art and life. I enjoyed the music but would have preferred catching every word of the script."

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- Eric Gordon

Birdland Blue at The Los Angeles Theatre Center

Birdland Blue

Birdland Blue Reviews

Theatre Spoken Here - Highly Recommended

Stage Raw - Highly Recommended

Peoples World - Somewhat Recommended

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