All Entries Tagged With: "charles mcnulty"
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. [...]
“A willing participant in the great chicanery that is LA theater criticism” – David Jette
Chicanery: The act of deceiving. This is the sad state within which David Jette, playwright/director and once-critic at LA Theatre Review has found himself. He has come to the conclusion that Los Angeles Theatre Criticism is an “act of deception”. In a recent post entitled Why I Stopped Writing Theatre Reviews David has – with [...]
Downer Don Still Arm Wrestling with the LA Times
Don Shirley continues to keep the LA Times on its toes in his latest offering What’ll the Times Think of Next?. His main beef here has become a continuous crusade for Don: Where’s the love for the mid-size theatres in Los Angeles? It’s a good question. The Times did a story earlier in the year [...]
Downer Don Continues to Turn the Screws on the Times’ Lack of Local Coverage
Where the McNulty/Morris “dialogue” in the Los Angeles Times was a veritable love-fest, Don Shirley keeps the pressure on the Los Angeles Times’ lack of theatre coverage in its own back yard. Especially of the Shakespearian variety. Check out his wee article over at LA Stage Watch here. This is my favorite snippet: So apparently [...]
McNulty vs. Morris aka “The Snore Fest”
C’mon, guys! This was the best you could do? I almost passed out while reading your “dialogue”. I kept picturing two guys in Tuxedos sipping wine from an Opera Hall veranda blessing us with a little banter between Acts. Snore! Chuck sounded about as out of touch with small theatre as Kim Jong Il is [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Critique of the Week
PROCREATION Review by Charles McNulty – LA Times There’s something undecided about the tone of “Procreation,” the tiresomely outlandish family comedy by Justin Tanner that’s receiving its world premiere at the Odyssey Theatre under the direction of David Schweizer. With its grotesque caricatures and zingy retorts, the play aims for lowest-common-denominator laughs. Yet the cast [...]
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 [...]
THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE: 100% – Sweet
SWEET This kind of theatrical blood sport won’t be for everyone. (Pity the crew assigned to clean up the mess after each performance.) But if a flincher like me found himself tittering with open eyes, maybe you’ll be tickled by McDonagh’s malign mirth as well. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Playwright Martin McDonagh taps [...]
THURGOOD: 100% – Sweet
SWEET At the end, Marshall recites the following lines from a poem by his Lincoln University schoolmate Langston Hughes: “O, let America be America again./The Land that never has been yet — /And yet must be….” Fishburne allows the words to resonate with purpose, clarity and democratic feeling, and his performance is an opportunity for [...]
IN THE HEIGHTS: 88% – Sweet
SWEET This Tony-winning musical makes its L.A. bow in an exhilarating touring edition that pulsates with showstopping song-and-dance numbers while raising one’s spirits with its funny and poignant characters, coping with the challenges of life in the barrio of New York’s Washington Heights. Les Spindle – Backstage BITTER The resolutions to almost all these tangles [...]
SURF REPORT: 0% – Bitter
BITTER I think the insinuation that the ever changing current in everyone’s life is akin to the unpredictability of the ocean is correct and worthy to be explored. However, this play is not the venue worth exploring it in. Or in surfer terms, Surf Report wishes it was an epic but instead is an example [...]
KING LEAR (ANTAEUS PRODUCTION): 100% – Sweet
SWEET The Matthews team, featuring Morlan Higgins’ stalwart Kent, Kirsten Potter’s villainous Goneril, Francia DiMase’s vindictive Regan and Drew Doyle’s sly Oswald, ultimately had a larger intellectual impact on me — the play administering a lesson on the dangers of dividing language from truth. The Groener crew, with Allegra Fulton’s sinister Goneril and Jen Dede’s [...]
SOUTH PACIFIC: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET But this “South Pacific” is to be treasured above all for Cusack, whose interpretation of her character’s embarrassment of Rodgers & Hammerstein riches is so stunningly suffused with heart that it was as if I were hearing the songs for the first time. Nellie vainly tries to “wash that man right outta” her hair, [...]
PALOMINO: 89% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET As it happens, Kieren tries to get Edward, who has a connection to Vallie, interested in publishing his tell-all diaries. This coincidence enables Cale to take his theme of the bartering of love in a more generous direction. The outcome is far from inevitable, but Cale’s initial conceit sparks enough fascination to sustain our [...]
