THE MORINI STRAD
Monday, November 19th, 2012NOT RECOMMENDED
As any Colony Theatre regular can tell you, Burbank’s premier regional theater has had crowd-pleasing hit after hit with its series of “odd couple” two-character plays, from Rounding Third to Trying to Educating Rita to Visiting Mr. Green to Grace & Glorie to Shooting Star to Old Wicked Songs. That’s why, as a longtime Colony fan who loved each and every one of this magnificent seven, it pains me to report that their latest two-hander, The Morini Strad, failed to capture or hold my attention despite the best efforts of all concerned.
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IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER
Saturday, November 17th, 2012
The gods and goddesses of the West African Yoruba people are transformed into African-Americans living in the projects of San Pere, Louisiana in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s award-winning In The Red And Brown Water, now getting an impressive Los Angeles premiere at the Fountain Theatre.
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INTIMATE APPAREL
Monday, November 12th, 2012
Elegant writing, a fascinating place and time, and an African-American heroine rarely given center-stage status transform Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel from soap opera to Outer Critics Circle Award-winning drama, as Los Angeles audiences can now (re)discover in its impeccable big-stage revival at the Pasadena Playhouse.
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AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
Monday, November 5th, 2012
A mysterious host invites eight guests, each of them a stranger to the others, for an island holiday off the coast of Devon, a pair of married servants in attendance and said host (or hostess?) nowhere to be seen. Does this sound like recipe for murder?
To a diehard Agatha Christie fan, it not only does, it sounds suspiciously like And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians), published first as a novel in 1939 and then adapted for the stage by the author herself in 1943.
Hollywood’s Actors Co-op now revives this Christie gem in a production that makes for as entertaining and suspenseful a mystery thriller as any Christie fan or neophyte could possibly ask for, thanks to incisive direction by Linda Kerns and topnotch performances by an all-around terrific cast.
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HOW TO WRITE A NEW BOOK FOR THE BIBLE
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
I wonder if any son has ever paid greater tribute to his mother than Bill Cain does in How To Write A New Book For The Bible, his extraordinary new play about her death—and her life, told extraordinarily well in its Southern California Premiere at South Coast Repertory.
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A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012
A great big bear of a man stands alone at night in a deserted Boise, Idaho parking lot and repeats and repeats a single word like a cry to heaven. “Now. Now. Now.” The “now” Will is begging for is the moment in which the “dead in Christ” and those who are still alive will be “caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord”—in other words, The Rapture. In the meantime, the Boise newcomer has taken a part-time job at the local Hobby Lobby superstore, the better to get to know teenage cashier Alex, the son he gave up for adoption eighteen years ago.
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COLLECTED STORIES
Sunday, October 21st, 2012
Two of L.A.’s most gifted actresses ignite the stage in The Group Rep’s production of Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize finalist Collected Stories, giving performances every bit as brilliant as one might expect to see on the stages of our finest regional theaters.
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GOOD PEOPLE
Thursday, October 18th, 2012
When a well-known politician recently made some off-the-cuff remarks about a certain 47% of Americans he essentially considers free-loading bums, one American who’d surely have a word or two to say to him would be Margaret Walsh, the protagonist of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, currently America’s most-produced play—and a great one at that, as its San Diego premiere at the Old Globe Theatre makes abundantly clear.
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