All Entries in the "LemonMeter" Category
A CHILD LEFT BEHIND: 100% – SWEET
SWEET The script balances social and personal commentary successfully, and Aymie’s energetic charm allows us easy access to his outrage. Amy Lyons – LA Weekly SWEET “Excellence” is the one word I would use to describe Alan Aymie’s highly energetic and dynamic one-man show. Audrey Linden – LA Examiner SWEET This is a play that [...]
ROMEO AND JULIET (COEURAGE THEATRE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET With the new production of Romeo and Juliet by the Coeurage Theatre Company, currently playing at the Actors Circle Theatre, it finally all makes sense. Geoff Hoff – LA Theatre Review SWEET Flaws notwithstanding, this is a memorable effort, thanks to a gifted director’s fearless concept that clearly energizes everyone involved, particularly his dynamic, [...]
THE GIRL MOST LIKELY TO: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Even if someone living under that proverbial rock doesn’t know the fate of Araujo, it would be difficult to anticipate a happy ending as Premsrirat’s story unfolds, but under the bold, erotically charged leadership of director Jon Lawrence Rivera, who is blessed with a gamely inspired cast and design team, all the razzle-dazzle helps [...]
THE BRIDGE CLUB: 66% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER But Mike Sabatino’s direction is shaky, a failing particularly evident in Dobbs Owen’s slow line pick-ups and pauses. And Sue’s awkward smoking of bizarre long white things that bear little resemblance to cigarettes makes us wonder what Sabatino was thinking. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times SWEET Christopher Franciosa and Nancy Dobbs Owen play [...]
FORBIDDEN BROADWAY, GREATEST HITS, VOLUME 2: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Full of biting wit and downright funny parodies of various popular Broadway shows—and the famous actors that star in them—Musical Theatre West’s cabaret-style send-up FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: GREATEST HITS, VOLUME 2 plays its final, laugh-filled set of performances this weekend ending April 29 at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach. Michael L. Quintos [...]
TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER: 86% – SWEET
SWEET “Tennessee in the Summer” combines fine acting and production work in a sizzling examination of Tennessee Williams and his demons. Mary Mallory – Tolucan Times SWEET Credit goes to director Sal Romeo for keeping the four-person cast cognizant of the all-too-real tragedies in Williams’ life, which though the stuff of soap opera, were hardly [...]
FINDING THE BURNETT HEART (THEATRE 48): 91% – SWEET
SWEET Jeremy Aldridge’s direction elicits fine work from his impeccable cast and illuminates the play without calling attention to itself. Andrew Menzies’ set is handsome, modest, and convincingly lived-in. Neal Weaver – Backstage BITTERSWEET Paul Elliott’s play has its moments, but it feels rather dated even though it’s set in the present time. That said, [...]
CLOUDLANDS: 50% – BITTER
SWEET The result is nothing short of a triumph for all concerned with this extraordinary new work. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times BITTER Cloudlands does not elevate the storyline. It sinks it. The whole piece feels like a travelogue; the characters comment on their feelings, endlessly describing their unpleasant emotional experiences, yammering on and [...]
THE CONVERT: 88% – SWEET
SWEET The devastating clash between Western culture and religion and African tradition and spirituality is at the heart of this masterful new work. Director Emily Mann has mounted a production that’s as compelling as it is gorgeous. Jennie Webb – Backstage SWEET Brought to life by Emily Mann’s subtle direction, a splendid set by Daniel [...]
MISS SAIGON (LA MIRADA PERFORMING ARTS): 86% – SWEET
SWEET Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s phenomenally successful Vietnam War-era gloss on “Madama Butterfly” receives a sleekly staged, wonderfully performed revival that heightens this critic-proof popera’s strengths and obscures its frailties, to impressive effect. David C. Nichols – LA Times BITTER Let’s face it. For all its bells and whistles, “Miss Saigon” is really not [...]
THE BEWILDERED HERD: 75% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Still, director Laurie Woolery’s production features an excellent cast, with Richards giving a tart, moving performance as a befuddled widow, Getz every inch the smooth operative, and Cummins a prickly innocent. Henderson makes their confusion oddly compelling. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times BITTERSWEET This is an exceptionally “chatty” play, and the major problem is [...]
NO TIME TO WEEP (MATRIX THEATRE): 60% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER Not since Mel Brooks’ outrageous “Springtime for Hitler” has there been a Holocaust musical as ill-conceived and badly performed as No Time to Weep, now onstage at L.A.’s Matrix Theater. Cynthia Citron – LA Examiner SWEET Standing ovations at the Matrix Theatre greeted the actors of Lucy Deutsch’s Holocaust life story, No Time To [...]
DAMES AT SEA (COLONY THEATRE): 75% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET While the tapping could have been crisper, everyone is in fine voice. Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly BITTER But try as everyone will, they’re still faced with Jim Wise’s forgettable music, which pays glaringly inadequate homage to Porter and Gershwin and is dragged down further by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller’s conspicuously predictable book [...]
IVANOV (ODYSSEY THEATRE): 83% – SWEET
SWEET “Ivanov,” the play in which Anton Chekhov was still testing the formula for his dramatic breakthrough, is usually revived in somberly autumnal shades. So the opportunity to see the play thrillingly brought to life in brazen color, courtesy of director Bart DeLorenzo, is one that no serious aficionado of modern classics should pass up. [...]
LAURA (THEATRE 40): 75% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER Director David McClendon has assembled a handsome and entertaining production, but he allows most of his actors to turn in plain-vanilla performances, without the intensity and danger that would generate real suspense. Neal Weaver – Backstage SWEET Ultimately, although Caspary and Sklar’s stage adaptation ends up not nearly as inspired as the Preminger-Andrews-Tierney film [...]
