All Entries Tagged With: "charlotte stoudt"
EAT THE RUNT (Theatre of NOTE): 80% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Written by Avery Crozier with mind-boggling brilliance… This one will twist your brain! One of the most innovative, funny, wildly creative, ingenious, and theatrically challenging staged concepts I’ve ever seen! Pat Taylor – Tolucan Times SWEET As to whether this reviewer will be back for more runt eating, the answer is yes indeed. Stay [...]
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 [...]
CARRY IT ON: 100% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET What becomes legends most? Not necessarily treating them with respect. “Carry It On,” Theatricum Botanicum’s musical survey of American idealists and activists, has a faultless heart, but its showbiz instincts could use a goosing. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times BITTERSWEET Not to say there weren’t any odd moments in the play: Isadora Duncan explaining [...]
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 [...]
![[title of show] (Celebration Theatre): 92% – Sweet – UPDATED](http://bitter-lemons.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/titleofshow-150x150.jpg)
[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 [...]
OPUS: 80% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Levy and his accomplished cast almost manage to sell Hollinger’s unnecessary excursions into overwrought soap, particularly in the final scene. It’s the smaller moments that compel, creating an intimacy that make “Opus” a stylish midsummer date night. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times SWEET The world of classical chamber music easily evokes images of grace [...]
THE JESUS HICKEY: 75% – Sweet
SWEET Yankee, also directing, keeps this Katselas Theatre Company production moving on Jeff McLaughlin’s set, a living room that goes from threadbare to posh as Agnes’ gift brings in the dough. Stylistically, the play — like its Irish accents — wanders a bit, starting out at the kitchen sink and spinning into broader comedy. TV [...]
FOUR PLACES: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The manner in which Drake tells this story — blending humor and stark ugliness, while exploring themes of sibling rivalry, marital infidelity and even euthanasia — is thoroughly engaging and held in sharp balance by director Robin Larsen. The characters are fully fleshed out, both in the writing and the performances, as disturbing for [...]
BEHIND THE GATES: 70% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Played out on Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s set of stone columns and sheer curtains, David Gautreaux’s staging has a minimalist elegance occasionally at odds with the style of the play, which mixes the tropes of a Lifetime movie with journalistic clarity. What ultimately resonates in this Hatikva Productions drama is the fierce hunger of an [...]
LONDON’S SCARS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Hirsch’s ear for the British idiom, especially London slang, is undeniable, and his characters are fascinating — especially the tortured souls of Mary and Habib. However the simmering tension Hirsch strives to build into “explosive” (sorry) moments unfortunately lacks the requisite danger and menace to keep us in anticipation. Director Darin Anthony employs creative [...]
LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE: 90% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Sullivan has the cast occasionally act out bits of dialogue, which adds a sense of theatricality to the reading, and breaking up “Gingy’s Story” adds cohesion to the evening. Even the weakest stories have interesting elements, and performed by this cast, they are engaging and entertaining. Jeff Favre – Backstage SWEET “What I Wore” [...]
TEMPODYSSEY: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Goofily attracted, Springthorpe and Sidell recall Chaplin and Paulette Godard, adrift in post-Modern Times but longing for connection in director Emily Weisberg’s acute and emotional grounded production. Dietz sometimes lets the play get away from him, but even an incomplete ending can’t blunt the exhilarating punch of this wild and engaging experiment. Charlotte Stoudt [...]
MY SISTER IN THIS HOUSE: 100% – Sweet
SWEET “My Sister” is an absorbing, often oppressive study of class and codependency. Or, as an audience member put it as we filed out of the theater, “Too much estrogen under one roof.” Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times SWEET Bray and Zion are lovely and expressive in communicating the sisters’ bond, forged ever more tightly [...]
L.A. NOIR UNSCRIPTED: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Imagine walking on stage facing an audience full of people that you don’t know, taking on the character of another person, turning it into a performance with six other actors that are as equally unprepared without embarrassing yourself should you fail and you have Impro Theatre and Combined Artform presentation of L.A. Noir UnScripted. [...]
NIGHTMARE ALLEY: 27% – Bitter – UPDATED
BITTER Although Jonathan Brielle does a neat job of compressing the action into two hours onstage, he fails to capitalize on the terrible implications of falling from grace into a hell beyond the reaches of spirituality or religion, and neither his lyrics nor music is memorable. Laurence Vittes – Hollywood Reporter BITTER But mystery and [...]
DOCTOR CERBERUS: 80% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Yet there’s always a feeling that the playwright and director are holding back, erring on the safe side of comedy and short-shrifting the horror. One of Aguirre-Sacasa’s earlier efforts, “Mystery Plays,” was a chilling twilight zone where self-aware young people found themselves in uncanny dilemmas. One story featured a girl whose brother killed their [...]
