All Entries Tagged With: "david c. nichols"
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
PRAYING SMALL: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Relayed in nonlinear flashback, the play rivets our attention through the depth and breadth of the central character, an intrepid, introspective Everyman with a strong sense of irony, who references Thomas Wolfe and repeatedly mulls why it is that one can’t go home again. There’s humor here, too. The likable Morts delivers a dynamic [...]
AMADEUS: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET In that quest, Swander often speaks of passion, yet it rarely feels as if his character possesses the passion his words suggest. Part of this may have been director August Viverito’s desire for a slow build, even though it does eventually pay off in Act 2. Stafford’s Mozart, on the contrary, is id perfectly [...]
THE SOCIALIZATION OF RUTHIE SHAPIRO: 50% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
SWEET This is an endearingly wonderful and “emotion stirring” play. It will take you back to your own “growing pains” at age 12, time and time again. We enjoy every moment of Ruthie’s search for acceptance! Beautifully written with a feast of “food for thought” by Barbara Nell Beery, it is billed as a memory [...]
BOOM: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Apocalypse comes with a personals-ad twist in “boom.” Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s dark satire about sex, fish and the end of the world gets a valiant Los Angeles premiere by Furious Theatre Company. David C. Nichols – LA Times SWEET The mood and situation quickly darken, as the nonsexual relationship deteriorates, but there is always [...]
SUPERNOVA: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Director Lindsay Allbaugh’s fantastic ensemble sells us on each individual scene, even if the play as a whole doesn’t add up to more then some well-acted catharses. Kelly Elizabeth and Joe Wiebe join in for the furious climax as two fellow high schoolers who bear witness to what even the adamantly optimistic Mabel admits [...]
CRIMES OF THE HEART (SCR Production): 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Sams, Lyon and Rylie make a beautifully balanced, wholly convincing threesome, each finding an incisive fresh take on their character. Auberjoinois avoids the caricature inherent in Chick, almost reasonable in her understated bile. If Baesel reads too young as Doc, he offers an able mix of joviality and regret, and Mahaffy imbues Barnette with [...]
DEMENTIA: 100% – Sweet
SWEET José Luis Valenzuela’s production for the Latino Theater Company feels like a defiant affirmation, despite the imminence of death. On another level, it works as a metaphor for the Latino Theater’s presence itself at LATC. Despite the crippling blows of the economy that have prevented the company from fully activating the facility as intended, [...]
THE GIFT HORSE: 67% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Their efforts often counter some nascent showcase aspects and an overloaded narrative that, for all its cagey theatricality and character focus, doesn’t always match up with its ambitions. Even so, “The Gift Horse” has both value and validity. Diamond devotees should certainly check it out. David C. Nichols – LA Times BITTERSWEET It’s a [...]
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO: 50% – Bitter – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET This new translation, by director Frederique Michel and Charles Duncombe, is serviceable and fairly traditional. It is also a tad overlong, and a bit of discreet editing would not be amiss. Michel has pitched her production as broad farce, with sometimes-obtrusive stylized movement, which can be distracting. Playing artificial comedy artificially seems like overkill. [...]
SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE: 80% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER You might wanna see something else. Cynthia Citron – LA Examiner SWEET Exciting, imaginative, gripping, and musically adventurous—See What I Wanna See is all this and more. With Henning at the helm and a cast and band more than up to the task, this is innovative, modern musical theater at its best. Steven Stanley [...]
NEIGHBORHOOD III: REQUISITION OF DOOM: 100% Bittersweet
BITTERSWEET What’s lacking is a consistent match-up between the Shirley Jackson-flavored overview and the Wes Craven-tinged plot. The visual restraint puts the exchanges up front, but it doesn’t exactly chill our blood, and the narrative’s final swerves into graphic novel territory are almost another property. Still, “Neighborhood III” has cult favorite written all over it, [...]
HARAM IRAN: 40% Bitter – UPDATED
BITTER Human rights issues in Iran deserve a great play to be written about them, and Michael Matthews deserves a great play to direct, one at the level of his talents. The cast too deserve better than Haram Iran. So does the Celebration Theatre. Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA BITTERSWEET It’s an apt Celebration property and [...]
