All Entries Tagged With: "philip brandes"
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
THE WINTER’S TALE: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Rather than softening the play’s jarring transition from tragedy to comedy, Kubzansky punches the contrast. The horrific mauling of Foyer’s Antigonus by a towering bear puppet is immediately followed by a brilliant bit of clowning by the shepherd (Andrew Ross Wynn), who adopts and raises Leontes’ abandoned daughter Perdita (winsome Mary Kate Wiles). As [...]
ST. NICHOLAS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Call it vampire light, void of Stoker but with a touch of Anne Rice. McPherson’s tinkering with the vampire myth is a clever literary sleight of hand, but the ease of his narrative and its animated density, the shades of humor and poignancy, and McGee’s textured performance make for a terrific outing. Lovell Estelle [...]
1951-2006: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The nicely paced love story and history lesson dovetail in Freed’s sharp dialogue, though his staging overindulges cleverness. As the pair trade quotes from Shakespeare, Beckett and pop culture, they often seem to be performing for each other rather than conversing. There’s more poignant, natural chemistry in Meg’s occasional scenes with her other lover [...]
Can I get a Translator?
First person to decipher this last paragraph from Philip Brandes’ review of Tom Jacobson’s “The Twentieth Century Way” in the LA Times gets a toaster. Or at least a, uh, facsimile thereof. As the actors try to assert an increasingly tenuous separation between the practice of their craft and any responsibility for the tragic consequences [...]
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAY: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Though a bit long and unfocused at the end, The Twentieth Century Way is fascinating, insightful, and wonderfully free from cheap posturing. Jacobson’s sure-footed romp through the idiocies of public morals crusades and homophobic bigotry is free from the tiresome self-pitying anger that infests so much else in current gay-themed material. There is enormous [...]
THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE, THE MUSICAL: 88% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Musical director Gregory Nabours works expertly with the strong cast, as he does with his skilled musicians, to create a production of immense scale in this tiny venue. Scenic designer Kurt Boetcher offers just enough set to suggest the slum conditions but stays out of the way of the actorsm and it’s all nicely [...]
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD: 88% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Elliot’s pacing is just right, gentle enough to catch the emotion and the beauty of the language yet brisk and smart enough to serve the comedy. Among the lovely performances are Jill Hill’s Widow Quinn (who shares the dainty, word-wise qualities of Mance’s Countess in Figaro); the eccentric and idiosyncratic William Dennis Hunt’s Philly [...]
SURVIVAL EXERCISE: 75% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Nevertheless, director Duane Daniels and his very sharp cast employ exemplary stagecraft to work minor miracles with problematic material, whether machine-gunning their way through corporate-speak banalities (accompanied with nonsensical chalkboard diagrams), or delivering amusingly quirky line readings that enliven abstract characters and dialogue. A particularly inspired staging moment brings visual coherence to an otherwise [...]
RICHARD AND FELIX: TWILIGHT IN VENICE: 33% Bitter
BITTER The crux is a long, long conversation between the musicians mostly about the past, recalling names of characters and compositions that will doubtless intrigue devotees, and leave the rest out in the cold. Shnauber may or may not be blaming Wagner for Hitler’s ascent. Hitler praised and borrowed from many artists and philosophers. Does [...]
OLD GLORY: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Director Carri Sullens elicits performances that flow with cross-currents of hardship and fury, yet with a delicacy that’s almost amiable. Ormeny and Gardner excel with these gifts. And the latent violence simmering between the soldiers – one a devotee of graphic novels, the other of real novels – speaks head-on to why the United [...]
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: 92% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET A Noise Within’s “Much Ado About Nothing” is nothing but well done and well-deserving of praise. See it before it closes on 21 May 2010. The production is family-friendly and would make a good introduction to Shakespeare or theater for older children. Jana J. Monji – LA Examiner SWEET With regard to Much Ado [...]
MEN OF TORTUGA: 60% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER The loss of its host company with the closing of the Pasadena Playhouse threatened the show’s very opening, let alone Furious’ future, and seems to have cast a listless gloom over the production. Whatever the reason, when what’s billed as a “comedic thriller” offers few laughs and even less suspense, there’s a lot more [...]
GEOGRAPHY OF A HORSE DREAMER: 75% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Shepard’s surreal fable is a good fit for the Moth Theatre’s focus on Jungian psychology and dream channeling. Aside from Hoffman’s menacing Doctor, however, the young ensemble lacks the seasoning needed for finely tuned tension building. But director Jamie Wollrab’s staging gets stronger as events become increasingly weirder, and his feel for the darkly [...]
STAGE DOOR: 67% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET So what’s missing here? Not all the actors are up to the challenges of this production’s style, nor any acting style. Too bad this sinks our complete enjoyment here. But credit Open Fist Theatre Company with giving so many actors a chance to ply their skills onstage—an opportunity the devoted women of the Footlights [...]
A SONG AT TWILIGHT: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET In this age of Facebook, Twitter, and texting, where the English language has been reduced to grunts and groans and fractured grammar, Noel Coward has come to the rescue, at least for an extremely delicious few hours, in the form of the West Coast premiere of A Song at Twilight at the Odyssey Theatre [...]
ABSINTHE, OPIUM & MAGIC (Actor’s Gang Revival): 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Opium smuggling, gangsters, prostitution and corruption make Shanghai circa 1920 an irresistible vacation spot for the Grand Guignolers, L.A.’s faux ’20s Parisian troupe inspired by the notorious French theater. Creator/director Debbie McMahon’s highly entertaining immersive staging, “Absinthe, Opium and Magic: 1920s Shanghai,” transforms the Art/Works environs into a fanciful shipboard voyage to the era’s [...]
THE BROWNING VERSION: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The actors give amazing performances, under Marilyn Fox’s elegant direction, including the superb Orson Bean as the unctuous headmaster and Michael Redfield and Caitlin Beitel as the newlywed Gilberts, who are itching to take over the Crocker-Harris’ position and flat. Good luck to them. Madeleine Shaner – Backstage SWEET From this sedate tapestry of [...]
“Big, the Musical”: 100% Sweet
SWEET Director Richard Israel and his fine cast have a first-rate revival of this 1996 Broadway musical, based on the film that made Tom Hanks a star. And if you’ve seen the movie and think you know the story, think again: You can expect a few witty surprises here. Lovell Estell III – LA Weekly [...]
“The Crucible”: 67% Sweet
SWEET But as this illuminating production makes clear, the play remains eloquent and relevant, and director Marianne Savell gives it a sharp new focus. In addition to examining the plight of John and Elizabeth Proctor (Bruce Ladd and Nan McNamara), both accused of witchcraft, she highlights two of the accusers: The paranoid, egocentric, hysterical Reverend [...]
“Play with a Knife”: 25% Bitter
BITTER Hyde’s likable Michael offers the best rebuttal to Evan’s amoral relativism, but more by way of demonstrated decency than argument. For all the earnestness and dramatic sharp edges, “Play With a Knife’s” derivative and rather predictable philosophical inquiries play more like a 2 a.m. dorm room debate. Philip Brandes – LA Times BITTER Therefore, [...]