EURIPIDES’ HELEN
Friday, September 14th, 2012
Take the greatest legendary beauty of the Ancient World, three of Hollywood’s most glamorous screen legends, the splendor of the Getty Villa’s Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater, the prodigious originality of playwright Nick Salamone, the spellbinding music of David O, and the directorial mastery of Jon Lawrence Rivera, mix all of this together, and the result is Euripides’ Helen, Salamone’s clever, mesmerizing, and oh so entertaining adaptation of the 412 BC play of the same name.
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WAR BRIDE
Monday, August 20th, 2012
When returning WWII G.I. Alvin Rhodes told his mother Catherine he’d be bringing a surprise back to Merced with him, she thought he meant a lovely tea set. About the last thing she was expecting was a Japanese bride. After all, it was only the month before that the “Japs” had surrendered, and as far as Catherine was concerned, they were still our enemy. How dare Alvin play this sick joke on her? How dare he commit treason in this way!
Thus begins Samantha Macher’s highly original and often quite gripping War Bride, now getting its World Premiere production by SkyPilot Theatre, astutely directed and imaginatively choreographed by Nancy Dobbs Owen.
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THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
The facts are cut and dry. On December 21, 1988, PanAm Flight 103 from London to JFK exploded above the village of Lockerbie, Scotland, scattering bodies and debris over 845 square miles, a terrorist bomb hidden inside its front cargo space not only killing all 259 on board but ending the lives of 11 Scots going about about their daily lives in Lockerbie, never suspecting that the sky would soon be quite literally falling upon them. A number of years later, the women of Lockerbie set up a laundry project to wash the 11,000 articles of clothing found amongst the plane’s wreckage, after which the women packed and shipped them to the victims’ families around the world.
Playwright Deborah Brevoort takes these facts and puts a human face on them—to unforgettable effect—in her 2001 drama The Women Of Lockerbie, particularly powerful this summer of 2012 as staged outdoors in the rustic Topanga hills of Theatricum Botanicum—about the closest approximation of the hills of Lockerbie that any American audience is ever likely to get.
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THE PARIS LETTER
Monday, July 30th, 2012
Back in the pre-Stonewall decade when Anton Kilgallen and Sandy Sonnenberg were in their twenties, there were basically two choices for big city gay men. Anton opted for the first, living as “openly” as was possible in the underground world of illegal gay bars and private parties. Sandy chose the second, attempting a pseudo-straight lifestyle by marrying someone of the opposite sex and doing his best to repress whatever same-sex urges might threaten to erupt.
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INCIDENT AT VICHY
Saturday, July 28th, 2012
The mind still boggles and the heart still recoils at the statistics. Nearly 6,000,000 Jews killed, including 90% of the Polish Jewish population, 90% of German and Austrian Jews, and similarly high percentages in the Baltics and Czechoslovakia. If Jews in France fared “better,” with 74% their 350,000 surviving the Holocaust, these figures provided cold comfort to the 90,000 exterminated by the Nazis.
Arthur Miller puts a personal face on a dozen or so of these French victims of Nazi terrorism in his powerful Incident At Vichy, now being revived at the Sierra Madre Playhouse in a proscenium-staged production that comes close to matching what you’d see at the Pasadena Playhouse or any major regional theater, albeit on a smaller scale.
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ALL YOUR HARD WORK
Friday, July 27th, 2012
A decade or so ago, Jim and Mary-Ellen were college lovers, though perhaps not exclusively. Both seemed headed toward success, he in business, she in journalism. Now Jim is racking up those frequent flyer miles, doing business in fifteen cities in ten states, married, the father of a young child, and the owner of a “starter” house he was able to purchase with a $50,000 cash down payment. Mary-Ellen, on the other hand, works 12-hour shifts at Urban Outfitters, lives in a cramped studio apartment, and is just about the only person she knows without a spouse and children, though you could hardly call her celibate …or a teetotaler.
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MACBETH
Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Director extraordinaire Jessica Kubzansky humanizes the murderous Macbeth and his lethal Lady McB in a uniquely powerful production of Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play,” particularly as performed by a mashup of the Antaeus Company’s double-cast ensemble.
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THE EXORCIST
Saturday, July 14th, 2012RECOMMENDED
It takes chutzpah to adapt a horror movie classic for the stage, especially one as iconic as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, one of the highest grossing films ever. Nominated for ten Oscars (and winning two for Adapted Screenplay and for Sound), The Exorcist not only spawned two sequels and a prequel, it was named Scariest Film Of All Time by Entertainment Weekly and Movies.com.
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