HOUSE OF GOLD
Saturday, October 29th, 2011RECOMMENDED
The personal tragedy of the still unsolved 1996 murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey has, in the years since her death, been eclipsed by the ensuing media side show, one that continues to this day. Playwright Gregory Moss satirizes our endless fascination with JonBenét in his black comedy House Of Gold, now getting its West Coast Premiere by Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles in a production worth a look-see despite considerable shortcomings, thanks to imaginative direction by Gates McFadden, a brilliant performance by award-winning theatre vet Jacqueline Wright as JonBenét, and a sensational production design.
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SOUTHERN COMFORTS
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
To hear Hollywood tell it, the only thing post-retirement folks are good for is a laugh, often at their own expense. As for romance or (God forbid) sex, forget it. For these and many other reasons, Kathleen Clark’s romantic comedy Southern Comforts, now playing at Burbank’s Falcon Theatre, comes as a welcome treat.
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MONKEY ADORED
Monday, October 17th, 2011RECOMMENDED
In his 2009 post-apocalyptic nightmare fairy tale Treefall, playwright Henry Murray, director John Perrin Flynn, a superb quartet of actors, and an extraordinary design team joined forces at Rogue Machine for one of the year’s most moving, thought-provoking, absorbing pieces of theater.
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LOVE SICK
Friday, October 7th, 2011
A loaded gun proves the best medicine for lovesick Emily in Kristina Poe’s deliciously dark comedy Love Sick, now getting its World Premiere production at the always edgy Elephant Theatre.
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UP
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011
The recent spate of It Gets Better videos could easily have been made with the teenage protagonists of Bridget Carpenter’s Up in mind. Fifteen-year-old Mikey, though not gay, is “different” enough to get pushed around and called “faggot.” As for Mikey’s new friend Maria, the six-months-pregnant sixteen-year-old was sent packing when her “drunk bitch” of a mom found out her little girl had gotten herself knocked up.
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SHOOTING STAR
Sunday, September 18th, 2011
There’s something about airport terminal waiting areas that makes them ripe with dramatic possibilities. A few years back, Departures provided the writer-actors at the NoHo Arts Center with over half a dozen waiting area vignettes, and earlier this year, Having It All’s female fivesome met cute and bonded while stranded waiting for postponed flights. Now it’s former couple Reed and Elena who happen upon each other in a blizzard-bound Midwest airport twenty-five years post-love affair in Steven Dietz’s Shooting Star, getting its West Coast Premiere at Burbank’s Colony Theatre.
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WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANGRY?
Saturday, September 10th, 2011
Celebration Theatre opens its 29th season, and its first with John Michael Beck as its Artistic Director, with an all-around sensational revival of Patrick Wilde’s What’s Wrong With Angry?, brilliantly directed by Michael Matthews, impeccably performed by a cast of ten, and stunningly designed by some of L.A.’s finest creative talents. Need I say more?
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KOWALSKI
Monday, September 5th, 2011
The year was 1947 and Tennessee Williams, still basking in the success of his New York Drama Critics Circle Award-winning The Glass Menagerie, was hoping to avoid a sophomore jinx with his upcoming A Streetcar Named Desire. Elia Kazan was set to direct, and Jessica Tandy to star as Blanche DuBois, but as yet no one had been cast in the pivotal role of Stanley Kowalski. Producer Irene Selznick was batting for John Garfield, but Williams had his doubts that the film star was right for the part. Then, according to Wikipedia, a virtually unknown actor named Marlon Brando “was given car fare to Tennessee Williams’ home in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he not only gave a sensational reading, but did some house repairs as well.” Oh, and he got the part.
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