Archive for January, 2010
Critique of the Week
BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA by Clare Elfman – Buzzine Los Angeles, California – My bad. I did not do my research. So please, before you see this interesting kaleidoscope of a performance, do yours. I come from old school. A play speaks for itself. Linear. The last act leaves you with something concrete: a message, an emotion, a [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
CAMELOT by Sarah Taylor Ellis – Compositions on Theatre During my freshman year at Duke, I took a writing seminar entitled “Images of Arthur”; in one of my first academic papers on musical theater, I explored musical renderings of Arthurian legend from A Connecticut Yankee (Rodgers and Hart, 1927) to Camelot (Lerner and Loewe, 1960). [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Runner Up
WHISPER HOUSE by Charles McNulty – LA Times When the two singing ghosts of Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow’s new indie-spirited chamber musical “Whisper House” deliver the opening number, “Better to Be Dead,” the show tips its hand that it has no intention of playing by conventional rules. A morbid fixation on the grave, after [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Runner Runner Up
BOBRAUCHENBERGAMERICA by Robert Machray – Stagehappenings Robert Rauschenberg lived in the artistic period between abstract expressionism and pop art. His painting and sculptures display his belief that there is no difference between art objects and ordinary objects. He believed that an object became art when he said it was. How would his art reflect itself [...]
The Demise of the Pasadena Playhouse Continued
Some excellent commentary from both Charles McNulty (finally!) at the LA Times and Don Shirley at LA Stagewatch on the demise of the Pasadena Playhouse. First Charles: Ever since hearing the somber news about Pasadena Playhouse, I keep thinking of the title of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski’s book “Towards a Poor Theatre.” This revolutionary text [...]
DOG SEES GOD: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BLOCKHEAD: 100% Sweet
SWEET Perhaps it was the long-awaited dawning of the sunshine on Saturday morning, or the breath of refreshingly honest air each moment the actors shared, but I felt uplifted by the dark, heavy, and sometimes scary piece. My inner bully laughed at their careless treatment of friends but my heart, and the very-vocal souls sitting [...]
SPIKE HEELS: 100% Sweet
SWEET Rebeck’s comical archetypes – the siren, the bookworm, the prude and the rogue – are cleverly inverted, and the cast, particularly the effectively charming bad boy Dunne, imbue their characters with a raw believability throughout. Never descending to male-bashing, “Spike Heels” remains a witty and well-balanced treatment of the male-female dynamic, in all its [...]
KINGS OF THE KILBURN HIGH ROAD: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The setting, the characters, the behavior — a pub, heavy drinking, nastiness — are all quite stereotypical Irish in Jimmy Murphy’s “The Kings of the Kilburn High Road,” receiving its U.S. premiere at Burbank’s Theater Banshee. As the booze flows at a wake in this north London pub so, too, do the confessions and [...]
Pasadena Playhouse Closes
Wow. The Pasadena Playhouse will close Feb. 7 after the final performance of its current production of “Camelot,” leaving its future in jeopardy as company leaders explore ways out of its financial woes, including a possible bankruptcy filing. Stephen Eich, the executive director hired last June to run the theater, said 37 employees learned at [...]
The Thursday Thought
A friend of mine saw a show here in Los Angeles the other day – a show that was extremely well-reviewed and had garnered some awards and nominations – and said to me, “Yeah, it was good, but it would get ripped to shreds in New York.” I thought, what the hell does that mean? [...]
WISDOM 2116: 100% Sweet
SWEET In fact, some 55 years ago, in honor of his dear friends actors Charles Laughton and wife Elsa Lanchester, he penned the sci-fi piece, now titled, Wisdom 2116 for them to perform on stage. But both passed away before having the opportunity to mount it. Now resurrected after all these years, it echoes a [...]
BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA: 78% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Bart DeLorenzo’s staging preserves the tone, inherent the text, that’s both wry and frivolous, abstract and pop, with one breakout poetical excursion into Walt Whitmanesque grandeur, delivered by a hobo (Brett Hren) and accompanied by Dvorak’s Symphony from The New World. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET In viewing the show at Inside [...]
THE CITY: 33% Bitter – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Director Stan Mazin’s adaptation and update of Clyde Fitch’s 1909 play has a lot going for it. That said, references to Lady Gaga and Desperate Housewives can’t disguise the fact that it’s an overly talky melodrama. Sandra Ross – LA Weekly BITTERSWEET The holes come in the staging and acting. Hector Hank plays his [...]
SHAKESPEARE UNSCRIPTED: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Watching the players occasionally struggle to respond in Shakespeare’s vernacular, or to follow each other’s intentions, is hilarious fun. While the show may veer to and fro at times, it never runs off track. The result is a truly entertaining presentation that feels, if not like an actual comedy script from Mr. Shakespeare, then [...]
Psst. Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Nom’s Are Out
Yes, it’s true the ever-mysterious, “Only True Los Angeles Theatre Critic Body of Note” has emerged from their smokey Star Chamber high in the Angeles Forest Hills and pronounced the nominees for their 2009 LA DRAMA CRITIC CIRCLE awards. Back in the day I remember I once used a Critic’s quote in one of my [...]
