All Entries Tagged With: "robert machray"
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
![[title of show] (Celebration Theatre): 92% – Sweet – UPDATED](http://bitter-lemons.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/titleofshow-150x150.jpg)
[title of show] (Celebration Theatre): 92% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Now, mind you, the characters’ sexuality is never a hindrance to the evening, as it is all done in fun and in fairness to everyone. The American Theatre has not been particularly homophobic, or racist, or even sexist, for some decades. And as the show is playful in the extreme, running a tad over [...]
1776: 100% – Sweet
SWEET And if the tone seems a bit self-congratulatory or historically reductive for some tastes, credit director Nick DeGruccio’s impeccable production and a flawless ensemble for so ably selling Stone’s long-winded book and Edward’s mostly undistinguished songs. Bill Raden – LA Weekly SWEET Opening less than a week past Independence Day, this powerful revisit to [...]
BLACK COFFEE: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot give Theatre 40 one of its best productions with the Queen Of Crime’s classic mystery thriller Black Coffee, one which delivers at least as many laughs as thrills, the entire cast delivering sparkling performances with just the right amount of tongue in cheek. Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA SWEET Agatha [...]
AMADEUS: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET In that quest, Swander often speaks of passion, yet it rarely feels as if his character possesses the passion his words suggest. Part of this may have been director August Viverito’s desire for a slow build, even though it does eventually pay off in Act 2. Stafford’s Mozart, on the contrary, is id perfectly [...]
THE SOCIALIZATION OF RUTHIE SHAPIRO: 50% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
SWEET This is an endearingly wonderful and “emotion stirring” play. It will take you back to your own “growing pains” at age 12, time and time again. We enjoy every moment of Ruthie’s search for acceptance! Beautifully written with a feast of “food for thought” by Barbara Nell Beery, it is billed as a memory [...]
SOUTH PACIFIC: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET But this “South Pacific” is to be treasured above all for Cusack, whose interpretation of her character’s embarrassment of Rodgers & Hammerstein riches is so stunningly suffused with heart that it was as if I were hearing the songs for the first time. Nellie vainly tries to “wash that man right outta” her hair, [...]
FOUR PLACES: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The manner in which Drake tells this story — blending humor and stark ugliness, while exploring themes of sibling rivalry, marital infidelity and even euthanasia — is thoroughly engaging and held in sharp balance by director Robin Larsen. The characters are fully fleshed out, both in the writing and the performances, as disturbing for [...]
IT AIN’T ALL CONFETTI!: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Many of Taylor’s revelations are fairly surface level, dealing with his interactions with the stars he’s come across – and he often seems so in control over what he’s saying, you could starve to death waiting for any “behind the mask” information about the performer. Yet, the show is ultimately a compelling presentation of [...]
WHITE PEOPLE: 100% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Director Douglas Clayton and his cast elevate Rogers’ words, be they damning or mundane, to perfection. The actors handle Rogers’ format, a 95-minute one-act series of monologues, so expertly that the resulting stories seem to be uttered out loud for the very first time. Doerr’s delivery is astonishing in this regard, as his character [...]
U.S.S. PINAFORE: 100% – Sweet
BITTERSWEET The transference of Gilbert and Sullivan’s social satire into a few quips on our pop culture feels like a reduction of scale, but nothing compared to the reduction served up in the tinny soundtrack. Delivering the goods with confident glee, this excellent ensemble deserves better. In fact, this would be a sinking ship were [...]
MADAGASCAR: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Playwright JT Rogers begins this piece with a descriptive passage regarding the results of someone vanishing from the life they have been leading until then. What follows is an amazing treatise about the effects of said disappearance on those closest to the missing subject. Melodically constructed, it alternates between a dryly etched wit and [...]
LONDON’S SCARS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Hirsch’s ear for the British idiom, especially London slang, is undeniable, and his characters are fascinating — especially the tortured souls of Mary and Habib. However the simmering tension Hirsch strives to build into “explosive” (sorry) moments unfortunately lacks the requisite danger and menace to keep us in anticipation. Director Darin Anthony employs creative [...]
CANNED HAM: 67% – Sweet
SWEET The title of Tom Judson’s autobiographical solo show might lead one to anticipate self-indulgent shenanigans, but in Judson’s refreshingly unpretentious string of anecdotes, this New York–born performer proves to be an ingratiating and captivating storyteller. Actor-singer-musician-songwriter Judson has experienced unorthodox career paths, and he wastes no time in sharing his remarkable adventures with us—some [...]
