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RSSAll Entries Tagged With: "backstage"

Photo by Shashin Desai

THE CLEAN HOUSE (INTERNATIONAL CITY THEATRE): 100% – Sweet

SWEET Costume designer Kim DeShazo provides Lane with a white pantsuit in almost great-white-hunter style, which softens to a pink sweater and white slacks by play’s end. Virginia’s clothing, by contrast, begins as prim but comfortable and ends as happily comfortable. As does the audience’s tour of this odd, unique, and ultimately cathartic play. Dany [...]

Photo courtesy of Circus Theatricals

TITUS REDUX: 100% – Sweet

SWEET The minimalist settings are dynamic in their flexibility. Using two tables and a few other bits and pieces, the nearly two-hour narrative, unbroken by intermission and strewed with terrible soliloquies, create the pain, suffering and grief that few of us would dare even to imagine. Laurence Vittes – Hollywood Reporter SWEET The story’s pieces [...]

Julia Campbell and Leith Burke in 'Neighbors.' | Photo: I.C. Rapoport

NEIGHBORS: A PLAY WITH CARTOONS: 100% – Sweet

SWEET The Brooklyn-based playwright, precocious at 26, now works in Berlin on a project about black soldiers stationed in Germany. Every element of his vivacious play is fresh, alive, and communicates. It’s wildly intelligent, unafraid, and wickedly funny. Debra Levine – Arts Meme SWEET Jacobs-Jenkins has written a play that is heartfelt, ambitious, angry, outrageous [...]

Photo by Dove Huntley

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG (FREMONT PRODUCTION): 100% – Sweet

BITTERSWEET As Booth, Rider has an appealing intensity that bounces nicely off of Jed Reynolds’ low-key Lincoln. James Reynolds’ simple staging is clear and clean, and the young actors own the play’s many comic moments. They have more difficulty mining the complexity of the material—reaching the depths it demands—and at times handling the heightened language. [...]

Hermione (Monica Schneider), Polixenes (Matt Merchant), and Leontes (Matt Walker) in A Withers Tale. PHOTO COURTESY OF TROUBADOUR THEATRE COMPANY

A WITHER’S TALE: 91% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET A Withers Tale is a nice change of pace for the Troubadour Company but as they are so cosmically gifted at side-splitting silly stuff, let’s hope that their next production is more seriously funny. Lynne Bronstein – Santa Monica Mirror SWEET The somber saga builds to Walker’s showstopping rendition of “Ain’t No Sunshine,” enhanced [...]

CHESS IN CONCERT: 100% – Sweet

CHESS IN CONCERT: 100% – Sweet

SWEET I’ve attended many concert and staged readings of musicals in Los Angeles and most tend to be simple presentations, on book at music stands, with little or no additional production elements. CHESS in Concert at Musical Theatre of Los Angeles has elevated the concert reading convention to new heights, with a lush 9-piece orchestra, [...]

Photo courtesy of Theatre Asylum

STILL STANDING: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Shyla Marlin’s new play sets forth a compelling premise in portraying the intersecting quests of two women to solidify their self-identities and familial roots. Director Nick Mills has assembled a solid cast to explore the sociological and psychological ramifications of Marlin’s intelligent themes. Yet the script is hampered by a choppy pseudo-cinematic quality and [...]

Photos: Michael Lorre and Kevin Remington. Credit: Cece Tio

THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP: 100% – Sweet

SWEET There’s a mildness that prevents Lorre and Remington’s handling, played out on a set of black furniture adorably marked with chalk, from becoming an unfettered tour de force. (A few bald comic patches could use a directorial comb-over.) But the duo’s gentle playfulness has its own rewards — first and foremost, a chuckling sincerity. [...]

THE GOOD NEGRO: 100% – Sweet

THE GOOD NEGRO: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Such a weighty matter could easily dip into the self-righteous, but what makes The Good Negro so compelling is it refrains from being preachy and gives us characters just as flawed as the historical ones from which Ms. Wilson obviously draws her inspiration. Rev. Lawrence, although committed to nonviolence and a noble cause, has [...]