DUAL CITIZENS: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET The story of Broken Nails is less stunning than Ms. Skubik’s performance. It is the usual story of an aging star using power and manipulation to keep her flame alive while alternately abusing and relying on her faithful help, who has anger and resentment of her own. There is a twist in the end [...]
COUSIN BETTE: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET At least one key performance is over laden with shtick, and some fine-tuning of others is in order. Still, Doukas is terrific, delivering a consummate performance that arouses, for her long-suffering deceitful character , pity, disdain — and admiration. Tony Amendola’s licentious merchant is also top-notch. And alongside the story’s bathos is its salient [...]
KINGS OF THE KILBURN HIGH ROAD: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The setting, the characters, the behavior — a pub, heavy drinking, nastiness — are all quite stereotypical Irish in Jimmy Murphy’s “The Kings of the Kilburn High Road,” receiving its U.S. premiere at Burbank’s Theater Banshee. As the booze flows at a wake in this north London pub so, too, do the confessions and [...]
ORPHEUS DESCENDING: 86% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Frantic Redhead Productions’ presentation of Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending is a prime example of Los Angeles theater at its finest. A big-name trio of leading players with serious theatrical credits and training, a gifted director with an inspired concept, and one of the finest design teams in town have combined forces to make one [...]
11, SEPTEMBER: 0% Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET The play rides the line between exploring and exploiting coincidences, yet it gets bogged down in its own psychological realism. This raises questions that can’t be answered by chaos theory, or any other — such as why the characters sometimes blurt out incendiary details of their past, given how neither is particularly trustworthy, or [...]
F*CKING MEN: 86% Sweet
SWEET With a title like F*cking Men and the promise of full frontal male nudity, the latest Celebration Theatre production will have no problem attracting audiences. Joe DiPietro’s modern gay twist on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1900 classic La Ronde has been filling seats in London for the past two years and counting. What WeHo theatergoers will [...]
THAT PERFECT MOMENT: 73% Sweet
SWEET Rave reviews prompted producer Racquel Lehrman to bring back That Perfect Moment following its October-November run at the NoHo Arts Center. The return engagement (at Burbank’s Little Victory Theatre) is welcome news for L.A. theatergoers in search of laughter, nostalgia, and even a tear or two. Directed to perfection by Rick Sparks and featuring [...]
THE TROJAN WOMEN: 100% Sweet
SWEET The approach risks overload, some things unnecessarily explained, and director Michel occasionally struggles to keep the tone consistent. Still, if the aim is to yank “Trojan Women” into our consciousness, this company benchmark, though overstuffed, is a triumph. David C. Nichols – LA Times SWEET With all its ambiguities and the sometimes wobbly tones, [...]
“Breaking and Entering”: 67% Sweet
BITTERSWEET It’s an admirably complex script, the outcome in doubt up to its denouement. Yet, though director Mark L. Taylor gets considerable mileage from Jeremy Pivnick’s lighting and Bill Froggatt’s sound, the tension comes and goes. Shaw and Bishop do competent work, although his Art Carney aspect isn’t exactly menacing and her nervous emotionalism lacks [...]
“Fellowship!”: 100% Sweet
SWEET From Thursday’s sellout crowd’s enthusiastic response to every song, joke, and reference, I’d guess that most of them were diehard Lord Of The Ring fans, and doubtless the more you know, the more you’ll “get” the in-jokes. But even non-LOTR aficionados like myself can have an equally fine time with Frodo and his friends. [...]
“The Designated Mourner”: 100% Sweet
SWEET Director Matthew McCray nimbly navigates a potentially unwieldy text — essentially three interwoven monologues — ably realizing Shawn’s famously acerbic wit and savage ironies. Kass’ Jack is a marvel of modulation as the affably sympathetic everyman of Act 1 metamorphoses into the venomous, solipsistic scoundrel of Act 2. Equally fine is Sarah Boughton’s sweetly [...]