All Entries Tagged With: "la weekly"
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 [...]
NEIGHBORS: A PLAY WITH CARTOONS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The Brooklyn-based playwright, precocious at 26, now works in Berlin on a project about black soldiers stationed in Germany. Every element of his vivacious play is fresh, alive, and communicates. It’s wildly intelligent, unafraid, and wickedly funny. Debra Levine – Arts Meme SWEET Jacobs-Jenkins has written a play that is heartfelt, ambitious, angry, outrageous [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE Review by Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Let’s not mince words. Any man who devotes a show to the subject of his own penis has way too much time on his hands. Puppetry of the Penis would be Exhibit A were this theory ever to be [...]
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 [...]
MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE: 100% – Sweet
SWEET For fans of the one person memoir, MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE is a breezy hour that touches on issues of import to us all- without getting preachy or mired in a self help, tell all, work through my issues trap that many solo performers face. Sacre has given himself the [...]
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 [...]
GROUNDLINGS RIVER ADVENTURE: 33% – Bitter
BITTER What has not changed for the better since this reviewer’s last visit to the Groundlings is a weakness in improv. One understands director Damon Jones and the Groundlings institution provide a training ground for improv, as well as sketch. But on the night reviewed, the improvised pieces often felt forced, too controlled; for example, [...]
THE EXERCISE: 33% – Bitter – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Notwithstanding the excellent acting, the real exercise is more to see if the audience can sit for two hours plus coping with dialog that at first starts out bland and then escalates to predictable. There are some detours that are funny and a couple more that are poignant, but the questions that kept nagging [...]
A WOLF INSIDE THE FENCE: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER One of three plays in the First Look Festival, Joseph Fisher’s dramedy creeps along at a maddeningly slow pace with a plot as thick and tedious as any world history textbook. The knock-you-on-the-side-of-your-head stock characters are of the typical all-American high school trope: the bad girl that smokes out front, a frustrated history teacher, [...]
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. [...]
BOY’S LIFE: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Howard Korder writes insightfully—and hilariously—about the male psyche in his 1988 comedy Boys’ Life, smashingly revived (and smoothy updated to the 21st Century) by Crown City Theatre Company. Impeccably acted and directed, this is a production which ought to disprove once and for all any notion of Los Angeles not being the great theater [...]
“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 [...]
SHAKE: 67% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The mystery comes in the reverse momentum. Told forward, it’s a soap opera — going back, a parlor game. We know this drama traces back to the fall of the towers, but when we get there, we realize Bill and Peggy’s relationship was already headed to destruction — 9/11 simply changed the route. More [...]
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 [...]
MASTER CLASS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Ellen Geer has mastered wide-ranging roles during her decades as artistic director and frequent actor at this charming hillside venue. Yet, in her portrayal of Maria Callas (1923–77) during the retirement years of the egocentric Greek opera diva, the term “chameleon” has never seemed a more apt summation of Geer’s talents. Inhabiting this challenging [...]
NOT ABOUT HEROES: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Both actors achieve a credible resemblance to their originals. Mann possesses the cragginess of Sassoon, and Hardin’s center-parted hair imparts boyish charm and period flavor. In the last third of the play, dealing with Owen’s death under fire just seven days before the armistice was signed, Mann achieves a potent elegiac tone and genuine [...]
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 [...]