All Entries Tagged With: "anthony byrnes"
Critique of the Week
This one from Anthony Byrnes is more conversational in tone – probably due to the fact that he actually READS these on air at KCRW – but in the writing it’s an interesting and engaging style as well, kind of like a folksy storyteller pulling up by the fire. This praise is in direct contrast [...]
JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE (MARK TAPER): 95% – SWEET
SWEET This powerfully acted production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” which opened Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum under the direction of Phylicia Rashad, is a gift for audiences hungering for theatrical nourishment after being fed a steady diet of snacks. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Thesps Keith David, Glynn Turman and John [...]
HOT CAT (THEATRE OF NOTE): 90% – SWEET
SWEET Yet Hot Cat is as ironic as The Royale is earnest — until the finale, a moving pas de deux between the estranged Maggie and Brick, set to the laconic sounds of a piano, in which the entire lunatic tragedy settles into a poignant tenderness. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET The performers [...]
The Saturday Saying(s)
“The ancient Greeks, with their complicated notion of catharsis, thought theater could speak to these questions. Great plays, like Medea or MacBeth, have taken us into unspeakable acts and if not made sense of them – at least honestly plumbed their depths. The folks at Boston Court couldn’t have imagined how their choice of plays [...]
ANNAPURNA: 94% – SWEET
SWEET From White’s poignant script to Bart DeLorenzo’s faultless direction to Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman’s beautifully centered performances, “Annapurna” is a lovely theatrical construct from the ground up. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times SWEET Under the sturdy, austere direction of DeLorenzo and featuring two actors capable of such astonishing commitment to their art, [...]
AMERICAN MISFIT: 63% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Via songs by Mr. Dietz and Phillip Owen, painstaking and inventive direction by Michael Michetti, and the enthusiastic participation of a four-man rockabilly band and a cast of eight (some overlap there), this show shouts encouragement to those who would participate in a collective political and spiritual evolution. If the show were a person, [...]
HEART OF DARKNESS (ACTORS’ GANG): 100% – SWEET
SWEET This stripped-down Actors’ Gang production zooms in on Finney’s intensely contained performance as Marlow, the seaman who tells the story of his obsessive pursuit of the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who has come to symbolize, among other things, the insatiable greed of imperial conquest. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET The Actor’s Gang [...]
THE NETHER: 97% – SWEET
SWEET Like the hard-core radical voyeurs in Jennifer Haley’s terrific sci-fi play “The Nether,” you won’t want to leave the Hideaway, that site on a futuristic Internet that caters to men in search of Victorian children. Nor will you want to leave the Kirk Douglas Theater, which gave Haley’s play its world premiere. Robert Hofler [...]
MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION (ANTAEUS): 95% – SWEET
SWEET Shaw’s 1893 ground-breaker makes an exciting return to Los Angeles as The Antaeus Company premieres another if its couldn’t-be-better revivals starring the incomparable Anne Gee Byrd in the title role. Who could ask for anything more? Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA SWEET A strong, able cast led by Robin Larsen’s firm direction makes George Bernard [...]
TRIBES: 89% – SWEET
SWEET With actors this emotionally connected, words are secondary. More to the point of Raine’s play, hearing is shown to depend more on an open heart than fully functioning ears. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET The conversation Tribes inspires about communication and community in the deaf world more than justifies this production. It’s unfortunate [...]
Behold the Bitter Lemons Academy of Arts Criticism (BLAAC)
Pronounced “blaaach,” kinda like “blech” but with more “aaa”. But yes indeedy you heard right: The Bitter Lemons Academy of Arts Criticism. BLAAC. What the hell is it? Right now it is most definitely in its embryonic stage, but eventually it will become a full-fledged Academy with professors and semesters and tuition and diplomas and cigars [...]
A FAMILY THING: 88% – SWEET
SWEET Echo Theater Company is known for its superb ensembles. Fields, the artistic director, has built up a rich community of acting talent, and his cast is eminently watchable. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET So as long as you are not offended easily and you want to strike a few chords within you, then [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Runner Up
I offered this one in this week’s COW mix for two reasons, one, because I share Anthony’s sentiments about the show and two, because what we see here is a critic’s impassioned plea to a clearly beloved company to up their game, and making some very good points along the way. CASSIOPEIA Anthony Byrnes – [...]
CASSIOPEIA: 71% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET If you’re in a mood to give yourself over to rich imagery richly (sometimes too richly) conveyed, you’ll encounter something rare and beautiful. Bob Verini – Variety SWEET Part dream drama, part choreo-poem, the 75-minute three-character work, directed by Emilie Beck, charms both the brain and the senses. Evan Henerson – Backstage SWEET Still, [...]
WALKING THE TIGHTROPE: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Director Debbie Devine and her cohorts have fashioned from scratch something incredibly special, suggesting the feeling of a sweet summer dream staged by Federico Fellini. Travis Michael Holder – Backstage SWEET Devine’s staging is quite entrancing, and White even overcomes the perils of being a grown woman cast as a young girl. Don Shirley [...]
