All Entries Tagged With: "stagehappenings"
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
BECKY’S NEW CAR: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The play’s genesis is worthy of some note: The work was a personal commission by a Seattle arts patron as a gift for his wife. As such, the material occasionally tries a little too hard to please, with a narrative that occasionally emulates the mood of 1930s screwball comedies — a style that is [...]
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 [...]
THE WHO’S TOMMY: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Up front disclosure: I am not a child of the sixties and seventies, nor am I a fan of the ear-splitting music of that period. However (long pregnant pause), the quality of the Chance Theater’s production of “The Who’s Tommy” was so outstanding, it completely blew me away! Shirle Gottlieb – Stagehappenings SWEET The [...]
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 [...]
THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN: 100% – Sweet
SWEET A moral dilemma bubbles at the play’s core: Can a person do good in the world — assisting others clearly in need — while also safeguarding one’s personal comfort? That question loomed in collective consciousness when the play was written between 1939 and 1941, and hovers there still. If that seems strong stuff, fear [...]
IN THE HEIGHTS: 88% – Sweet
SWEET This Tony-winning musical makes its L.A. bow in an exhilarating touring edition that pulsates with showstopping song-and-dance numbers while raising one’s spirits with its funny and poignant characters, coping with the challenges of life in the barrio of New York’s Washington Heights. Les Spindle – Backstage BITTER The resolutions to almost all these tangles [...]
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 [...]
OPUS: 80% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Levy and his accomplished cast almost manage to sell Hollinger’s unnecessary excursions into overwrought soap, particularly in the final scene. It’s the smaller moments that compel, creating an intimacy that make “Opus” a stylish midsummer date night. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times SWEET The world of classical chamber music easily evokes images of grace [...]
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, [...]
Critique of the Week
SUPERNOVA Review by Eve Meadows – Stagehappenings How often does one go the theatre to discover that he/she has fallen in love with the script, actors, set, direction, and all aspects of a production? How often is one deeply moved and satisfied in our 99-seat world existing only here in Los Angeles? Rarely do I [...]
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 [...]
BOOM: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Apocalypse comes with a personals-ad twist in “boom.” Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s dark satire about sex, fish and the end of the world gets a valiant Los Angeles premiere by Furious Theatre Company. David C. Nichols – LA Times SWEET The mood and situation quickly darken, as the nonsexual relationship deteriorates, but there is always [...]
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 [...]
SUPERNOVA: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Director Lindsay Allbaugh’s fantastic ensemble sells us on each individual scene, even if the play as a whole doesn’t add up to more then some well-acted catharses. Kelly Elizabeth and Joe Wiebe join in for the furious climax as two fellow high schoolers who bear witness to what even the adamantly optimistic Mabel admits [...]
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 [...]
MORE LIES ABOUT JERZY: 86% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Holmes’ journalist tries to psychoanalyze why Jerzy would make stuff up so habitually – perhaps a war trauma or something – and Jerzy ridicules that process as petty psychoanalysis. The degree to which Jerzy may be right is the degree to which this play gets very interesting, veering away from its dangerous trajectory of [...]