THE BEVERLY HILLS PSYCHIATRIST & JESSICA’S MONOLOGUE: 0% – BITTER
LemonMeter | Feb 03, 2011 | Comments 0 |
Tony Motzenbacker, left, and Alexander Zale in "Beverly Hills Psychiatrist" at the Lounge Theatre 2. Photo courtesy of Gerhard Clausing.
BITTER
While all humor is built on incongruity, it requires a rational or at least pseudo-rational context; here, the premise that someone would continue seeing a senile analyst for this long is a stretch of credibility and patience, and the faltering performances lack the comic timing to sell it.
Philip Brandes – LA Times
BITTER
This goes on for 19 maddeningly repetitious scenes, during which one can only wonder why the patient doesn’t just leave. At the end, the patient finally does realize his doctor is a fraud, but it’s too little and too late. Perhaps Schnauber was attempting a Pinterian conundrum, but Pinter was never this dull.
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly
BITTER
There’s very little that’s new in this cliché-rich script. It’s a question here of who’s the doctor and who’s the patient. And frankly, do we care? The laughs are quick in coming early in the show, equally swift in losing steam as the repetition drags on for most of an hour. It’s directed by Louis Fantasia in a mild case of expense of talent in a waste of shame, to almost coin a phrase.
Madeleine Shaner – Backstage
BITTER
The problem with the production grows from the play’s greatest strength: Mr. Schnauber’s text is circuitous. The actors must be on top of the text at all times. Unfortunately, Mr. Zale and Mr. Motzenbacker are not on top of the text. A couple of times it seemed the dialogue got away from them. At one point it undeniably did, as the director shouted a prompt from the back of the house.
Andrew Moore – LA Theatre Review
BITTER
THE BEVERLY HILLS PSYCHIATRIST, currently playing at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood, certainly has “name appeal”. I expected an uproarious satire on the world of psychiatry; a no-holds-barred comedy on the trials of mounting the couch every week for a therapy session on Rodeo Drive. What I got was an incredibly boring and repetitive series of blackout sketches depicting a patient’s one year journey through the worst psychoanalysis the American Psychiatric Association (if there is such a group) has to offer.
Robert Axelrod – Reviewplays
“Beverly Hills Psychiatrist”
Presented by the Max Kade Institute for American-German Studies at USC in conjunction with the German-American Cultural Society
The Lounge Theatre 2, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 6
$20. (323) 960-4418
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
Filed Under: LemonMeter
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