The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • E3

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2017 E3 LATIMES.COMCALENDAR culturemonster 5 DAYS OUT Highlights of the week ahead in arts, music and performance "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" Antaeus Theatre Company Gindler Performing Art Center, Glendale Through Dec. 10 "The Reformation: From the Word to the World" Huntington Library, San Marino Opens Saturday; ends Feb. 26 "Mateluna" Guillermo Calderon REDCAT, L.A. 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday "Ella Enchanted: The Musical" South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa Opens 7 p.m.

Friday Through Nov. 12 "Dia de los Muertos" Los Angeles Master Chorale Walt Disney Concert Hall, L.A. 7 p.m. Sunday ART REVIEW Angeles imes Quiet power of embroidery hits eloquently Jordan Nassar Where: Anat Ebgi's AE2, 2680 S. La Cienega L.A.

When: Through Nov. closed Sundays and Mondays Info: (310) 838-2770, BBBBBBBUBBBBBBBM BiflBBBBBBBY BtH BBBflflBBBmlPBBBBBBBfl HHHHHHHHHHHHHHS) iBBBBBISB Bf EBj BBBBBBB7B Bk' 811111111 BBBBBbUbBBmIybIbK tjnABBBBBBafluBBBBBEB bWbBBBBi FflH fl A SjmmmmmmmBtLm A A c. -g By Leah Ollman If only negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis could work themselves out as respectfully and inventively as Jordan Nassar has negotiated the divergent forces feeding into his work. A Palestinian American from New York who's married to an Israeli, Nassar has said that he was "born into the conflict." His first solo show in L.A., however, feels like an oasis of calm. The work at Anat Ebgi gallery's AE2 space is politically charged and impassioned, but it's whisper-quiet.

It feels delicate yet has tremendous power. Nassar bases his work on Palestinian tatreez cross-stitch embroidery, typically sewn-on panels that are joined into garments or used on domestic items. The cot-ton-on-canvas panels stretched and framed here retain a modest scale, many of them just 8 inches by 10 inches. Nassar's stitched patterns riff on traditional geometric borders, foliate and floral motifs, but his thread colors don't necessarily correspond to those designs. Instead, they articulate distilled landscapes of receding, silhouetted hills in shades of emerald, wheat, pomegranate and mustard.

A rich, animating tension emerges between pattern and the pictorial, between the fabric's surface and the deep view of the image sewn upon it. The ancient cross-stitch technique reads to contemporary eyes as a kind of pixelation, even as kin to pointillism. Each stitch is an intimate module positioned on a grid, minimalist in practice but elegantly post-minimal in tactility. If the patterns and colors of traditional Palestinian embroidery told stories of place and belonging, Nassar's work too addresses issues of identity. As a man, he is claiming a place within a custom passed down among women.

By his very practice, he helps dismantle the tired hierarchy distinguishing art from craft. And then there is the bigger question of ethnic identity, which Nassar touches on in a lovely zine made for the show. Both are titled "Dunya," an Arabic word for the world. Nassar shades the literal definition with emotional and metaphoric import, writing that Dunya makes him think of "the Palestine that might exist only in the imaginations of the Palestinian Diaspora. It is the perfect, magic, dream-Palestine." The beauty of these embroidered meditations is not just visual.

Nassar imbues them with reverence, tenderness and hope. calendarlatimes.com Photographs by CAROL ROSEGG ROBERT CREIGHTON, center, as James Cagney is an agile dancer backed by a strong supporting cast. THEATER REVIEW It's dandy for Cagney fans Bio -musical on Hollywood tough guy, who was a song-and-dance man at heart, has a lot on tap -i-it i By Margaret Gray BBBB'i HhBBv5 BBr BRUCE SABATH is spot-on as the demanding Jack Warner. 'Cagney' 8iWM-48k It's obvious that Creighton takes great joy in portraying the singing, dancing Cagney and maybe not quite so much joy in being the guy who won America's heart with lines like "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door." Accordingly, Cagney's entire Hollywood oeuvre has been compressed into two efficient numbers, leaving plenty of time for tap routines. We see faithfully re-created bits from his early vaudeville career, his performance as Cohan in the 1942 movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (which earned him an Oscar) and his World War II-era USO shows.

This extreme focus conveys the impression that, except when he was holding a pistol or roughing somebody up on a soundstage, Cagney was pretty much continuously tap-dancing. Jeremy Benton, Danette Holden, Josh Walden and Ellen Z. Wright all shine in supporting roles that, if not especially nuanced, demand near-constant costume changes and a range of accents. The pleasure they take in their broad characterizations of old-timey Americans is hard to resist, as is Bill Castellino's cheerful and fast -paced direction. The one character written in more than one dimension is Jack Warner (the spot-on Bruce Sabath) a despot who answers the phone with the catchphrase "Make me happy!" and proudly refers to Warner Bros, as "the San Quentin of the studio system." Warner tries to use Cagney like a paper doll.

But even this foil ultimately comes off like a caricature, a harmless, even lovable blowhard. And Warner's scenes with his besotted secretary, Jane (Holden), who trots after him trembling with desire, must have seemed less creepy and ill-advised before the Harvey Weinstein scandal stories broke. calendarlatimes.com 4 James Cagney is remembered best for playing tough-talking gangsters in Warner Bros, movies in the 1930s and '40s, which, according to "Cagney," a loving and cartoonish small-scale bio-musical playing at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, is exactly how he didn't want to be remembered. After years of portraying one dumb, trigger-happy, woman-slapping Irishman after another, as his character complains in the colorful period dialogue of Peter Colley's book, Cagney started his own production company so he could take on more nuanced roles ideally involving tap-dancing, the skill that launched him in showbiz. But the public just cried out for more tough guys.

This was his great tragedy. Or so "Cagney" suggests, not altogether convincingly, between lively tap numbers choreographed by Joshua Bergasse and performed by the small but energetic original cast that made the musical's off-Broadway run a hit last year. We expect a certain amount of tragedy from a bio-musical: Our sense of fairness requires that a person who reaches dizzying height also should fall hard. At least as presented here, Cagney's rise to fame was effortless, a series of lucky breaks. (Bob Hope! What are you doing here at the Times Square Automat? Hope: "Well, Jimmy, I heard of a Broadway role that would be perfect for you they're looking for a Cagney's family supported him.

He didn't cheat on his wife. He never became addicted to anything. It's hard to muster schadenfreude for a movie star who wished he'd played fewer gangsters. But if "Cagney" never quite finds a story line as a drama, it's enjoyable as a celebration of its subject's lesser-known talents. The musical's subtitle could have been: Where El Portal Theatre, 5269 Lankersheim North Hollywood When: 2 and 8 p.m.

Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday Ticket: Info: (818) 508-4200, CagneyTheMusical.com Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes "The Tough Guy Who Was a Song-and-Dance Man at Heart." Robert Creightonreprisesthe title role of the "old hoofer who got lucky in the movies." Short and blocky, as the real Cagney was, Creighton is a delightfully agile dancer with a pleasing tenor. He co-created this musical and also wrote three songs in its score, including the charmer "Falling in Love." (Christopher McGovern supplied others, which are rounded out by a selection of 1940s numbers by George M.

Cohan.) Photographs from Anat Ebgi Gallery JORDAN NASSAR'S hand-stitched panels take on the traditional elements of Palestinian embroidery..