BUS STOP
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
William Inge is perhaps best known for a pair of plays about life in the American
Midwest in the 1950s. Picnic tells of a frustrated small town girl who falls for a
handsome drifter. Its companion piece, Bus Stop, is about a naïve cowboy
who loses his head over a “chanteuse” with a past. Both became popular
films and gave blonde bombshells Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe rare
chances to prove that they were actresses and not just glamour girls. Both
Picnic and Bus Stop continue to be favorites of community and regional
theaters, with the latter now getting a first-rate staging at the Rubicon in
Ventura.
(read more)
DICKIE AND BABE: THE TRUTH ABOUT LEOPOLD & LOEB
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Having recently attended opening night of Nick DeGruccio’s outstanding
production of the Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story, I found Daniel Henning’s
superb Dickie & Babe: The Truth About Leopold & Loeb of special fascination.
Thrill Me is an 80-minute romantic musical, told entirely through the eyes of the
two Chicago teenagers who gained fame, and infamy, from the 1924 “thrill
killing” of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, and features an entirely fictional twist at its
conclusion. Dickie & Babe runs twice as long, introduces over two dozen
additional characters including family members, friends, trial witnesses, and the
greatest attorney of his time, Clarence Darrow, and is scrupulously based on fact.
(read more)
TALK ABOUT THE PASSION
Sunday, February 10th, 2008RECOMMENDED
An unshaven, disheveled young man carrying a backpack arrives at the office
of book editor Evelyn Ayles, who is seated at her desk. Too busy (or too above
it all) to even look the man in the eye, Evelyn simply points to a chair and keeps
on talking on the phone as if he were not present. Finally she tells him (still not
making eye contact), “You’ve wasted your time coming here today,” and
tosses back the “clichéd” manuscript he has sent to her, then returns to
ignoring him. The man persists, “This is my life, and you call it a cliché!” And
then, before Evelyn even has a chance to see what he’s doing, the young
man removes a plastic strip from his pocket and locks her into her own office.
“You’re not going anywhere until we can talk,” he declares. “I want to talk to
you about my son.”
(read more)
DRIVING MISS DAISY
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy is perhaps best known from the 1989 film
adaptation which starred Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, and which
won Miss Tandy the Oscar at the age of 80. However “Miss Daisy” made her
first appearance in a tiny off-Broadway theater in 1987, with Dana Ivey and
Freeman creating the roles of Miss Daisy and her chauffeur Hoke. That Uhry’s
tale of an elderly Southern Jewish widow and the African American driver
foisted upon her by her adult son could work equally well on the big screen
and on a small stage is testimony to its power. Now, McCoy Rigby
Entertainment’s revival at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts
proves that Driving Miss Daisy is equally successful performed on a Broadway-
sized stage, especially in the hands of TV icon Michael Learned and her 3-time
Miss Daisy costar Lance C. Nichols, under the assured direction of Brian Kite.
(read more)
THE MONKEY JAR
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
STUDENT BRINGS GUN TO SCHOOL; THREATENS TEACHER
An everyday occurrence in inner-city high schools, yet in Richard Martin Hirsch’s
The Monkey Jar, now in its world premiere engagement at Theatre 40,
Bienvenida Charter School is not in the inner city but rather in an upscale West
Los Angeles suburb, and the child involved is just 10 years old.
(read more)
DEPARTURES
Friday, February 1st, 2008RECOMMMENDED
Departures is a theatrical experiment that works. Seven playwrights each
independently wrote a 10-15 minute one-act about an airline passenger or
group of passengers gathered in an airport waiting area. Open At The Top’s
artistic director James L. Mellon then compiled and condensed the playlets,
“composing” them into a fluid hour and twenty minutes of intertwining stories.
The result is an entertaining and often moving dramedy that feels for the most
part like the work of a single writer. We meet, in order of appearance:
(read more)
ORSON’S SHADOW
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
The year is 1960. The place is Dublin, Ireland, more specifically the Gaiety Theatre,
where renowned film critic Kenneth Tynan has just arrived on a mission. He plans
to ask Orson Welles of Citizen Kane fame to direct “the greatest actor in the
English language” in a production of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. The actor in
question is, of course Lawrence Olivier, fresh from his stage and screen triumph in
The Entertainer. There is one hitch to Tynan’s plan, however, and that is Welles’
belief that “Olivier destroyed me in Hollywood in 1948.”
(read more)
BACHELORETTE
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
The night before bride-to-be Becky’s wedding, her maid of honor Regan arrives
at Becky’s hotel suite accompanied by two young women, neither of whom is
particularly close to Becky. In fact, Regan tells Katie and Gena, “Becky has no
friends. She has to invite her myspace friends. I’m surprised she didn’t post a
bulletin.” Rather harsh words to come from Becky’s maid of honor, but that’s
just the start of an often very funny, and sometimes quite shocking glimpse into
the ugliness that can hide behind pretty faces.
(read more)
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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