Entertainment in Los Angeles

In Los Angeles here we are constantly being reminded about about the latest movies either via television, newspapers or bill boards. And yet this city has a lot more to offer than that venue. Last Sunday we attended a  community theater's production of Mitch Album's play And the Winner is.. It is the story of an actor nominated for the Academy Awards but dying before he found out whether he won. He bargains and is allowed to return to earth only long enough to find out whether he had won. The play was well done and quite entertaining. We have seen two movies in the past week, Book of Eli  and Avatar. The story line of the  latter movie reminded me of the movie Dances with Wolves. Yes, I know, Avatar is all about the scenery and special effects in 3D which we did enjoy. I should not take the story all that seriously. And speaking of that movie, we saw a notice in the paper that the soloist Karen Hogle Brown (who was a soloist in the sound track of  Avatar) was singing in concert with The Concord Ensemble on Saturday. Saturday's concert was to be held at a Lutheran church in Manhattan Beach, available free to the community as it was to be a preview of the main concert being performed Sunday in Beverly Hills. We attended that, as well as a melodrama show in the evening here in Long Beach. The last act of that show had a variety of song and dance. As I listened to an actor and actress sing some goofy song of jungle noise I thought back to the concert that afternoon when Karen Brown and Scott Graff sang a portion from the operatic comedy The Barber of Seville. It seemed that John and I had gone from the sublime to the ridiculous in one day with the musical fare we had heard! By the way, if you have a chance to hear The Concord Ensemble, do try to go to one of their concerts. They have toured extensively throughout the United States and the world, headlining some very prestigious music festivals. We enjoyed their concert very much.