GROUNDLINGS RIVER ADVENTURE: 33% – Bitter

GROUNDLINGS RIVER ADVENTURE: 33% – Bitter

BITTER What has not changed for the better since this reviewer’s last visit to the Groundlings is a weakness in improv. One understands director Damon Jones and the Groundlings institution provide a training ground for improv, as well as sketch. But on the night reviewed, the improvised pieces often felt forced, too controlled; for example, [...]

Photo courtesy of Open Fist Theatre Company

A WOLF INSIDE THE FENCE: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED

BITTER One of three plays in the First Look Festival, Joseph Fisher’s dramedy creeps along at a maddeningly slow pace with a plot as thick and tedious as any world history textbook. The knock-you-on-the-side-of-your-head stock characters are of the typical all-American high school trope: the bad girl that smokes out front, a frustrated history teacher, [...]

Photo by Michael Lamont

FREE MAN OF COLOR: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Smith’s spare three-character study unfolds through intimate moments and intellectual discourse, powerfully examining the issues of its day, as well as questions surrounding citizenship and belonging, which continue to occupy us. The dialogue is especially refreshing for its crisp diction, for which the credit goes to both the cast and director Dan Bonnell. The [...]

Photos: Joel Daavid

PARASITE DRAG: 100% – Sweet

SWEET The final plot turn is raw and dirty. Notwithstanding the play’s bleak tapestry, Roberts instills plenty of comic relief into his writing. The characters are well sketched and without a trace or urbanity. David Fofi delivers spot-on direction and draws very good performances from his cast, particularly Nowicki, who artfully blends Southern charm and [...]

Everette Wallin and Brynn Thayer. Photo credit: Ed Krieger.

ENGAGEMENT: 50% – Bittersweet – UPDATED

BITTER Granted, Barton’s curiously unedited spate offers flashes of fresh and funny philosophical insight. However, like pyrite in a streambed, obscured by the rushing flow of verbiage, the occasional nugget is not worth the excavation. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times BITTERSWEET Unhappily, she is, so the course of their love does not run smooth. [...]

Photo: Norman P. Dixon. Credit: Michael Lamont

BECOMING NORMAN: 100% – Sweet

BITTERSWEET It’s an evident labor of love, and more power to Dixon for sharing it. Whether this virtual memoir achieves a broader reach is another matter. There are missed opportunities, as when Dixon remembers childhood dress-up without donning the skirt hanging upstage, and the literal recounting of conversations is at times like a self-realization exercise. [...]

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG (LILLIAN PRODUCTION): 71% – Sweet – UPDATED

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG (LILLIAN PRODUCTION): 71% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET In an intimate space re-creating the size of the original off Broadway production, Martin Papazian’s direction doesn’t allow for a moment’s respite in the escalating chaos of jealousy and confusion. The ritualized partitioning of the room and the relationship between the two figures — one a former card shark haunted by death, the other [...]

A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT: 100% – Sweet

A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Then I think of actor-based companies, such as Antaeus, people who do work in TV and film, who are committed to exploring classics; you saw their recent, very strong “King Lear” — not sure you could argue that the director was shunted to the margins. I just saw an adaptation of “Macbeth” by a [...]

Photo by Darrett Sanders

SHAKE: 67% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET The mystery comes in the reverse momentum. Told forward, it’s a soap opera — going back, a parlor game. We know this drama traces back to the fall of the towers, but when we get there, we realize Bill and Peggy’s relationship was already headed to destruction — 9/11 simply changed the route. More [...]

Photo by Miriam Greer

MASTER CLASS: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Ellen Geer has mastered wide-ranging roles during her decades as artistic director and frequent actor at this charming hillside venue. Yet, in her portrayal of Maria Callas (1923–77) during the retirement years of the egocentric Greek opera diva, the term “chameleon” has never seemed a more apt summation of Geer’s talents. Inhabiting this challenging [...]

NOT ABOUT HEROES: 100% – Sweet

NOT ABOUT HEROES: 100% – Sweet

SWEET Both actors achieve a credible resemblance to their originals. Mann possesses the cragginess of Sassoon, and Hardin’s center-parted hair imparts boyish charm and period flavor. In the last third of the play, dealing with Owen’s death under fire just seven days before the armistice was signed, Mann achieves a potent elegiac tone and genuine [...]

