GO LA: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Young Frankenstein and Other Horrors

Plus, Doug Stanhope, Fake Radio, Oliver Sacks and more, April 17-23

Comments (0) By Libby Molyneaux Thursday, Apr 16 2009

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COMEDY

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE?

This is the dress that went walking. After midnight.

Chris Saunders

Doug Stanhope

More About

Fake it may be, since it’s not actually broadcast on air, but comedy troupe Fake Radio’s re-creation of vintage radio dramas comes complete with scripts in hand, period costumes and an uncanny sense of a time warp gone horribly right. The troupers stay so true to their premise, they even include the commercials. Tonight’s show is an episode of the 1940s spy series Dangerous Assignment, an NBC Radio program whose name should have won an award or two for most uncreative spy-series title. Secret agent Steve Mitchell’s adventures take him to an atlas’ worth of exotic locales: “A lot of places I can’t even pronounce. They all spell the same thing, though — trouble.” While reverent of the source material, the proceedings are often spiked with improv, so expect innuendo. Also expect an appearance by celebrity guest Kevin McDonald from The Kids in the Hall. If you really want to get all meta, you can buffer the stream on Fake Radio’s Web site (www.fakeradio.net), turn off your monitor and listen to the broadcast just like they did in the good old days, back when chicken cost 3 cents a pound and you bought them alive. Comedy Central Stage at the Hudson, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Thurs., April 23, 8 p.m. Free, but resv. required. (323) 960-5519. —Derek Thomas

LECTURE

OLIVER SACKS REALLY WANTED TO BE A DRUMMER

Riding high on the success of his 2007 book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, neurologist and raconteur Oliver Sacks disproves the notion that you need another boring lecture like you need a hole in the head. Sacks, the author of the groundbreaking 1966 study on L-dopa treatments for sleeping-sickness victims on which the 1990 film Awakenings was based, will talk about Music, Healing and the Brain, and will probably get lots of questions during the Q&A like, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this — what should I do?” Making clinical studies far less clinical with popular, populist coverage of neurology in The New Yorker, The New York Times and publications without “New” or “York” in their title, Sacks deftly portrays victims of neurological annihilation as perfect subjects for the study of music’s organic effects on the mind. Most memorable: the victim struck by lightning who gave up everything but music after the bolt from the blue; epileptics who hear certain music only during seizures; those with brain damage who can communicate only through song. Sacks’ explorations of music’s psychosomatic effects — its ability to inspire action despite pain, or to re-educate the body to move a particular way — are cautionary tales that really hit home. UCLA Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, L.A.; Thurs., April 23, 8 p.m.; $50, $40, $25 ($15 UCLA students). (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org. —David Cotner

CLASSICAL

BRAIN, MEET HEART. HEART, BRAIN

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s Westside Connections, that invigorating chamber-music and discussion series that explores “the intricate connections between various art forms,” concludes its 2008-09 season with a program of music and poetry guaranteed to get those brain cells and heartstrings working. The evening’s special guests include California’s new Poet Laureate, Carol Muske-Dukes, whose work has been lauded for its “emotional accuracy” and “acid clairvoyance,” and acclaimed baritone Sanford Sylvan, singing Samuel Barber’s arrangement of “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold’s classic lyric poem lamenting the loss of faith and truth in the hardened industrial age. LACO members also perform Benjamin Britten’s Phantasy Quartet in F minor, Op. 2 for violin, viola and oboe, a fascinating work influenced by Purcell and the baroque “fantasie” concept, all the more amazing because Britten was only 19 when he wrote it; and Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, the composer’s only foray into the string-quartet genre, influenced by Cesar Franck, Alexander Borodin and the mysterious strains of the Javanese gamelan. Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica; Thurs., April 23, 7 p.m.; $37. (213) 622-7001, Ext. 15 or www.laco.org. —MBC