PROOF: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Auburn’s powerful play hinges on the issues of trust and faith. As the playwright Bertolt Brecht observed, “the inflexible rule [is] that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Despite the fine performances of the cast — tautly directed by Bob Morrisey on set designer Lacey Anzelc’s convincing back porch — Sherer [...]
HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE: 100% Sweet
SWEET Paula Vogel tackles pedophilia in her 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned To Drive, and if the sexual abuse of an eleven-(to seventeen)-year-old sounds like unpleasant subject matter for an evening of theater, you’re absolutely right. Told by its heroine Li’l Bit as a series of flashbacks, How I Learn To Drive is a [...]
To Review or Not to Review
I’d like to introduce the lovely and talented Kat Primeau and her newish Los Angeles based blog Adventures in La-La Land. Actor, writer and fledgling critic, Kat contacted us recently and guided us to her latest post “To Review or Not to Review” concerning her struggles with venturing into the world of the critic while [...]
The Monday Moment
Yep. It’s about time for the Democrats to grow some. Whatever you want to say about the Republicans. They got shit done. Bad shit, for the most part. But shit done, nonetheless.
WHISPER HOUSE: 83% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER Composer Duncan Sheik’s voice, which entered the world of stage tuners with a roar in 2004′s “Spring Awakening,” is reduced to a whisper in “Whisper House,” the somnolent chamber musical now world premiering at the Old Globe. Sheik’s sophomore slump doesn’t mean his vastly popular, Tony-winning debut was a fluke. But it does suggest [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
ORDINARY DAYS by Sarah Taylor Ellis – Compositions on Theatre I drove a full two hours to reach South Coast Repertory this past Friday evening. Cast recordings of Floyd Collins and A Little Night Music entertained me in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but it was quite a trek to make for a 90-minute show: I hoped Adam [...]
Critique of the Week
ORPHEUS DESCENDING by Keisha7 – LASplash Somewhere in the forgotten South, back in the not so distant past, the locals of a small country town await the arrive of one of it’s most important citizens. Jabe Torrance (Geoffrey Wade) is returning home from the hospital after suffering from heart ills. His general dry goods store [...]
BAAL: 100% Sweet
SWEET In director Ben Rock’s sensual and visceral staging of Peter Mellencamp’s profane, poetical adaptation, now playing at Sacred Fools Theatre Company, Gregory Sims performs the title character with the primal seductiveness of the young Al Pacino, growling through the play, as though he’s borrowed Tom Waits’ voice. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET [...]
PROJECT WONDERLAND: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The stars here are Teresa Shea’s costumes and sets and Lynn Jeffries’ puppets, a whirlwind of giant lobster claws and waves of parachute silk and 15-foot flower hats and packs of angry cards buzzing about the stage. Amidst the chaos, standouts include Bonnabel’s Caterpillar, Jabez Zuniga’s Queen of Hearts, Matthew Patrick Davis’ Mad Hatter, [...]
LOYALTIES: 67% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER Pasqualini’s play is not really a thesis drama, but it often sounds like one, treating its characters as mouthpieces. There are, however, some potent scenes. Though we’re clearly intended to sympathize with Michael, he’s too whiny and self-centered to take seriously. Director David Gautreaux has able actors but sometimes allows them to succumb to [...]
Don Shirley’s Super Spectacular Capsule Reviews Are Back!
Yep. The venerable LA theatre critic, Don Shirley, is at it again. A while back Don and I got into a virtual tussle about these “capsule reviews” he was passing off as actual reviews for the now defunct City Beat. Don’s main point was that he saw just way too many shows and didn’t have [...]
ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD: 100% Sweet
SWEET The most dramatic moment in the play is delivered to an incredulous audience. Guildenstern gets fed up, and stabs the Player because his portrayal of death is not death itself. We believe that the Player has indeed died, only to have the company clap in unison announcing what a beautiful act it was. This [...]
A SONG AT TWILIGHT: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET In this age of Facebook, Twitter, and texting, where the English language has been reduced to grunts and groans and fractured grammar, Noel Coward has come to the rescue, at least for an extremely delicious few hours, in the form of the West Coast premiere of A Song at Twilight at the Odyssey Theatre [...]
What Does Art Mean to You and How Can We Make it Relevant in Mainstream California?
Hi kids. I’m hoping to spark a discussion with theatre folks about the core of what we do and get some varying points of view. Last week I spent two days at a conference in Sacramento with 100 other arts leaders from around the state in a very interesting discussion of what “The Arts” mean [...]
ORPHEUS DESCENDING: 86% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Frantic Redhead Productions’ presentation of Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending is a prime example of Los Angeles theater at its finest. A big-name trio of leading players with serious theatrical credits and training, a gifted director with an inspired concept, and one of the finest design teams in town have combined forces to make one [...]