HILLARY AGONISTES
Saturday, May 17th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
The year is 2009, Hillary Clinton is our President, and 65,000,000 people have disappeared across the world. “Who are these people who would just disappear without their clothes?” wonders Hillary. And who (or what) is behind this phenomenon? Is it terrorists? Aliens? The Rapture? Female Chief of Staff Morag advises (in a Scottish brogue), “Aliens is the way to go on this. It defuses the Rapture scenario. Some people can’t bear the stigma that the Lord has passed them over. You have to leave them something to believe in. Certainty soothes.”
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TOOTH AND NAIL
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
The Elephant Theatre Company follows the outstanding Anything with an even better world premiere comedy, Gena Acosta’s absolutely fabulous Tooth And Nail.
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AND HER HAIR WENT WITH HER
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Tonya Pinkins and Tracie Thoms are two actresses who could get together on a stage and captivate audiences merely by reading the proverbial phone book. Performing in a winner of a play like Zina Camblin’s And Her Hair Went With Her, the duo is theatrical magic.
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PARK YOUR CAR IN HARVARD YARD
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Theatergoers who made the recent production of Trying a monster hit for the Colony Theatre are hereby advised to head on down to Long Beach for International City Theatre’s superb revival of Israel Horovitz’ 1981 two-hander, Park Your Car In Harvard Yard. Like Trying, Park Your Car takes two people who are different in every possible way (age, sex, education, religion, family background, etc.), puts them in the same space, and lets the sparks fly. Like Trying, affords an actor in his eighties the part of a lifetime. Like Trying, the actress playing opposite said actor gets the gift of a role so richly drawn that sinking her teeth into it proves a veritable feast, both for the actress and for the audience.
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THE INJURED PARTY
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
South Coast Repertory has a bonafide hit on its hands. Richard Greenberg’s latest, The Injured Party, is one of the most exciting plays I’ve seen since John Guare’s Six Degrees Of Separation, a work which it shares a number of common themes with. Both deal with family, love, art, money and ambition among New York’s very rich. Both are exceedingly smart without being pretentious. Like Six Degrees, The Injured Party features a gay lead character whose sexual orientation is not central to the story. Both plays keep you riveted from curtain up to curtain calls.
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COFFEE WILL MAKE YOU BLACK
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Coffee Will Make You Black may seem at first an odd choice for the Celebration, L.A.’s professional theater representing the gay and lesbian community. None of its 18 characters are gay men, and of its many female characters, only a handful may (or then again may not) be lesbian. Hopefully this will not be a turnoff to the Celebration’s loyal core audience, for Coffee Will Make You Black is a joyous, engaging, and laugh-out-loud uproarious celebration of the birth of African American identity in the late 1960s.
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THE CONCEPT OF REMAINDERS
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Richard Martin Hirsch proves himself not only prolific (4 plays produced locally in the last two years) but versatile par excellence with his latest (and best) work. After The Quality Of Light (a May-September romance set in France), Atonement (an engrossing character study of a Jewish writer in crisis), and this winter’s The Monkey Jar (a “from today’s headlines” drama about a child accused of threatening his teacher with a handgun), Hirsch now turns his considerable talents to comedy with a sexy adult concoction entitled The Concept Of Remainders.
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CELL PHONE FUNERAL
Friday, April 11th, 2008RECOMMENDED
WeHo gay boy Zackery has just accidentally run over a fellow WeHoian named Patrick—twice, and confesses to his best bar buddy Barry that he feels “kinda bad” about killing the stranger, who like Zackery was out cruising for sex. Meanwhile, 3000 miles away, Patrick’s alcoholic muumuu-wearing mother is given the bad news by her surviving son Marcus. In a “Mom always liked you best” moment, Mother tells Marcus, “Don’t take this personally. I love you both equally, but he was my favorite.” She decides to fly west to arrange his funeral. “But you hate to fly,” protests Marcus. “I’ll fly,” insists Mom. “He’s my only son.”
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