Author Archive
THE VALUE OF NAMES
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Academy Award buffs will recall a dramatic moment in the 1999 Oscar ceremony when 89-year-old Elia Kazan, two-time Best Director winner (for Gentleman’s Agreement and On The Waterfront), was awarded a special lifetime achievement Oscar. Though Warren Beatty, Kathy Bates, Karl Malden, Meryl Streep and Helen Hunt were among those who gave Kazan a standing ovation, others like Nick Nolte and Ed Harris remained seated, not joining in the applause. Nolte, Harris, and those who shared their disapproval of the Academy for honoring Kazan remained unforgiving of the octogenarian director for having named names at the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. Even forty-seven years later, Kazan’s decision to aid and abet the blacklisting of some two hundred artists for alleged Communist connections was one that could not be forgotten.
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THE HOUSE OF BESARAB
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Fans of those 1960s Hammer Films horror classics like Dracula: Prince Of Darkness, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, and Taste The Blood Of Dracula, all starring Christopher Lee as the blood-sucking Count, will be in Hammer Horror Heaven at The House Of Besarab, now playing at the historic Hollywood American Legion Post 43. Though Terance Duddy and Theodore Ott’s adaptation of the classic Bram Stoker tale does not set out to be Shakespeare, then again, neither did those Hammer screenplays by Jimmy Sangster and John Elder. What lifted the Technicolor/Techniscope extravaganzas out of the ordinary were their stellar casts (Christopher Lee later became SirChristopher Lee, thank you very much) and their lush settings.
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GRACE KIM & THE SPIDERS FROM MARS
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, L.A.’s decade-old Asian-American 99-seat theater company, is ending its tenth (and sadly final) season with Philip W. Chung’s romantic comedy Grace Kim & The Spiders From Mars. With charismatic lead performances by Elizabeth Ho as its Korean-American title character and Hanson Tse as the man who might just be able to rescue Grace from ten years of sadness, this World Premiere production is likely to please romcom fans regardless of ethnicity or country of origin. Though its more run-of-the-mill sitcom moments could benefit from a tweaking or two, as could a few over-the-top scenes, Chung’s play is filled with characters to care about, some inspired musical numbers, and a love story that grips from the moment Grace and Wayne first meet. If only the man of Grace’s dreams weren’t her sister’s fiancé.
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LA RONDE DE LUNCH
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Peter Lefcourt skewers Hollywood deal-making—brilliantly—in La Ronde De Lunch, the funniest show you’re likely to see this fall and one of the most terrifically performed comedies of this or any season.
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TREE
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
The last thing Louisianan Didi Marcantel expects to find soon after the death of her father is a bunch of letters written to him over forty-years ago … love letters addressed to a woman he knew while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. Even more surprising is the discovery that her Caucasian father’s one-time lover was African American—back in the days when Jim Crow laws made interracial relationships not only “improper” but illegal as well. Tripling the effect of this surprise is the news that the union between Ray Marcantel and his beloved Jessalyn produced a child, Didi’s now 46-year-old half-brother Leo Price, father of Didi’s 20ish half-niece JJ.
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PO BOY TANGO
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009RECOMMENDED
East meets West in Kenneth Lin’s Po Boy Tango, a culture-clash dramedy now getting its West Coast premiere at Little Tokyo’s East West Players.
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BABY IT’S YOU
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
In the Eisenhower late-1950s, a housewife and mother did not suddenly come to the realization that there was life outside her kitchen and living room and traipse off to the big city in search of something more. She did not suddenly decide to “get into” the record business, even if her children were nearly grown and off on their own, and not even if told by her daughter, “Mom, there are some girls in my high school who sing so well they could be recording stars.” No. Back then housewives and mothers in Passaic, New Jersey knew that their place was in the home and they stayed there … all but one, all but Florence Greenberg. Florence saw that there was indeed life away from the suburbs, a life in New York City, and the four high school girls her daughter Mary Jane was telling her about became the first big girl group of the 1960s, The Shirelles, under contract to Scepter Records, Florence’s very own label.
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WAIT UNTIL DARK
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
The cell phone may well be the third-greatest invention of the past fifty years, right after the home computer and the Internet. Most of us look back at the pre-cellular 1980s (and before) and think, “How did we ever survive without them?” On the other hand, it’s fortunate indeed for lovers of classic stage thrillers that playwright Frederick Knott lived most of his life in a mostly cell phone-free 20th Century. How could Knott have written 1952’s Dial M For Murder had Margot Wendice had a cell phone in her purse or pocket? 1966’s Wait Until Dark is even harder to imagine in a cell phone age. Knott’s thriller about a blind New York City newlywed targeted by a trio of thugs in search of a heroin-filled doll they believe to be hidden somewhere in her walk-down flat is absolutely dependent on there being only one land-line phone in the apartment and a (now virtually non-existent) phone booth on a nearby corner.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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