GANESH VERSUS THE THIRD REICH: 93% – SWEET
SWEET These are mighty questions that “Ganesh,” a small but rippling production, leaves you pondering. It’s a piece in which a hug, proffered by the wispy Laherty to a fellow performer after a brutal scene, turns into an eloquent statement about what it means to be a human being. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
Anthony Byrnes once again illuminating on both the micro and macro level. Good stuff. ‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE Anthony Byrnes – KCRW Now typically when I talk about the ephemeral quality of theater, it’s something I’m celebrating. It’s part of what makes theater so magical and essential. Theater can’t be repackaged in a ‘best [...]
The Saturday Saying
“UCLA is just an extreme single weekend case of how theater is produced across Los Angeles from the Taper to the most intimate shoebox. The model is basically run a show for 6 weeks then close. If lightning miraculously strikes and the show’s a blockbuster – consider a two week extension. It’s astounding with the [...]
‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE (FREUD PLAYHOUSE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Cheek By Jowl’s revival leaves you with the same disquieting frisson of a Tarantino film or McDonagh play, raising questions about the artistic purpose of shock and horror that have no easy answers and may send you home more disturbed than entertained. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET The true pity would be to [...]
Critique of the Week
Productions are just starting to crank up, so figured I’d highlight my favorite review of Los Angeles Theater 2012, well at least my favorite on the positive side. Still looking for a good well-rounded one that has the balls to tell us what didn’t work. Jason? Tony? Can we get a dose of reality to [...]
KCRW’s Best of Los Angeles Theater 2012
And they just keep rolling in. The latest list of Los Angeles Faves in 2012 Theater is from KCRW theater critic Anthony Byrnes. Again there is much crossover with McNulty, Morris and Shirley’s lists as well as our addition to the mix here at the Lemon. Love this thought from Anthony on the musical Bad Apples at Circle [...]
CYMBELINE (BROAD STAGE): 94% – SWEET
SWEET “Cymbeline” has no business being on anyone’s top 10 Shakespeare list, but it has its glories — most of them outlandish, though a few that are breathtakingly refined. Fiasco’s revival gives us a fair glimpse of both. Charles McNulty – LA Times BITTERSWEET What the company lacks in skill, they make up for in [...]
OTHER DESERT CITIES (MARK TAPER): 76% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET What should be a perfect storm, alas, isn’t. Working with watchable and often affecting material, Egan and his cast of five feel like they’re trying to wrestle two or three disparate plays into a shapable entity. Despite a career-stretching performance by JoBeth Williams and strong work by the consistently reliable Robert Foxworth, “Other Desert [...]
The Saturday Sayings
“I don’t know whose idea it was to set the entire show in a dingy office and have the actors play workers who are sliding in and out of Gatsby roles as they go about their work day, but I think this concept adds nothing to the production. Far better that they’d just done Gatsby [...]
NORA (PACIFIC RESIDENT THEATRE): 89% – SWEET
SWEET First produced in the early ‘80s, the play receives a near-optimum staging from director Dana Jackson at Pacific Resident Theatre. In uniformly cogent performances, a superlative cast cuts to the emotional heart of Ibsen’s masterwork. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times SWEET Although the decision (by Bergman, not Jackson) to add a dramatic, pace-interrupting [...]
GATZ (REDCAT): 91% – SWEET
SWEET Theatre like this arrives once in a blue moon, and you don’t want to miss a word-for-word of it. Tony Frankel – Stage and Cinema SWEET In its simultaneous devotion to Fitzgerald’s text and ingenious expansion upon it, “Gatz” looks forward to an entirely new American theatrical form. It is quite simply not to [...]
Critique of the Week
Mr. Byrnes has been on the pulse lately and he doesn’t disappoint with this latest. BAD APPLES Anthony Byrnes – KCRW There’s something profoundly disturbing about the world premiere musical Bad Apples at Circle X Theatre Company. Take a scene that happens right before the first intermission: We’re in a Pizza Hut with Mohammed Atta [...]
The Saturday Saying
“Bad Apples isn’t a perfect piece of theater but it’s an important piece of theater. It’s asking difficult questions in sophisticated ways. It’s also the kind of theater that can only be born in a small theater. It’s too risky politically and aesthetically. Circle X took that risk and it payed off. It’s not often [...]
BAD APPLES: 77% – SWEET
SWEET Anybody concerned that Circle X’s new musical about America’s most notorious prisoner-torture atrocity was going to be some sort of Abu Ghraib: The Musical! can rest easy; Bad Apples is a thoughtful, penetrating and theatrically thrilling meditation on the all-too-human dimensions of what Hannah Arendt famously called the banality of evil. LA Weekly BITTER [...]
KRAPP’S LAST TAPE (KIRK DOUGLAS THEATRE): 96% – SWEET
SWEET The emphasis on humor in Michael Colgan’s visiting Gate Theater Dublin production, executed by the brilliantly talented John Hurt, makes it easier to swallow Beckett’s bitter pill. Bob Verini – Variety SWEET A truly great actor, Hurt’s performance is riveting. His voice, both the pre-taped version and when he speaks live, is rich with [...]