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING: 86% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET The situation is winning, but if it weren’t for such standout numbers as “A Secretary Is Not a Toy,” “I Believe in You” and “Brotherhood of Man,” the plot — a succession of sketches, really — would seem interminable. Music director Darryl Archibald and his soaring orchestra are forever rescuing the work from its [...]
Colin around the Block – the Awards debate
John: One of the fantastic Bitter Lemons editors, who I’m honored to have here, is substituting for Jesse today. This episode is “Colin around the Block”… Colin: “Colin around the Block”… Very nice! John: Thank you! (laughs) I thought that was good. Colin, welcome to the blog. Colin: Thank you very much. Why exactly am [...]
BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO (TAPER REVIVAL): 100% – Sweet
SWEET Derek McLane’s Middle Eastern sets are as spare as they are atmospherically rich. The scenic design may have worked better on a more compact stage, but the magical sense that anything can occur has been vitally left intact. David Lander’s pockets of lighting certainly enhance this quality, as do David Zinn’s simple yet transformative [...]
LA Times Head Theatre Critic Charles McNulty on the Pulitzer Award for Drama: The Board “Blew it”
Wow. All right. Now we got some action goin’ on. Charles McNulty, Head LA Times Theatre Critic, and as I now know, chair of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize jury for Drama, is not happy about, one, having his jury’s advice ignored, and two, giving the award to Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s musical Next to [...]
THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE: 88% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Director Mark Brokaw, an experienced hand with adventurous American playwrights (he’s had an especially fruitful history with Paula Vogel and Craig Lucas), stages the whimsy in an exaggerated manner that doesn’t diminish the work’s underlying streak of tragicomic tenderness. If the humor at times seems strained, that’s probably because Cho is better at imagining [...]
THE WAKE: 69% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET If “The Wake” succeeds more as a character study than as an assessment of the historical zeitgeist, it’s probably because Ellen is too much of an individual to bear the metaphorical burden placed on her. Those blind spots she’s begun to recognize don’t belong to her exclusively. But her journey into understanding the heartbreak [...]
McNulty Speaks
And it’s one of his better offerings since he’s been the LA Times head critic, in my book. The article is called Southern California’s big theatres need fresh, dramatic thinking. Oh yes they do. With the demise of Pasadena Playhouse as a takeoff point and the recent coming’s and going’s of the “big house” Artistic [...]
AWAKE AND SING!: 92% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Long before feminism made it a catchphrase, “Awake and Sing!” revealed just how political the personal can be. And though its language often sounds dated, the play’s discordant notes continue to speak to the turbulent longing in our national soul. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Director Andrew J. Traister captures the play’s potent [...]
THROUGH THE NIGHT: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Beaty’s language is realistic and lyrical. The situations he creates are true-to-life and dreamlike. The story is spiritual and earthy. But there is nothing ambiguous in the aftereffects of this enthralling 80 minutes of storytelling. May “Through the Night” continue to reverberate through the years. Dany Margolies – Backstage BITTERSWEET Although crisply directed by [...]
IN A GARDEN: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET What ultimately pulls the play together is a fascination with the compromises that bedevil the artistic process every bit as much as they stymie diplomatic progress. In this sense, architecture mirrors politics — both adapting dreams into flawed but concrete realities. “In a Garden” possesses the subdued intelligence and unflashy dramatics that distinguish Korder’s [...]
DREAMGIRLS: 89% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET The all-out attack of Angela’s performance was of a piece with the “American Idol”-ization of this revival, directed by Robert Longbottom with nonstop generic glitz. This is a production that sets out to pummel its audience into smiling submission. The unrelenting dazzle is in fact so exhausting that the producers might want to consider [...]
FORGIVENESS: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The human heart’s capacity to get past the atrocious sins of others in order to grant forgiveness is bracingly dramatized in stage and TV scribe David Schulner’s world premiere, packing more character tension into a mere 75 minutes than many another work twice its length. Helmer Matt Shakman unerringly steers a family ensemble — [...]
FENCES: 100% Sweet
SWEET Robinson is riveting as the conflicted man whose fanciful storytelling and outward affection for Rose is in sharp contrast to the way he handles his self-professed responsibilities and the harsh treatment he metes out when his authority is challenged. Jennings’ portrayal is also authentic and moving. Seret Scott’s directorial choices are finely tuned, allowing [...]