All Entries Tagged With: "lynne bronstein"
A WITHER’S TALE: 92% – 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 [...]
BACKSTREET: 60% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER This musical—with a book by Evelyn Rudie, Matthew Wrather, and director Chris DeCarlo—has an engaging premise but was much more effective when originally produced at the Santa Monica Playhouse in 1998. During the first act of the current revival, the music so overpowers the singers that their voices are virtually inaudible, while most of [...]
SISTER MARY IGNATIUS EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU/ THE ACTOR’S NIGHTMARE: 100% – Sweet
BITTERSWEET The play, however, challenges a very old system of doing things: Catholicism. Durang does away with God by interrogating a horrible representative of the religion, the Sister, with all the major faith-based questions. A lot of people, perhaps Durang, are introduced to God and turn away from God because of a particular religion. And [...]
URINETOWN, THE MUSICAL: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET With a well-performed good-versus-evil story between Bobby Strong (David Laffey), Caldwell B. Cladwell (Michael Heimos) and a solid supporting cast, “Urinetown” will definitely leave its musical savvy audiences tickled with laughter and happiness. Parimal M. Rohit – Campus Circle SWEET Whether the title Urinetown amuses you or disturbs you, it should at least intrigue [...]
LOVE IN BLOOM: 100% Sweet
SWEET It was as if we were watching Shakespeare set to music with its Faerie King Orion (Chris DeCarlo) and Faerie Queen Talia (Evelyn Rudie) at the helm of Love in Bloom at the Santa Monica Playhouse. Written by these two brilliant and talented Co-Executive Directors of the Playhouse, they have, once again, created a [...]
THE COLLECTOR: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET After you’ve watched the subtle, nuanced performance of Dane Zinter as Fredrick, a pathetically lonely, obsessed madman in “The Collector,” you may be excused for concluding that the actor himself is more than a little deranged. His defensive smirk, his furrowed brow, his awkward gestures with his hands are so spot-on that you simply [...]
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 [...]
“Pay Attention”: 80% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER Performance is an effective tool for healing, and while this show is honest and includes the witty self-deprication that is often the engine of this kind of work, South’s muddy performance is hard to parse. At 130 minutes with no intermission it is an ordeal, and I suspect that there are times when South [...]