by Christopher Cappiello

You’re lookin’ swell, Rozzie!

Roslyn Kind is both blessed and cursed to be the younger half-sister to Barbra Streisand. Kind was still in school when Babs became a worldwide star, and her own considerable gifts are easily overlooked because of her sister’s high-wattage fame. But Kind has proven to be a powerful vocalist in her own right, with a long history of performing in concert and cabaret settings — including a 2006 gig at Carnegie Hall with friend Michael Feinstein. Now the longtime Los Angeles resident brings her vocal talents and vivacity to the Catalina Jazz Bar and Grill for a weekend of gigs in early February.

In those shows, Kind will be treating fans to a range of material, from musical theater favorites to comic songs, ballads and standards. “It’s a mix of all the things I love and identify with and love to perform,” she says, before correcting herself. “Actually, I don’t perform them; I live them. I don’t like to do songs that I can’t feel inside.”

While Kind has been known to champion new writers and new material, her Catalina gigs will favor familiar fare. “Right now I love story songs,” she shares. “I love songs that have three acts. … The message means a lot to me.”

In the early 1990s, Kind earned acclaim for her theater work on and off Broadway. She was considered for a comic role in the recent musical adaptation of Legally Blonde, and would love to work on a new theater project. “We have so many revivals,” she says, “it would be wonderful if something really great and new came along that you could be the one who interprets for the first time.”

In the meantime, she is looking forward her upcoming Catalina gigs. “I hope that we have a wonderful, joyous evening together, filled with fun and heart and excitement. I haven’t performed in Los Angeles in a while, so it’s like coming back home again.”

Roslyn Kind performs at 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 1-2 at the Catalina Jazz Bar and Grill, 6725 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd. For tickets and information, visit www.catalinajazzclub.com.

Burton’s Hamlet—the remix

For more than 30 years, New York’s Wooster Group has been creating fiercely original pieces of theater, often combining live performance with a sophisticated use of technology and mixed media. This winter, the company comes west, bringing their acclaimed 2006 adaptation of Hamlet to REDCAT for its West Coast premiere.

Combining live actors with black-and-white film footage of Richard Burton’s 1964 Broadway turn as the melancholy Dane, the production seeks to recreate the theatrical experience of that 44-year-old production. Burton’s Hamlet, directed by Sir John Gielgud, was staged at the height of the media frenzy surrounding his scandalous relationship with Elizabeth Taylor (they were married during the Toronto out-of-town tryouts). The production was filmed with 17 cameras and edited to be shown in theaters across the country for two days only. Since the surviving footage shows isolated stage areas and actors, Wooster Group director Elizabeth LeCompte has attempted to piece together what we don’t see on camera. The multimedia adventure finds actors speaking in synch with their celluloid counterparts, who then might quickly fade out and hand the baton to the folks on stage. Like most Wooster projects, it sounds highly imaginative, controversial and slightly mad. Serious theatergoers will probably want to book seats now.

The Wooster Group’s Hamlet runs Jan. 30-Feb. 10 at REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. For more information, visit www.redcat.org.