AMERICAN BUFFALO
Friday, April 12th, 2013
The four-letter words fly fast and furious in the Geffen Playhouse’s latest, American Buffalo, and though David Mamet’s 1977 Broadway debut remains unlikely to be a traditional theatergoer’s cup of tea, it’s hard to imagine a better cast, acted, directed, or designed revival of this 1977 groundbreaker than the one at the Geffen.
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THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HEDDA GABLER
Monday, April 8th, 2013
In a case of serendipitous cross-programming, two of Henrik Ibsen’s most iconic heroines are currently alive and well and onstage in San Diego, Nora Helmer in A Doll’s House at The Old Globe and Hedda Gabler in The Further Adventures Of Hedda Gabler at Diversionary Theatre.
No, you didn’t read that last title wrong. Though The Old Globe is featuring Ibsen’s Doll House in its original, albeit freshly translated, form, Diversionary is offering San Diegans Jeff Whitty’s surrealistic comedy The Further Adventures Of Hedda Gabler, and if Whitty’s play runs about twenty minutes longer than it ought to, in all other ways it makes for a heady, laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking evening of absurdist theater.
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BILLY & RAY
Sunday, April 7th, 2013
Back in 1944, Hollywood’s “Hays Code” made it perfectly clear. If you wanted to make a movie, your film had better not show any of the following: “brutality and possible gruesomeness, technique of committing murder by whatever method, sympathy for criminals, …“ The list of no-nos went on and on.
So how, then, did Paramount Pictures manage in 1944 to make a movie out of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, a film in which insurance salesman Fred MacMurray and housewife Barbara Stanwyck plot and execute the murder of her husband—and make it look like an accident so as to cash in on hubby’s insurance policy’s “double indemnity” clause, one which guarantees double the payout in case of accidental death?
Mike Bencivenga’s World Premiere play Billy & Ray not only explains how co-screenwriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler found ingenious ways to hoodwink Hays Code czar Joseph Breen into letting them include all of the abovementioned taboos in their movie, under Garry Marshall’s pitch-perfect direction, it does so in the most entertaining of ways.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Sunday, March 31st, 2013
What’s in a name? Well, to Gwendolen Fairfax, whose “ideal has always been to love someone of the name Earnest,” it means just about everything, so much so that her beau Earnest Worthing dare not let it slip that “Earnest” is merely a moniker he assumes when in big city London, his real name Jack being reserved for the rest of his life in the Hertfordshire countryside.
Any theater buff worth his or her salt can surely tell you that the “Earnest” in question is but one of two bogus “Earnests” in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, now getting a dandy revival at North Hollywood’s Theatre Banshee under the assured direction of Sean Branney.
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CHAPTER TWO
Thursday, March 21st, 2013
Widower meets divorcee and romantic sparks ignite if only the happy couple can prevent memories of his not-too-long-deceased wife from intruding on their happiness.
Ask any avid theatergoer (or Neil Simon aficionado in particular) to name the play and the answer is obvious. It’s Simon’s 1977 dramedic gem Chapter Two, the latest charmer from San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre, as fresh and funny as ever, its Internet, cell phone, and social media-free New York City making it a delightful period piece as do mentions of As The World Turns, Merv Griffin, and Fresca.
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MY BIG GAY ITALIAN WEDDING
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
The place is Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where Tony Manero discoed the night away in Saturday Night Fever and where women still live by the credo, “The higher the hair, the closer to God.” The time is the present, meaning that the gay boys of South Brooklyn no longer have to pretend to be straight, and can even tie the legal knot when they meet Mr. Right. What better time could there be for a 20something Italian-American ragazzo like our hero Anthony Pinnunziato to pop the question to his Polish-American sweetie Andrew Polinski? Now all he has to do is convince his traditional Mamma and Papa to give the happy same-sex couple their blessing.
Playwright Anthony Wilkinson thus sets the comedic wheels in motion in his off-Broadway hit My Big Gay Italian Wedding, now getting a hilarious West Coast Premiere in an exuberantly acted albeit barebones production under the peppy direction of Paul Storiale.
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BORN YESTERDAY
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Folks had best not try to pull the wool over Billie Dawn’s eyes or they’ll soon discover she wasn’t Born Yesterday—or at least that’s what some Washington D.C. politicos find out the hard way in Born Yesterday, Garson Kanin’s Broadway classic and a terrific season opener for Claremont’s Inland Valley Repertory Theatre.
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BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Monday, February 11th, 2013
What do a couple of gay male penguins immortalized in a controversial children’s book, an opposite-gender pair of red-tailed hawks nesting on a top-story ledge of a pricey Upper Manhattan co-op, and the marital woes of a former ABC/CBS/Fox/CNN news anchor have in common?
The answer is that all of the above take center stage in Birds Of A Feather, Marc Acito’s sweet, funny, topical, and ultimately quite moving one-act comedy now making its West Coast debut in a something-to-squawk-about production at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre.
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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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