GOD’S MAN IN TEXAS
Saturday, April 27th, 2013
“And I am telling you, I’m not going!”
No, it’s not Effie White belting out a showstopper in Dreamgirls, but the spoken words of Dr. Philip Gottschall, an 81-year-old Texas megapreacher unwilling to give up the pulpit of a church he’s built up to a congregation of 30,000 and counting, and it’s not Deena Jones who’s in Eve Harrington mode, but 40something San Antonio pastor Jeremiah Mears, whom fully half of the pastoral search committee would like to see replace their aging leader. As for the other half, the status quo is fine, just fine.
Playwright David Rambo pits preacher against preacher in God’s Man In Texas, the latest offering from the newly re-energized Sierra Madre Playhouse, and if being forced to listen to considerable sermonizing by the kind of Christian fundamentalists who have recently made it their mission to “protect the sanctity of marriage” proved tough going in Act One, once Rambo’s central concern became evident in the play’s thoroughly compelling second act, this reviewer came to realize that any Act One discomfort was personal, and no reflection on what ends up one humdinger of a play.
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THE LARAMIE PROJECT: 10 YEARS LATER
Thursday, April 25th, 2013
The hate crime that was the brutal 1998 murder of 21-year-old University Of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard brought playwright Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of New York’s Tectonic Theater Project to the town of Laramie in search of answers. Who could have committed such a barbaric act (and why?) … and how did the residents of Laramie react to Shepard’s murder, and to the attention it focused on their city of 28,000?
The result of Kaufman and his team’s* eighteen-month research was The Laramie Project, which Los Angeles audiences got their first look at when the Colony Theatre Company staged it to memorable effect in 2002.
Ten years after their initial visits, Kaufman and the Tectonics returned to Laramie to find out how much the city and its residents had changed in the ensuing decade, the result of which is The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later.
Orange County’s award-winning Chance Theater now presents both plays in rep, offering Southern California audiences the rare opportunity to see not only where we were at the time of Matthew’s murder, but also how far we’ve come since then, and assuming Oanh Nguyen’s staging of the original is as powerful as the sequel reviewed here (as I’m certain it must be), then Angelinos and Orange County residents alike are in for a humdinger of a double feature.
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THE MIRACLE WORKER
Sunday, April 21st, 2013RECOMMENDED
A pair of powerhouse performances would make Actors Co-op’s revival of William Gibson’s Tony-winning The Miracle Worker must-see theater if only attention been paid to sightlines, or had the Co-op staged it at the David Schall Theatre next door.
Note: See update at end of review.
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SLIPPING
Monday, April 15th, 2013
A young man’s traumatic journey from adolescence to adulthood comes to vivid, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful life in Daniel Talbott’s 2009 drama Slipping, whose Los Angeles premiere reunites its pair of New York stars under the incisive direction of its multitalented writer.
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A DOLL’S HOUSE
Sunday, April 7th, 2013
Eight and a half decades before Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique set off what’s known as the Second-Wave Feminist Movement in the U.S., Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen created a heroine whose frustration at being “just a housewife” could well have inspired Friedan and her fellow women’s libbers.
Her name, as you may have guessed, was Nora, and if playwright Ibsen steadfastly asserted that he had not consciously “worked for the women’s rights movement,” A Doll’s House must certainly have inspired generation after generation of women in the years since its 1879 debut.
Ibsen’s masterpiece, incidentally the world’s most performed play, now arrives at San Diego’s The Old Globe Theatre in a World Premiere adaptation by translator Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey and director Kirsten Brandt that makes Nora, the Norwegians surrounding her, and Ibsen’s play itself seem considerably younger than their one hundred thirty-four years of age.
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REMEMBRANCE
Sunday, March 31st, 2013
His Protestant son was murdered by an IRA hit squad in the driveway of his father’s Belfast home. Her Catholic son was tortured, then shot to death by a vigilante Protestant street gang. Their late-in-life romance is at the heart of Graham Reid’s powerful 1987 drama Remembrance, not only one of the finest plays to be part of a Theatre 40 season, but quite possibly the best overall production I have seen at Beverly Hills’ premier 99-seat theater.
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ON THE SPECTRUM
Friday, March 29th, 2013
Young man with Asperger syndrome and young woman with autism fall in love to his single mom’s dismay.
Rarely has a play had as Hollywood-ready a “log line” as On The Spectrum, now getting its West Coast Premiere at The Fountain Theatre, and though Ken LaZebnik’s dramedy is not at the level of the stellar production it is being given at the Fountain, a pair of breathtaking lead performances and an extraordinary video/sound design are more than enough put it on every L.A. theater lover’s must-see list.
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MASTER CLASS
Monday, March 25th, 2013
Behind every great voice there must surely be a story, though few great voices have behind them a story as compelling as that of Maria Callas, the Greek soprano known the world over as La Divina, or so L.A. theatergoers will discover as Master Class, Terrence McNally’s Tony-winning Best Play of 1996, returns to our stages in an all-around superb production at Long Beach’s International City 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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