‘Into the Woods’ Review: A Tour for Stephen Sondheim’s Masterpiece Brings Broadway Brilliance to L.A.’s Ahmanson

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If country music used to pride itself on being about “three chords and the truth,” the increasingly belligerent superstar Jason Aldean has a different idea of what the genre should represent: two chords and a beating, or maybe a shotgun blast. Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is close to being the most cynical song ever written about the implicit moral superiority of having a limited number of neighbors, which is saying something, given how many attempts to write the Great American Small Town Anthem are generated in a single year. At least most of the others at least put up the appearance of celebrating local pride, not prejudice. But for Aldean, it’s about how tiny burgs are under the imminent threat of attack from lawless urban marauders who will have to be kept at bay by any means necessary — meaning, pretty explicitly, vigilantism.

Often regarded as pioneers of electronic music, the English music act last toured Australia in 2017 with shows in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and the Gold Coast. 

Titled the 'Wiggly Big Day Out Tour', fan favourite characters like Dorothy the Dinosaur, Captain Feathersword, Henry the Octopus, and Wags the Dog will join The Wiggles in their world-famous blue, purple, red, and yellow skivvies. 

UPDATED, 11:20 AM: The producers of Here We Are have announced the cast for the first production of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical.

The Mary Wallopers have announced their new single ‘Wexford’, and told NME how they are looking to challenge perceptions of Irish folk music by making their music as accessible and thought-provoking as possible.Having gained notoriety from their lockdown livestreams, Dundalk band The Mary Wallopers have gone on to galvanise an unlikely fanbase from across the UK – and been hailed as making the traditional folk genre more accessible to a new generation.Following on from lead single ‘The Holy Ground’, the band have today (July 17) released the second track new album ‘Irish Rock ‘N’ Roll’ — a cover of Pecker Dunne’s ‘Wexford’.One of the album’s more emotive and introspective tracks, the cover sees The Mary Wallopers pay tribute to the late Irish folk icon and shed a light on the backlash faced by travellers, which often goes overlooked.“It is to show respect to the people that influence us,” guitarist Charles Hendy told NME. “The song itself is so raw and honest, it’s about him growing up in Wexford and he doesn’t sugarcoat anything in it.“It’s just an amazingly written song.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Over a single weekend, 28-year-old Toronto resident Daniel Konikoff will experience two life-changing events. On July 23, he’s getting married. Two days before, he’s going to the movies with his bride-to-be and their entire wedding party for a double feature of Greta Gerwig’s very pink romp “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s extremely dark historical drama “Oppenheimer.” “It stemmed from a joke, and then we started to actually create a plan,” Konikoff says. “So, the double bill is a little wedding-adjacent party.” As soon as the second movie lets out at 1 a.m. — “it’s bed!” he adds. “And then we drive to the venue. There’s not a lot of sleep, but you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s not many tours that take a complete left turn from the style, content and tone of how they started with just a few dates left on the itinerary before everyone heads home. That’s coasting time. Yet that’s exactly what happened with the final six shows on Elvis Costello & the Imposters’ “We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday Tour,” where no one who saw any of the first 17 gigs on the outing would have much recognized how things transpired in the final half-dozen. It was all due to the transformative presence of a three-man horn section, which the advertising had accurately promised would only be showing up for the tour coda. What was unexpected was just how thoroughly Costello retooled the whole show to build it around these new brass arrangements, discarding certain set staples and adding new ones to show just what different flavors could be realized with horns o’ plenty.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “The Miracle Club” may not be a faith-based movie in the traditional sense (that is, a film made with an explicitly evangelical Christian agenda), but this Ireland-set art-house offering is a movie about faith all the same — specifically, about the conviction that drives four women to make the pilgrimage from Ireland all the way to Lourdes, France, where the waters are believed to have holy healing powers. If “The Miracle Club” were an overtly religious film, audiences would know from the outset what to expect from the trip (namely, a miracle), whereas director Thaddeus O’Sullivan doesn’t presume to play God, focusing more on mending the relationship between his main characters.