ETERNAL THOU: 91% – SWEET
SWEET Matt McCray distinguishes himself with Eternal Thou as one of the most inventive and, pardon the pun, plugged-in theater makers in LA. He’ll leave you thinking about that iPhone in your pocket a little differently. Anthony Byrnes – Opening the Curtain SWEET McCray’s staging blurs the distinctions between the actors-as-tech-components and actors-as-people, so that [...]
BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL (PANTAGES): 84% – SWEET
SWEET This irresistible show is an expertly crafted, well-oiled pleasure machine designed to make you feel exactly the way you want to feel at a musical: awed, tearful, warm of heart, slightly sheepish about loving it so much and grateful that everybody around you is cheering just as hard. Margaret Gray – LA Times SWEET [...]
GOOD PEOPLE (GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE): 96% – SWEET
SWEET Although Kaczmarek is the shining star of the show, she isn’t the only standout in the L.A. production of Good People. The sets, by designer Craig Siebels, are stunning, changing from a back alley to a kitchen to a church hall to a suburban mansion. And Marylouise Burke is an inveterate scene-stealer as Dottie, [...]
EARLY AND OFTEN: 75% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET It’s unclear how many of the period jokes and references will register with viewers not steeped in the legacy of former Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine, but the intricately plotted shenanigans tap a cynicism that never goes out of style. With inanimate corporations now enjoying the same rights as people, the idea of [...]
SLOW DANCE IN MIDTOWN: 93% – SWEET
SWEET It’s an exercise that, well, feels a little like an exercise, especially the second time around. But the writing is full of sharp insight and powerful emotion, the characters are well developed and sympathetic and the fine actors, while sometimes struggling with their accents and with Sarnoff’s quirkier locutions (“I would like to put [...]
LIGHTS OFF, EYES CLOSED: 91% – SWEET
SWEET Playfully directed by Meredith Berg, the capable cast of six gives ambitious and multi-faceted performances. Pat Taylor – Tolucan Times BITTERSWEET Liz Shannon Miller’s romantic comedy gets off to a rocky start, with unremarkable acting and staging, but soon finds its rhythm, as the cast of six improves as the story begins to plumb [...]
IN PARIS (BROAD STAGE): 80% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET Baryshnikov’s physical approach serves him well in a performance piece that doesn’t give him much more than a dramatic scenario to work with. Directed by Dmitry Krymov, who also adapted the text, this production (performed in French and Russian with English supertitles) is long on mood and atmosphere, short on action. It’s really just [...]
LINCOLN: AN AMERICAN STORY: 74% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET In this his Lincoln – An American Story, Hershey Felder the actor, guided by Joel Zwick’s generously even direction, plays with great sensitivity, showing a seldom seen compassionate side of his artistic temperament. Don Grigware – Grigware Blogspot SWEET Despite its stylistic excesses, the substance of “Lincoln” resonates. In a time of national crisis, [...]
THE BUNGLER (A NOISE WITHIN): 96% – SWEET
SWEET This sitcom-worthy premise spins into something buoyant and diverting in director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott’s stylish (and stylistically coherent) production. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times SWEET Sometimes unprepossessing plays yield hugely satisfying results, as in this buoyant revival of Molière’s seldom-performed comedy “The Bungler.” David C. Nichols – Backstage SWEET Still, if A Noise Within’s production [...]
THE PRINCE OF ATLANTIS: 95% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET A good percentage of Saturday’s matinee audience at South Coast Repertory, where the work is having its world premiere, seemed to eat it up. I found it contrived and tedious, but as dramedies (awful word) go, it hits all the requisite emotional marks while cracking just enough jokes to be labeled harmlessly diverting, at [...]
LABORATORIES OF OUR YOUTH: 34% – BITTER
BITTERSWEET “Laboratories of Our Youth” is an ambitious attempt to conjure a sophisticatedly silly contemporary farce with historically resonant trappings, but its underlying thematic material fails to produce a chemical reaction and the final compound is something less than the sum of its parts. Lyle Zimskind – LAist BITTER In addition to Bowlin’s stillborn script, [...]
THE VAULT: BANKRUPT: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Credit too to Hazel Kuang’s scenic design, Jasmine Orpilla’s original music and video appearances, and Patsy McCormack’s lighting. Their scrappy yet stylish efforts do a nice job framing this evening of smart and silly satire. Jennie Webb – Backstage SWEET Yet although the message is somewhat murky, the show still works as pure entertainment [...]
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (THEATRE BANSHEE): 91% – SWEET
SWEET Yet director Sean Branney, who won a Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Award for his direction of last season’s “The Crucible,” largely redresses that pitfall by emphasizing the comical in a surprisingly rollicking staging. And if all that high energy occasionally verges on the manic, the production nonetheless scores high points as a richly cogent [...]
GHOSTS (EDGEMAR CENTER FOR THE ARTS): 60% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER All these actors try to supply elements necessary to the play. Ms Danner displays no similar instinct; nor, unfortunately, does Mr Kaback. Jason Rohrer – Stage and Cinema SWEET Doug Kaback has directed and adapted a modern version of this haunting and classic play. And, I have to say, he’s done an excellent job [...]
DEATHTRAP (DAVIDSON-VALENTI THEATRE): 87% – SWEET
SWEET Director Ken Sawyer has successfully added sensual passion to a play that usually succeeds solely through cleverness and scares. Though the casting is uneven, Grinstead brings a youthful energy and acting skill that increases as the play’s tension mounts. Tom Provenzano – LA Weekly SWEET But who goes to “Deathtrap” to see nuanced method [...]