GETTING FRANKIE MARRIED – AND AFTERWARDS: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET In L.A., Foote’s Lone Star State irregulars can seem close to parody, which makes underplaying essential. Some of the supporting cast in Scott Paulin’s solid production push too hard, working against the fine performances by leads Lacy and Demson. But by the second act, the play finds its groove, and James Spencer’s cheerful living [...]
LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING: 91% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Callaghan finds the madness in each of her characters. It’s not apparent but it’s there, as it is in each of us. This gives the play its strength, as each of the characters is strong, too, and the three of them stubbornly fight to defend their turf. August is weak and unlikeable and, as [...]
THE CHARM OF MAKING: 33% – Bitter – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET This Stella Adler Los Angeles Theatre Collective production has its charms, including the genuine sense of connection that director Milton Justice creates among his cast, and some tart dialogue. But the play is an ensemble in search of an engine — everyone sits around the living room half in love with easeful death – [...]
EXTROPIA: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Director Kelleia Sheerin cleverly adjusts to the nightclub venue, offering a rockin’ rock reinvention of the overworked theme. Any familiarity is made forgivable by adding the talents of McQuilken and his cohorts, whimsically futuristic set pieces by Squared Design, and sincere—if uneven—performances. Littlefield and Fulton are charming together as the stunned but delighted discoverers, [...]
OEDIPUS EL REY: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Alfaro spins much of this in a colloquial lexicon that makes it all the more forceful. Some of his passages — Tiresias’ musings on what a father really is, after Oedipus has beaten and reviled him (beautifully played by Rocha) — are memorable and moving. Huen is charismatic, the ensemble is strong and the [...]
CELADINE: 60% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Evered apparently set out to write a modern Restoration comedy, but his play is too pale, genteel, and bloodless to qualify. It’s all pleasant enough, and it’s not without charm, but it’s too loosely plotted, thinly written, and dependent on offstage action to generate theatrical excitement. A bit of swordplay toward the end perks [...]
SOUVENIR: 83% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER Even with its elegant production design, including a NYC skyline that pops up when needed via slide projections, and Nick McCord’s delicate lighting design, Gregg W. Brevvort’s production is a one-trick pony. In her various songs and arias, rather than pursuing the elusive notes, which would create an excruciating tension from a musical game [...]
KATAKI (The Enemy): 100% Sweet
SWEET “Star Trek” buffs will recall veteran TV scribe Wincelberg wrote “Dagger of the Mind,” the episode featuring the first appearance of the Vulcan mind-meld. His humanist message feels a little dated here, but this Prince Livingston Players production deftly explores what genuine communication is. If “Kataki” ultimately comes to feel more like a playwriting [...]
LOYALTIES: 67% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER Pasqualini’s play is not really a thesis drama, but it often sounds like one, treating its characters as mouthpieces. There are, however, some potent scenes. Though we’re clearly intended to sympathize with Michael, he’s too whiny and self-centered to take seriously. Director David Gautreaux has able actors but sometimes allows them to succumb to [...]
BLOOD AND THUNDER: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Anthony’s script is tautly written, his characters are finely drawn, and the actors give solid performances, but the production is marred by an awkward and confusing nonlinear structure. Though the action seems continuous, it’s interspersed with flashbacks and a fantasy sequence, so that it takes far too long to puzzle out the sequence of [...]
ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The gloves come off in John Patrick Shanley’s romantic comedy at the Ruskin Group Theatre. Performed by an outstanding cast, the play follows the delightful mishaps of love and hate as Aldo (John Collela) tries to help his good friend Huey (Chad Wood) woo back his shrewish ex-wife, Janice (Amy Jacobson Ruskin) in a [...]
TENT MEETING: 0% Bittersweet
BITTERSWEET Most of the action goes down in the family’s cramped trailer, courtesy of scenic designers Mark Colson and PJ King, but what begins as a brisk comedy of claustrophobia quickly begins to stall. By the time we reach the play’s climactic final scene, there’s little to invest in. Becky Ann and her little monster [...]
PO BOY TANGO: 33% Bitter
BITTER Toward the end, a fierce argument concerning race finally erupts after an angry Gloria accuses Richie of disrespecting her, but the conflict seems forced. Likewise, although Mama’s narrative includes a single compelling incident, it’s mostly quotidian detail from which a clear portrait of the past fails to emerge. Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly SWEET [...]
“Half of Plenty”: 67% Bittersweet – UPDATED
SWEET These are the Tindall’s, and these are the Zook’s. Confused? You won’t be when you find out the main reason for seeing this comedic gem. Mandan, best known for his role as Chester Tate on “Soap,” gives a commanding performance as the befuddled Jack. The actor is fearless here, from every nuanced look to [...]