In the 1980s, perhaps no one typified beauty, glamor, and sex appeal more than the big four, “The Super Models” —Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington. These runaway models were everywhere, and perhaps nothing epitomized their global allure more than George Michael’s steamy “Freedom” video, which featured all of these women plus Tatjana Patitz and was directed with erotic sweatiness by none other than David Fincher.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Global Citizen Festival will return to Central Park Sept. 23 for another ticketed-but-free concert, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ms. Lauryn Hill set as the day’s headliners. Megan Thee Stallion, Conan Gray and Stray Kids are also on the day’s bill.  As always, tickets to the show on the Great Lawn are free, but require fulfilling a task as part of the international advocacy organization Global Citizen’s initiative to raise awareness about hunger, poverty, climate change and inequities facing women around the world, among pressing related concerns. The broadcast component will be produced by Done and Dusted; broadcast partners have not yet been announced. The show is being presented by  by Citi and Cisco. 

The first, star-packed Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along has extended its engagement by two months, giving ticket buyers until March 24, 2024 to see the production featuring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez.

Last week, FX confirmed that the third season of its critically acclaimed series “Reservation Dogs” would be its last. It’s the second TV program about indigenous communities after Peacock‘s “Rutherford Falls” to get the ax recently.

A very cool teaser trailer for the upcoming Stranger Things stage adaptation The First Shadow doesn’t give away much by way of plot details, but we do see some clips of the TV series’ early episodes only to watch the screen shatter and a mysterious red, glowing orb appear on the stage of an otherwise empty theater.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic European Taylor Swift fans won’t have to look closely at the fine print on a grid to figure out who will be opening for her on which nights on the “Eras Tour” next year, as American fans did this year. Swift revealed Wednesday that Paramore will be preceding her on stage for her entire European tour. Additionally, she announced that 14 shows have been added to the lineup, all representing second, third, fourth or even sixth nights in cities that were already on the itinerary for May through August of 2024. “Really can’t contain my excitement because… we’re adding 14 new shows to The Eras Tour,” Swift wrote on social media. “And I get to travel the world doing shows with Paramore!! Hayley and I have been friends since we were teens in Nashville and now we get to frolic around the UK/Europe next summer??? I’m screaming???”

The beloved Broadway musical Into the Woods is now playing in Los Angeles and many members of the recent Broadway revival cast are leading the production!

Blur have announced the door times, curfew and stage times for their upcoming shows at London’s Wembley Stadium next weekend (Saturday July 8 and Sunday July 9). Check them out below.The Britpop heroes will be returning to the capital to play two consecutive nights at London’s Wembley Arena next week.

Eric Nam has announced his massive 66-date ‘House on a Hill’ world tour for 2023 and 2024.Eric Nam will kick off his ‘House on a Hill’ world tour with a 39-date trek across the US and Canada that will run form September to the middle of November. It will feature concerts in over 20 states, as well as four shows in Canada.The Latin American leg of the ‘House on a Hill’ world tour will take place in the latter half of November.

The stars of Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny took over the 2023 Taormina Film Festival for the latest film premiere!

Bad Cinderella could have been the poison apple that killed off revisionist fairy tales once and for all, but Britney Spears and Once Upon A One More Time, the new Broadway musical opening tonight that brims with her hits and high spirits, has come along to deliver a happy ever after that’s as unexpected as it is enchanting. Smart, funny, splendid to look at and all with a beat you can dance to, this tribute to the Brothers Grimm, the sisters of the Second Wave and, not least, the indomitable Ms. Spears, is a delight.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Singer-songwriter Brandy Clark has enjoyed triumphs recently on two fronts. Ten years of work on the score for her first Broadway musical, “Shucked,” paid off with a Tony nomination and a Drama Desk Award win for her and score co-writer Shane McAnally. And the Nashville resident’s self-titled fourth album, which found her friend Brandi Carlile moving into the producer’s chair, got the kind of great reviews that augur for more Grammy nominations (on top of the 10 nods she’s already picked up over the years). While she was making one of her many visits to New York, Variety caught up with her for a Facetime feature to discuss both her new Warner Records album, one of the year’s best, and the hit musical, which has a cast album of its own. The joint timing is coincidental, of course (“Shucked” was originally tagged for a 2020 opening, with an out-of-town run in D.C. that was just about to begin when the pandemic kicked in). That she gets to talk about two home runs at once makes her career seem far from anything that ends in “-ucked,” unless lucked applies.