All Entries Tagged With: "deborah klugman"
KARMA, THE MUSICAL: 100% – Sweet
SWEET And the production gains traction from Liz Heathcoat’s lively choreography, executed by an enthusiastic ensemble, and from videographer Scott Hunter’s background montage of cultural icons. That said, the show has multiple rough edges, including an uneven standard of performance and vocals that need improving. Director Michael Eiden does a respectable job of maneuvering a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
FABRIC: 100% – Sweet
SWEET A strong ensemble effort, with some stellar performances in the way of multiple roles. Feodor Chin’s military clad Thai politician with distinct and despicable mannerisms and a depth of emotion from Jolene Sarah Kwang-Ai Kim (Jaidee), Jully Lee(Lampha) and Jennifer Chang (Rotchana). Within Mr. Ong’s story are moral issues of how we treat people [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN: 100% – Sweet
SWEET A moral dilemma bubbles at the play’s core: Can a person do good in the world — assisting others clearly in need — while also safeguarding one’s personal comfort? That question loomed in collective consciousness when the play was written between 1939 and 1941, and hovers there still. If that seems strong stuff, fear [...]
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 [...]
GRACE & GLORIE: 100% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTTERSWEET Unfortunately for this play, Grace is paired with Gloria—who seems to have been created with less forethought by Ziegler and who is portrayed confusingly by Melinda Page Hamilton. Deep down, what kind of person is Gloria, whom Grace calls “Glorie”? Hamilton and director Cameron Watson seem to have found no gist of the character, [...]
MADAGASCAR: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Playwright JT Rogers begins this piece with a descriptive passage regarding the results of someone vanishing from the life they have been leading until then. What follows is an amazing treatise about the effects of said disappearance on those closest to the missing subject. Melodically constructed, it alternates between a dryly etched wit and [...]
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 [...]
THE KING OF THE DESERT (El Rey del Desierto): 100% – Sweet
SWEET How he fought off all these demons and, at long last, became whole, became himself, is played out vividly and powerfully by Rivera, whose solo performance is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Willard Manus - TotalTheatre.com SWEET Rivera’s performance is astounding. He is electric, passionate and luminous in portraying every character and in [...]
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 [...]
ACTING: THE FIRST SIX LESSONS: 100% Sweet
SWEET The production is dedicated to Betty Garrett, a founding member of Theatre West, whom I was fortunate to sit beside and hear stories of Beau’s early days with the company. Initially, Beau was rejected for membership because he was so young! This, his first effort on the main stage of Theatre West ably directed [...]
WIT: 100% Sweet
SWEET Edson’s commentary on American medical practice, however salient, merely lays the groundwork for the play’s most compelling and universal theme: the human struggle not only with mortality’s looming oblivion but with the unfamiliar and sometimes humiliating infirmity that precedes it. That Bearing’s lifelong subject of scholarly study – the poet Donne — was himself [...]
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 [...]
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 — [...]
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 [...]
SIDHE: 83% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Full of dark turns, Noble’s story is so packed with tension and conflict that at times it’s hard to believe only four characters are taking part. Not every twist is credible, even given the play’s supernatural standards. And sometimes the heavy Irish brogue makes essential details difficult to grasp. These qualifications notwithstanding, the production [...]
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 [...]
THE IMAGINARY INVALID: 100% Sweet
SWEET Davis’ adaptation retains the French character and some of the original’s vocabulary as it streamlines the tale. The production is a cheerful diversion and accomplishes with flair and good humor its stated goal of bringing classics to a general audience—including school-age children. Melinda Schupmann – Backstage SWEET Under Mary Chalon’s direction, the production evolves [...]
PROOF: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Auburn’s powerful play hinges on the issues of trust and faith. As the playwright Bertolt Brecht observed, “the inflexible rule [is] that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Despite the fine performances of the cast — tautly directed by Bob Morrisey on set designer Lacey Anzelc’s convincing back porch — Sherer [...]
Critique of the Week
A VERY MERRY HAPPY KOSHER CHRISTMAS by Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Set in 1978, playwright Mark Troy’s musty comedy employs a plethora of zany characters to compensate for its stale gags and banal humor. Two slow-witted thieves — Tony (Jeremy Luke) and Carlo (Joey Russo) — stage a robbery at the New York Public [...]
A VERY MERRY HAPPY KOSHER CHRISTMAS: 33% Bitter
BITTER Playwright Mark Troy’s efforts to offend every ethnicity, religion, institution, and tradition imaginable bring to mind vintage Mel Brooks. Though there are inspired moments in the world premiere staging of this frantic farce, the end result is less than the sum of its scattered parts. Despite director Ronnie Marmo’s energetic staging and the spirited [...]
BLACK LEATHER: 67% Sweet
BITTER But when your lead character is on stage for every scene, then you’d better cast an actor of some strength and ability to take risks. Sargent has no business putting himself into the lead as he lacks the skills needed to explore the emotional and intellectual contradictions inherent in his subject. He simply was [...]
LA RONDE DE LUNCH: 100% Sweet
SWEET No small part of the fun is generated by the waitstaff: a quintet of servers, all named Bruce, who comment, Greek-chorus-like, on the goings-on, as well as interacting with the customers and performing a stylistically different musical parody between each scene. Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly SWEET Peter Lefcourt skewers Hollywood deal-making—brilliantly—in La Ronde [...]
NIBBLER: 0% Bitter
BITTER Although the idea is interesting, the script leaves it unsatisfyingly underdeveloped. The dialogue seems awfully and needlessly contrived, the direction is clumsy and the acting, with one notable exception, does little to make one forget one is just watching a performance of 20-somethings pretending to be teenagers. Joel Elkins – LA Theatre Review BITTER [...]
“The Columbine Project”: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Transcending melodrama, the play delivers a nuanced account of the whole horrific event. Portraying the banality of evil is not easy, and Ahr does a scrupulous job imparting layers to the menacing Harris. Mortelliti communicates Klebold’s precarious volatility, while Meyers, sweet without being saccharine, exudes a lovely presence. Other strong performances include that of [...]