All Entries Tagged With: "theatremania"
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 [...]
THE WAKE: 69% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET If “The Wake” succeeds more as a character study than as an assessment of the historical zeitgeist, it’s probably because Ellen is too much of an individual to bear the metaphorical burden placed on her. Those blind spots she’s begun to recognize don’t belong to her exclusively. But her journey into understanding the heartbreak [...]
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET This presentation may not be a buzz-builder, in the way that the Nathan Lane-led 1996 Broadway revival was, but as directed by David Lee, it is reliably entertaining and is populated with solid singers who, along with conductor Steve Orich and a 22-player orchestra, put the music’s crackling artistry on full display. Daryl H. [...]
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 FEMALE OF THE SPECIES: 89% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET The script has an unending flow of verbal and physical high jinks but too many sitcom-quality one-liners and a lazy reliance on popular culture for easy laughs. There also is too much insincere rattling on about the sexual issues that Bening’s character has made her career by exploiting. And there’s no pretense at character [...]
CAROUSEL: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Michetti’s story-theater approach surely will be the most talked-about aspect of this production. The stage directions, meant for the production team’s eyes only, are spoken, “Our Town”-like, by the grandfatherly, bushy-eyebrowed character actor M. Emmet Walsh. When not otherwise needed, actors gather with him along the back wall to watch the story unfolding at [...]
CAMELOT: 73% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET In 1960 two legendary tuners bowed in Gotham exactly seven months apart: two-planks-and-a-passion romance “The Fantasticks” (May 3) and lavish spectacle “Camelot” (Dec. 3). Fifty years later at the Pasadena Playhouse, their destinies are again intertwined, after a fashion, as an expurgated “Camelot” receives a “Fantasticks”-like bare-bones staging with a mere eight thesps, minimalist [...]
FROSTY THE SNOW MANILOW: 75% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Costumes by Sharon McGunigle add color and sparkle to the production, nicely lighted by Christian Epps. Sherry Santillano’s multilevel village set offers opportunities for cast members to appear in open windows above the stage. The heart-stopping acrobatics on the Troubadours’ trampoline are always a showstopper, and Walker and his youthful cast don’t disappoint. Melinda [...]
BABY, IT’S YOU!: 57% Bittersweet
BITTER Serious book problems hamper a strong catalog of early 1960s tunes and the efforts of a talented cast in Baby It’s You!, now at the Pasadena Playhouse. The result is a surprisingly uninvolving biography of Florence Greenberg, the Jewish housewife who discovered and fostered the doo-wop group The Shirelles. Jonas Schwartz – Theatremania BITTER [...]
“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET An ebullient synthesizer of world data, Joseph is not just alert to the fevered geopolitical madness surrounding us, he’s also endlessly inventive in finding bold theatrical metaphors to depict the extent of the depravity. “Bengal Tiger” marks the breakthrough of a major new playwriting talent. Attending the opening gave me a sense of what [...]
“The Fantasticks”: 50% Bitter
BITTERSWEET The show’s fragile amalgam of rueful romance, whimsy, slapstick, and metaphorical fable calls for a delicate balance of moods and styles. Unfortunately, director Jason Alexander’s reinvention of the piece favors ham-fisted burlesque over wistful lyricism, obscuring the bittersweet beauty at the play’s core. There are moments—mostly in the second act—when the cast and production [...]