A friend offered to take me to a show at the Pantages Theatre as a birthday present. A neat gift, eh? I’m not one to take in a show, but if someone else is treating, well, that changes everything.
You’re aware of the Pantages, probably. It’s been at Hollywood and Vine, one of the world’s most famous intersections, since 1930. The Pantages switched in 1977 from movies to live theater and concerts. Today it’s the most Broadway-style venue in the City of Angels.
The Pantages is a grand sight, especially if you exit the subway across the street, take the escalator or stairs to street level and emerge with the theater’s Art Deco facade filling your field of vision.
Often there’s a line down the sidewalk of people hoping for rush tickets to whatever is on the marquee, like “Wicked,” “Hamilton” or “The Book of Mormon.” You may have been among them.
I’d been inside only once, for a concert. Bob Dylan was the headliner, with Merle Haggard as support act. This was in 2005, the Google gods tell me. I remember the pleasure of being there and a general sense of delight in the ornate architecture.
But that was 21 years ago.
For my birthday in March — I hope you celebrated, and perhaps took a day off — my friend gave me the Pantages schedule, which included “Beetlejuice,” “Monty Python’s Spamalot” and “Les Miserables.” And “Phantom of the Opera,” which is what I chose.
We saw a matinee July 26. (The show closes today, Aug. 9.) After an early lunch in Thai Town, we passed through the theater’s glitzy forecourt, had our tickets scanned and entered.
The Pantages’ main lobby has a high ceiling, chandeliers and wide staircases leading to upper levels and small gathering places. Many women posed on the carpeted stairs for a photo, commemorating their brief presence in a glamorous space.
In the auditorium, the walls are decorated with zigzag patterns and starbursts, carvings and bric-a-brac, under enormous chandeliers. The lighting and sound equipment somehow fit into the mishmash without looking out of place.
You may well have seen “Phantom” yourself, possibly multiple times. You might be able to break into one song or another from the show without prompting. Myself, I’ve seen film versions and read the novel but was totally unfamiliar with the music and songs.
Needless to say, the music and songs were quite good. The effects were sometimes remarkable, especially the river underneath the opera house, which appeared real.
As for the story, neither the Phantom nor the callow boyfriend struck me as proper suitors for Christine. However, that’s really none of my business, is it? I will stay in my lane.
We exited in a crush of people onto sunny Hollywood Boulevard, where hopefuls were already lining up for rush tickets to the evening performance.
All this didn’t provide quite enough for a column, it seemed to me. But the experience will be remembered. With any luck, it won’t be another 21 years before I return to the Pantages.
That was Sunday, July 26. The following Sunday, Aug. 2, I was at an arts event in Pomona — column to come — when a friend phoned in mid-afternoon. Her plus-one for the Hollywood Bowl that night had to bow out. Would I want to attend instead?
The tickets and parking were already paid for, a charcuterie kit and bottle of wine were packed and she would drive. All I had to do was meet at a park-and-ride lot in San Dimas in two hours.
Feeling as if I were leading a charmed life, I agreed. Who doesn’t want to go to the Hollywood Bowl? Especially if you don’t have to drive or park.
By 6:45 p.m. we had parked in the stacked lot, walked through the tunnel beneath Highland Avenue and entered the Bowl. The main act would be the singer St. Vincent (real name Annie Clark), who would be backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
When we took our seats, it was 7 p.m. The sun was still out, people were gradually filing in and the opening act, Anoushka Shankar, a sitar player, was unexpectedly great.
Munching on charcuterie, I thought back to my previous visits to the Bowl. There were a few, but not many.
Dylan, as is often the case with me, was the initial spur to go. In 1999 he co-headlined with Paul Simon. (They gamely tried some duets between their individual sets, including on “The Sound of Silence.”)
I returned in 2007 for Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow and, in 2010, a triple bill of male-female duos: She and Him, The Bird and the Bee, and The Swell Season, made up of the “Once” duo, Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard. Hansard died July 29. I remember his big, Bowl-filling voice.
My fourth and most recent concert was Dylan in 2012, with opening act Mark Knopfler. Dylan was fine. Knopfler’s set is fixed in my mind as the single dullest rock performance of my life.
That aside, had it really been 14 years since I’d been to the Hollywood Bowl? This was stunning. Some people go every season. You may be going tonight.
I took in the scene. The amphitheater is nestled within a canyon, wooded and surrounded by hills on three sides. Off in the distance, atop Mount Lee, is the Hollywood Sign, as iconic a sight as exists.
So is the Bowl’s Art Deco-style bandshell below us. It’s 50 feet high, the interior a series of soaring trusses like concentric circles. Musicians are dwarfed inside its massive ribs, as if performing from the belly of a whale.
At the Hollywood Bowl, you almost don’t care who’s on the bill. (Especially if it’s Mark Knopfler.) You just like being there.
Near the end of St. Vincent’s concert, twin searchlights crossed high in the night sky. An occasional plane passed overhead, lights blinking. The bandshell, washed in a series of colored lights, looked almost unreal in the darkness, as if it might float away.
Again, with no incidents and accidents (to quote a Paul Simon lyric), there wasn’t quite enough for a column.
Days later, though, marveling to a friend how one Sunday I had gone to the Pantages, and the next Sunday to the Hollywood Bowl, the twin events clicked into place.
The Bowl opened in 1922. The Pantages opened in 1930. Both are classic experiences in Los Angeles, specifically, in Hollywood. In a world where little seems permanent, they’ve been entertaining us for a century.
Go there to feel rooted in this region we share. While being transported somewhere else.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, glamorously. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.