All Entries Tagged With: "socal.com"
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 [...]
THE THREE MUSKETEERS: 83% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Ellen Geer, doyenne of the leafy Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, employs some 50 thesps for almost three hours in Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers,” adapted in the cram-it-all-in-there spirit of the RSC’s “Nicholas Nickleby” and Steppenwolf’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” Cinematic rather than theatrical — which is to say, played as straight naturalism [...]
KING LEAR (ANTAEUS PRODUCTION): 100% – Sweet
SWEET The Matthews team, featuring Morlan Higgins’ stalwart Kent, Kirsten Potter’s villainous Goneril, Francia DiMase’s vindictive Regan and Drew Doyle’s sly Oswald, ultimately had a larger intellectual impact on me — the play administering a lesson on the dangers of dividing language from truth. The Groener crew, with Allegra Fulton’s sinister Goneril and Jen Dede’s [...]
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 [...]
SKYLIGHT: 80% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER It’s possible that in a few weeks director Ken Meseroll’s stodgy production of the seething drama will gel to reflect the play’s subtle emotional shifts and nuances in a more involving way. At this point, though, Meseroll’s staging is merely workmanlike, with flat line readings and stiff blocking, while also missing the psychological edge [...]
TWO WRONGS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET In effective counterpoint to the sometimes ephemeral chitchat, director Missy Yager adopts a propulsively urgent tone that gives the humor added bite. The actors are uniformly charming, but Yager needs to address their tendency to overemphasize. One doesn’t always have to slap one’s thigh or an adjacent piece of furniture to make a point. [...]
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 [...]
L.A. NOIR UNSCRIPTED: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Imagine walking on stage facing an audience full of people that you don’t know, taking on the character of another person, turning it into a performance with six other actors that are as equally unprepared without embarrassing yourself should you fail and you have Impro Theatre and Combined Artform presentation of L.A. Noir UnScripted. [...]
CANNIBALS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The toxic admixture of personalities is good for laughs but doesn’t quite offset the play’s lack of action, leading to tedious stretches. A ray of light emerges when a “notable” director (Ray Abruzzo) taps the gals for a documentary, but the project is threatened when he brings his accomplished wife (the stellar Robin Riker) [...]
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A. EINSTEIN: 88% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET A veteran of stage and screen, Mersky nails both the Germanic tongue and dry sense of humor, and in weaving her self-admittedly simplistic interpretation of Einstein’s theories into her storytelling, she makes us forget that we are waiting for the man himself. Director Paul Gersten keeps Mersky moving about the stage with an industry [...]
Critique of the Week
LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING Review by Angela Gomez – Socal.com On a secluded Greek Isle, August (played by Silas Weir Mitchell) lives his life simply. His insanity hangs plump like the grapes from his vines temptingly waiting to be plucked and savored in the mid-summer’s afternoon. His Grecian wife, Daphne (played by Olivia Henry), waits at their [...]
LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING: 91% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Callaghan finds the madness in each of her characters. It’s not apparent but it’s there, as it is in each of us. This gives the play its strength, as each of the characters is strong, too, and the three of them stubbornly fight to defend their turf. August is weak and unlikeable and, as [...]
THE UNEXPECTED MAN: 57% Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTER I wish I could say that the play’s culmination is worth the investment of the slow buildup or that the enjoyment of art, as life, is in the journey, but on this ride, I would have gotten off around Reims. Joel Elkins – LA Theatre Review BITTER If the above sounds hardly the recipe [...]
BROADS, THE MUSICAL: 50% Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTER I loved the four gals playing the Broads – all talented – but the show needs a major overhaul. Too many jokes are tired old cliches – and singing about side effects from medications? Audiences do not find that entertaining as many experience these very problems on a daily basis. No one was laughing [...]
THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES: 70% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET All right, given this impressive pedigree, what’s my beef? Well, beyond the play’s passé style, I have trouble with the workmanlike use of the symbolic roses that inspire the title and even more with scenes that sometimes seem like acting workshop exercises. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Yet traditional dramatic styles needn’t be [...]
THE PRICE: 89% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER Miller’s characters all seem to struggle with responsibilities and guilt. This play offers the same type of individuals, but because of its long, drawn-out and repetitive dialogue, it is not one of his better plays. None of the characters are too likeable save for Gregory Solomon (performed so well by Kaplan), and the play [...]
NAKED IN THE TROPICS: 0% Bitter
BITTER Nanin’s predictable soap-opera script combines countless genres — including lesbian romance, boylesk, after-school special, musical and courtroom drama — to very little purpose, and the author’s slack direction doesn’t help. The cast strives mightily to score with thinly written characters who are trapped within the lackluster material. Neal Weaver – LA Weekly BITTER Rivera [...]
PROOF: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Auburn’s powerful play hinges on the issues of trust and faith. As the playwright Bertolt Brecht observed, “the inflexible rule [is] that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Despite the fine performances of the cast — tautly directed by Bob Morrisey on set designer Lacey Anzelc’s convincing back porch — Sherer [...]
F*CKING MEN: 86% Sweet
SWEET With a title like F*cking Men and the promise of full frontal male nudity, the latest Celebration Theatre production will have no problem attracting audiences. Joe DiPietro’s modern gay twist on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1900 classic La Ronde has been filling seats in London for the past two years and counting. What WeHo theatergoers will [...]
THAT PERFECT MOMENT: 73% Sweet
SWEET Rave reviews prompted producer Racquel Lehrman to bring back That Perfect Moment following its October-November run at the NoHo Arts Center. The return engagement (at Burbank’s Little Victory Theatre) is welcome news for L.A. theatergoers in search of laughter, nostalgia, and even a tear or two. Directed to perfection by Rick Sparks and featuring [...]
“Oleanna”: 100% Sweet
SWEET “Oleanna” still fills me with reservations — artistic as well as political. Yes, the debate is tendentiously rigged. But you can’t argue with a play that retains the power to get theatergoers arguing with each other as they head home. Charles McNulty – LA Times BITTERSWEET The only line of defense against this play’s [...]
“Our Town”: 91% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET The jury’s still out on “Our Town”: Is it a high school staple for a reason, or a victim of sentimentalists? The new production of Thornton Wilder’s 1937 classic at the Actors’ Gang doesn’t exactly settle that question. Clocking in at nearly three hours, Justin Zsebe’s staging showcases what’s best and worst about both [...]
“Is He Dead?”: 83% Sweet -UPDATED
SWEET Director Shashin Desai deserves bonus points for taking on something that’s essentially a twist on Charley’s Aunt with the added flavor of Feydeau. Desai’s sterling cast gives shape, color, and meaning to Twain’s ideas and Ives’ words, apparently having never met an episode of Bosom Buddies or films like Some Like It Hot they [...]