All Entries Tagged With: "la times"
STREEP TEASE: 83%- Sweet
SWEET Of course, if you haven’t seen all of the films in question, some of the humor might whiz over your head. However, this brisk, hour-long sampling of Streep’s oeuvre, directed by Ezra Weisz, features a gamely goofy cast, including Drew Droege (“Cry in the Dark”), Ron Morehouse (“Death Becomes Her”), Steve Hasley (“The Bridges [...]
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 [...]
TITUS REDUX: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The minimalist settings are dynamic in their flexibility. Using two tables and a few other bits and pieces, the nearly two-hour narrative, unbroken by intermission and strewed with terrible soliloquies, create the pain, suffering and grief that few of us would dare even to imagine. Laurence Vittes – Hollywood Reporter SWEET The story’s pieces [...]
A WITHER’S TALE: 91% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET A Withers Tale is a nice change of pace for the Troubadour Company but as they are so cosmically gifted at side-splitting silly stuff, let’s hope that their next production is more seriously funny. Lynne Bronstein – Santa Monica Mirror SWEET The somber saga builds to Walker’s showstopping rendition of “Ain’t No Sunshine,” enhanced [...]
CHESS IN CONCERT: 100% – Sweet
SWEET I’ve attended many concert and staged readings of musicals in Los Angeles and most tend to be simple presentations, on book at music stands, with little or no additional production elements. CHESS in Concert at Musical Theatre of Los Angeles has elevated the concert reading convention to new heights, with a lush 9-piece orchestra, [...]
ALL MY SONS (RUSKIN GROUP THEATRE): 100% – Sweet
SWEET Director Edward Edwards does not attempt any revisionist flourishes in the current production of “Sons” at the Ruskin Group, but although his simple staging may seem somewhat tame at intervals, it has, on the whole, an emotional authenticity that honors the play’s timeless themes. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times SWEET Trust me, there [...]
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 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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
PARASITE DRAG: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The final plot turn is raw and dirty. Notwithstanding the play’s bleak tapestry, Roberts instills plenty of comic relief into his writing. The characters are well sketched and without a trace or urbanity. David Fofi delivers spot-on direction and draws very good performances from his cast, particularly Nowicki, who artfully blends Southern charm and [...]
ENGAGEMENT: 50% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTER Granted, Barton’s curiously unedited spate offers flashes of fresh and funny philosophical insight. However, like pyrite in a streambed, obscured by the rushing flow of verbiage, the occasional nugget is not worth the excavation. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times BITTERSWEET Unhappily, she is, so the course of their love does not run smooth. [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
JUST 45 MINUTES FROM BROADWAY (Extended Run): 60% – Sweet
SWEET Start with quite possibly the most gorgeous set ever designed for a 99-seat theater production, add to that an intelligent, witty script which reads like a 21st Century version of Kaufman and Ferber’s The Royal Family, cast it with some of L.A.’s finest stage and screen talent—and the result is Henry Jaglom’s Just 45 [...]
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 [...]
ELEVATOR: 86% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The comically existential set-up is hardly new, but despite a series of sit-com-simple resolutions, Leoni, who also directs, invests the production with ample wit and high-gloss style. The excellent cast includes Alex Rogers, Mikie Beatty, Karlee Rigby and Rachael Page. Erica Katzin shines as a plus-size temp who is trying to figure out her [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
JEWTOPIA: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Amusingly cheesy production values honor the show’s seat-of-the-pants theater origins, and for those seeking a deeper probing of the Jewish experience, the authors cheerfully suggest you look elsewhere. Meaning, shmeaning — this one is strictly for laughs. Philip Brandes – LA Times BITTERSWEET That is the basis of the story and throughout the production, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]