All Entries Tagged With: "jonas schwartz"
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 [...]
BEYOND: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Hankering for leggy showgirls, recorded New Age music and a vaguely pretentious storyline? Vegas too hot or expensive? Sashay over to the El Portal’s “Beyond,” a Frenchified revue hoping to become Cirque du Soleil when it grows up. An attraction of modest means, modest pleasures and inflated ambitions, this labor of love from quintuple [...]
CHIPS THE MUSICAL: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The 14 loony production numbers (under Eric Heinly’s musical direction), neatly skewer the original series’ generic, funk-flavored, adult-contemporary score along with its absurdly insipid storylines — talk about shooting fish in a barrel! — and even produce the occasional gem, like Caroline Gross’ hilarious, must-be-seen, aerial-birthing flashback dance. Bill Raden – LA Weekly SWEET [...]
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 [...]
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET This presentation may not be a buzz-builder, in the way that the Nathan Lane-led 1996 Broadway revival was, but as directed by David Lee, it is reliably entertaining and is populated with solid singers who, along with conductor Steve Orich and a 22-player orchestra, put the music’s crackling artistry on full display. Daryl H. [...]
THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES: 70% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET All right, given this impressive pedigree, what’s my beef? Well, beyond the play’s passé style, I have trouble with the workmanlike use of the symbolic roses that inspire the title and even more with scenes that sometimes seem like acting workshop exercises. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Yet traditional dramatic styles needn’t be [...]
CAROUSEL: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Michetti’s story-theater approach surely will be the most talked-about aspect of this production. The stage directions, meant for the production team’s eyes only, are spoken, “Our Town”-like, by the grandfatherly, bushy-eyebrowed character actor M. Emmet Walsh. When not otherwise needed, actors gather with him along the back wall to watch the story unfolding at [...]
FROSTY THE SNOW MANILOW: 75% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Costumes by Sharon McGunigle add color and sparkle to the production, nicely lighted by Christian Epps. Sherry Santillano’s multilevel village set offers opportunities for cast members to appear in open windows above the stage. The heart-stopping acrobatics on the Troubadours’ trampoline are always a showstopper, and Walker and his youthful cast don’t disappoint. Melinda [...]
BABY, IT’S YOU!: 57% Bittersweet
BITTER Serious book problems hamper a strong catalog of early 1960s tunes and the efforts of a talented cast in Baby It’s You!, now at the Pasadena Playhouse. The result is a surprisingly uninvolving biography of Florence Greenberg, the Jewish housewife who discovered and fostered the doo-wop group The Shirelles. Jonas Schwartz – Theatremania BITTER [...]
“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET An ebullient synthesizer of world data, Joseph is not just alert to the fevered geopolitical madness surrounding us, he’s also endlessly inventive in finding bold theatrical metaphors to depict the extent of the depravity. “Bengal Tiger” marks the breakthrough of a major new playwriting talent. Attending the opening gave me a sense of what [...]
“The Fantasticks”: 50% Bitter
BITTERSWEET The show’s fragile amalgam of rueful romance, whimsy, slapstick, and metaphorical fable calls for a delicate balance of moods and styles. Unfortunately, director Jason Alexander’s reinvention of the piece favors ham-fisted burlesque over wistful lyricism, obscuring the bittersweet beauty at the play’s core. There are moments—mostly in the second act—when the cast and production [...]