MORNING’S AT SEVEN
Saturday, April 14th, 2012
“Morning’s at seven. The hill-side’s dew-pearled. The lark’s on the wing. The snail’s on the thorn. God’s in His heaven. All’s right with the world!”
–Robert Browning
All does indeed seem right with the world, at least at first glance, in Paul Osborn’s 1939 classic Morning’s At Seven, now being revived at the venerable Sierra Madre Playhouse. Sisters Cora and Ida have each been married for decades to men they adore, and have lived in side-by-side houses somewhere in the American Midwest for the past forty years or so. Married eldest sister Esther lives only a block and a half away, while spinster Arry resides with Cora and Cora’s husband Thor. Aside from Thor’s hypochondriacal complaints, which his wife has long gotten used to, the Gibbs sisters would seem to be, if not the happiest siblings ever, then at least far from the unhappiest.
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THE BUNGLER
Monday, April 9th, 2012
When you hear the name Moliere, it’s likely that The Bungler, one of the 17th Century playwright’s earliest comedies, will not make the list of titles coming to mind. Still, if A Noise Within’s production of this little-known gem is any indication, The Bungler (aka L’Etourdi) is one of the French master’s funniest confections—or so it would seem as conceived by director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott.anselm
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WORST AUDITION EVER
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
Actors give stand-up comics a run for their money in Worst Audition Ever, now back for more laughs at Silver Lake’s Cavern Club, downstairs from Casita Del Campo Restaurant.
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THE BOOMERANG EFFECT
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
Paul suggests that Andrew’s life might be better if he had that talk with Renee about her incessant nagging during sex. Andrew recommends that David start playing an online Scrabble game called Words With Friends. David’s husband Nick offers his own helpful advice to Julie, who then passes on her own self-help tip to Janetta.
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THE SEAGULL
Sunday, March 4th, 2012
I’ll admit it. When I hear the name Chekhov, the first words that pop into my head are dull, somber, and talky. That’s why it’s such a pleasure to report that the Antaeus Company’s revival of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull not only held my attention virtually throughout, it actually had me laughing more times than I could count. Talky it still may be, with characters often choosing monolog over dialog, but wonder of wonders, Seagull director Andrew Traister and company have brought to life on the Deaf-West stage is indeed the comedy its playwright intended it to be.
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BRILLIANT TRACES
Saturday, February 25th, 2012
A bedraggled young woman barges into a seemingly deserted Alaska cabin in the midst of a raging snowstorm, a frenzied look on her face, a torn, filthy wedding dress hanging off her like a grubby old rag. Suddenly becoming aware of a blanket-hooded figure seated on the cabin’s sole bed, she launches into a stream-of-consciousness monolog describing in detail how she kept from getting frostbite on the way from a dead car to the stranger’s cabin following days upon days of near nonstop driving, with only rare pauses for gas, a pee, a candy bar, or a Coke. Eventually, the combination of sugar withdrawal (“This is a Mars bars tremble,” she explains when she can’t get her hands to stop shaking) and multiple swigs from a whiskey bottle left conveniently atop the stranger’s kitchen table, the young woman crumples gracefully to the floor in a faint. Only then does the stranger rise and reveal himself to be a handsome, bearded young man with an unconscious woman in the middle of his house.
Thus begins Cindy Lou Johnson’s utterly riveting comedy-drama Brilliant Traces, now being revived (and quite terrifically so) at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre.
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PRIVATE LIVES
Friday, February 24th, 2012
Noël Coward’s Private Lives is back for its third L.A.-area production in a scant six months, but only the first to present Coward’s still-fresh-at-72 romcom classic up close and personal—adroitly directed by Jules Aaron and spiffily acted by a topnotch cast of five at Burbank’s 98-seat Grove Theatre Center.
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THREE YEAR SWIM CLUB
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
In the time-honored tradition of fact-based underdog sports tales like Hoosiers, We Are Marshall, and the recent Moneyball, East West Players now presents the Mainland Premiere of Three Year Swim Club, Lee Tonouchi’s crowd-pleasing true story of a Hawaiian swim coach and the ragtag band of Maui plantation kids he is bound and determined to send to the 1940 Olympics.
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