COME BACK LITTLE HORNY
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Meet the Maloneys, your average upper-middle class Palo Alto family:
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SETUP & PUNCH
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Nine years following her acrimonious split from Brian, Vanya (nee Yvonne Patricia) takes pen to paper to write (yes, write, not email) her onetime creative partner with a request. “Dear Brian,” she writes. “I know I can’t make up with you but I hope we can be friends.”
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THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
Diversionary Theatre’s production of The Little Dog Laughed makes several things perfectly clear. First, that despite the out, proud, and successful-as-ever Neil Patrick Harrises and T.R. Knights et al, the closet is alive and well in Hollywood. Second, that Douglas Carter Beane’s comedy may be the funniest Broadway show yet about gay movie stars, lesbian agents, and bisexual hustlers. Third, and the best news of all for San Diego audiences, Diversionary’s cast of four locally-based actors stands up very nicely to their Broadway counterparts, thank you very much.
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INCORRUPTIBLE
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
Can you imagine anything more improbable than a screwball comedy set in a monastery in 13th Century Europe? Wacky, zany, and madcap are not adjectives one would normally use to describe what Wikipedia refers to as “a period of cultural decline or societal collapse that took place in Western Europe between the fall of Rome and the eventual recovery of learning.” And yet Michael Hollinger’s Incorruptible is indeed a wacky, zany, madcap romp which takes place in 1250 France. I saw Incorruptible at the Colony Theatre in 2001—and loved it—and I am delighted to report that Theatre 40 has put together an equally rib-tickling production—now available for your delectation.
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IS HE DEAD?
Friday, May 1st, 2009
Straight men in drag have made for sure-fire comedy since long before Milton Berle donned wigs, lipstick, and gowns on TV’s Texaco Star Theater back in the 1950s and Barry Humphries created Dame Edna several decades later. Charley’s Aunt made the first of his/her six Broadway appearances way back in 1893, and only five years after that Mark Twain wrote Is He Dead?.
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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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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 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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