PALOMINO: 89% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET As it happens, Kieren tries to get Edward, who has a connection to Vallie, interested in publishing his tell-all diaries. This coincidence enables Cale to take his theme of the bartering of love in a more generous direction. The outcome is far from inevitable, but Cale’s initial conceit sparks enough fascination to sustain our [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
JAWBONE OF AN ASS: 50% – Bitter
BITTER The production’s most amusing elements are Steve Johnson’s set (the wallpaper in Paige Marie’s lost-in-time kitchen deserves a final bow of its own) and Tim Labor’s sound design. Pretty much everything else is excruciating, even though many of these otherwise talented people have been involved with L.A.’s adventuresome Circle X company, and Circle X [...]
ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S THE 39 STEPS: 85% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Tony Award nominated Director Maria Aitken has successfully transplanted the brilliance of the Broadway production to the incarnation currently running at the Ahmanson Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The production utilizes a sparse collection of set pieces and then challenges the imagination to engage in the world created by the quartet’s tireless Pantomime, a [...]
BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO (TAPER REVIVAL): 100% – Sweet
SWEET Derek McLane’s Middle Eastern sets are as spare as they are atmospherically rich. The scenic design may have worked better on a more compact stage, but the magical sense that anything can occur has been vitally left intact. David Lander’s pockets of lighting certainly enhance this quality, as do David Zinn’s simple yet transformative [...]
BUDDY: THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY: 100% – Sweet
SWEET There is no one too old to enjoy Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, and no one too young to be enraptured with the timeless music of this much lamented legend. Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story is marvelous entertainment for anyone who’s got the music in them, and that’s just about everybody, right? [...]
DOCTOR CERBERUS: 80% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Yet there’s always a feeling that the playwright and director are holding back, erring on the safe side of comedy and short-shrifting the horror. One of Aguirre-Sacasa’s earlier efforts, “Mystery Plays,” was a chilling twilight zone where self-aware young people found themselves in uncanny dilemmas. One story featured a girl whose brother killed their [...]
SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE: 80% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER You might wanna see something else. Cynthia Citron – LA Examiner SWEET Exciting, imaginative, gripping, and musically adventurous—See What I Wanna See is all this and more. With Henning at the helm and a cast and band more than up to the task, this is innovative, modern musical theater at its best. Steven Stanley [...]
JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS: 86% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living Paris” is an action-packed, two-hour musical featuring world-class songs from celebrated singer and songwriter Jacques Brel. It allows audiences to fully experience the incredible range of emotion onstage while sitting in their seats. Liana Aghajanian – Glendale News Press SWEET With master director Jon Lawrence Rivera [...]
THE ARSONISTS: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET The performances, as well as the flames, crackle in Ron Sossi’s slyly sardonic staging — performances that combine perfect comic timing with dense, rich personalities. Weisser’s nervous (and increasingly delusional) Biedermann and Hogan’s uptight wife are hilarious — but the true scene-stealers are Achorn’s rubber-faced, diabolical Schmitz and Bottitta’s ghoulish Eisenring, who are simultaneously [...]
THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE: 88% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Director Mark Brokaw, an experienced hand with adventurous American playwrights (he’s had an especially fruitful history with Paula Vogel and Craig Lucas), stages the whimsy in an exaggerated manner that doesn’t diminish the work’s underlying streak of tragicomic tenderness. If the humor at times seems strained, that’s probably because Cho is better at imagining [...]
THE PSYCHIC: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Bobrick’s latest farce seems a perfect complement to roast beef or lasagna, perhaps followed by a slice of cheesecake topped with berries. Offering a hint of whodunit halfway through, then abandoning that gambit in favor of predictable sitcom banter, Bobrick feeds us mildly entertaining fodder—nothing to challenge the mental digestive process. Les Spindle – [...]
ABOVE THE LINE: 50% Bitter – UPDATED
SWEET Ever wonder what happens in the high-rise Hollywood offices and private Beverly Hills bedrooms where movie deals are made? Well, wonder no more because playwright Susan Rubin takes you there in her hilariously biting new satire Above The Line, now getting a spiffy world premiere production at the Bootleg Theatre. Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA [...]