Gillian Doyle and John Getz in "The Good Book of Pedantry and Wonder"  (Source: Ed Krieger)

THE GOOD BOOK OF PEDANTRY AND WONDER: 63% – Sweet – UPDATED

BITTER From such fascinating but dramatically unpromising ingredients Pomerance seeks to assemble a play. Given that Murray used the wealth of English literature to assemble his dictionary, one might have imagined a Stoppardesque approach where Murray’s painstaking effort is scrimmed through some well-known literary masterpiece providing a superstructure on which to hang the theatrically inert [...]

Eric Schneider and Kelly Sullivan.  Credit: Craig Schwartz / The Old Globe

ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS: 100% – Bittersweet

BITTERSWEET As an entertainment, “Robin and the 7 Hoods” succeeds only if you agree to accept it on its own harebrained terms. The film had the advantage of Ol’ Blue Eyes, Dino and Sammy, to get viewers over the hump of the screenplay. Here, Cahn and Van Heusen’s music is the secret weapon. That’s some [...]

Tessa Auberjonois and Tory Kittles. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

BONES: 89% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET There’s a double-whammy irony about the power of the past to shape our lives: the more traumatic the event, the less reliable our ability to recall it accurately — and the more remote the possibility of moving past it becomes. Such is the equation of psychological paralysis that playwright Dael Orlandersmith charts with devastating [...]

Photo courtesy of ARK Theatre Company

LADY LANCING, OR, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: 100% – Sweet

BITTERSWEET It’s the rough edges of this production that keep that fun at bay. The play is, after all, a gentle comedy with farcical overtones. Here, the tone and pace turn those gentle qualities into a kind of sedative, under the ultralight touch of co-directors Douglas Leal and Derek Livingston. Notwithstanding some glaring instances of [...]

Photo: Robert Mandan and Maggie Peach. Credit: Ron Sossi.

BEDROOM FARCE: 67% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET Director Ron Bottitta wisely keeps this soufflé in period, abetted by designers Kathi O’Donohue (lighting), Kathryn Poppen (costumes) and Bill Froggatt (sound). His players form a first-rate ensemble, the odd dialect glitch or overstressed beat trivial when set beside such unified light-comic style. The play remains middlebrow boulevard fare, albeit written by a master [...]

Photo by Alysa Brennan

HELLO, DOLLY!: 100% – Sweet

SWEET The reason turns out to be a simple one. Major CLOs rent most of their sets, and there hasn’t been a Dolly set available for rent—at least not until 3D Theatricals decided to create one from scratch. The resulting scenic design, a gorgeous watercolor-toned storybook creation by the eminent John Iacovelli, may well lead [...]

Photo by J. J. Jetel

BECKY’S NEW CAR: 100% – Sweet

SWEET The play’s genesis is worthy of some note: The work was a personal commission by a Seattle arts patron as a gift for his wife. As such, the material occasionally tries a little too hard to please, with a narrative that occasionally emulates the mood of 1930s screwball comedies — a style that is [...]

Photo by Alexis Fancher

CIRCLE OF WILL: 33% – Bitter – UPDATED

BITTER A stumbling attempt at satire, the piece portrays Shakespeare as a lesser literary light and Burbage as a cretinous narcissist, fed up with dramas about death and threatening to walk unless he gets to be a hero in a play with a positive ending. The problem lies not in the lampoon of the theater [...]

PROCREATION: 33% – Bitter – UPDATED

PROCREATION: 33% – Bitter – UPDATED

BITTER My theater companion said afterward that he kept waiting for the large cast to break out into a musical number. I was just hoping that the humor would kick into a higher gear. But whatever the expectation, “Procreation” fails to deliver. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Tanner’s satire of behaviors roasts not so [...]

[title of show] (Celebration Theatre): 92% – Sweet – UPDATED

[title of show] (Celebration Theatre): 92% – Sweet – UPDATED

SWEET Now, mind you, the characters’ sexuality is never a hindrance to the evening, as it is all done in fun and in fairness to everyone. The American Theatre has not been particularly homophobic, or racist, or even sexist, for some decades. And as the show is playful in the extreme, running a tad over [...]