Author Archive
BETRAYAL
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
It’s New Year’s Eve, 1968, and Jerry is confessing to Emma his love for her, in the very bedroom she shares with her husband Robert, Jerry’s best friend. “I must tell you,” Jerry declares passionately. “I want to tell you. I have to tell you. You’re lovely. I’m crazy about you. All these words I’m using, don’t you see, they’ve never been said before. I’m bowled over, I’m totally knocked out, you dazzle me, you jewel, my jewel…” Heady words, and with them Jerry and Emma begin a love affair, virtually under the eyes of his wife and her husband, an affair which will last seven years, only to have become a distant memory when they meet again, nine years later.
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TUNA DOES VEGAS
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009RECOMMENDED
Joe Sears and Jaston Williams are back with the fourth installment of what till now has been the Tuna Trilogy. Since the folks in Tuna, Texas have already seen and done just about everything they can in the third-smallest town in the Lone Star State, Tuna Does Vegas sends a dozen or so of them off to Sin City. Though the fish-out-of-water concept doesn’t play out quite as well or as hilariously as one might have wished, there are still plenty of laughs and, as always, the pleasure of watching two very talented actors embody close to a dozen characters each, all the while making almost inhumanly quick costume changes just out of our line of sight.
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KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Monday, April 20th, 2009
When the folks at Musical Theatre Guild were planning their 2008-2009 season of rarely performed Broadway musicals, it probably didn’t occur to anyone that their one-night-only revival of Kiss Of The Spider Woman would come only months after L.A.’s first fully staged production of Kiss since Chita Rivera and the National Tour played at the Ahmanson in 1996. Havok’s production (which featured many MTG performers, and which many felt surpassed the Tour in excellence) would indeed be a hard act to follow. There was no way a “concert staged reading” could match Havok’s design elements or the complexity of the many production numbers which recently won Lee Martino the LADCC Award for Best Choreography. MTG’s readings are, after all, presented with minimal sets and lighting, and few if any costume changes, and the entire show is allowed only 25 hours rehearsal time per Actor’s Equity rules. On the other hand, what MTG could and did offer Monday’s audience at Glendale’s Alex Theatre was a whole bunch of superb performances, and a chance to go back to the basics of Terrence McNally’s book, John Kander’s music, and Fred Ebb’s lyrics. The result, I’m happy to say, was an absolute triumph.
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NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
A serial killer is on the loose in New York, strangling elderly women one by one, and leaving a lipstick kiss on the forehead of each of his victims. Hardly the stuff of musical theater, you might think.
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VOICE LESSONS
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
No one writes comedy quite like Justin Tanner; his writing style and comic sensibility are, quite frankly, almost impossible to describe. Wacky? Demented? Bizarre? Over the top? Maybe even brilliant? The answer is all of the above, and never has this been clearer than in the hour of inspired lunacy that is Voice Lessons.
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THE GIRL, THE GROUCH, AND THE GOAT
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
The Chance Theater scores a real coup in presenting the West Coast Premiere and first professional production of the latest musical by Mark Hollmann, the Tony-winning composer/co-lyricist of Urinetown. (I guess this means that it could well be billed as the show’s Professional World Premiere.) The musical is The Girl, The Grouch, And The Goat, and if Urinetown’s Little Sally had issues with the title of her musical, imagine what she’d have to say about this new mouthful of a title. Then again, this is indeed the story of a girl (named Myrrhine), a grouch (named Clemnon), and a goat (who remains nameless).
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THE DEVIL WITH BOOBS
Friday, April 17th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Open Fist Theatre Company’s West Coast Premiere of Dario Fo’s The Devil With Boobs is the kind of show that most people will either love or hate. I ended up pretty much in the middle. While I absolutely loved the performances, and found the show gorgeous to look at, I must confess to not having “gotten” Fo’s mishmash of styles, his nonstop use of vulgarity, and what seems often to be the antithesis of sophistication.
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SAVAGE IN LIMBO
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
No one writes about New Yorkers, particularly those who reside in the Bronx, quite like John Patrick Shanley … and nowhere is this more true than in his “Concert Play” Savage In Limbo. Fortunately for Shanley fans, the actors who make up the 68 Cent Crew have just the right look, attitude, and voice to bring the Oscar-Pulitzer-Tony-winning playwright’s quirky, entirely original characters to life. It’s hard to imagine an L.A. troupe more suited to stage Shanley’s 1986 tale of a quintet of 32-year-old bar denizens in search of love.
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