OEDIPUS EL REY
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
Where so-called “edgy” or “experimental” theater is concerned, the line between brilliant and pretentious is a fine one indeed, and in this reviewer’s experience at least, the latter is more often the case than the former. That’s why it’s such a pleasure to report that Theatre @ Boston Court’s production of Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey is out-and-out brilliant theater, even for playgoers whose tastes run, as mine do, more toward the traditional.
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THE DIVINERS
Saturday, March 6th, 2010RECOMMENDED
Don’t go expecting a happy ending in Jim Leonard, Jr.’s The Diviners. The play’s prologue reveals Buddy Layman’s fate from the get-go. “He’s dead now for certain. He’s passed on beyond us. The idiot boy is dead. Buddy Layman’s gone.”
MEN OF TORTUGA
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
In a stylish but sterile white office suite, three well-dressed men are discussing what appears to be an assassination plot with a rather scruffy, tattooed visitor whom one surmises to be the prospective assassin. The latter has qualms, not about the equipment he’ll be using, but about the pane of glass he’ll have to be shooting through. The window could affect the trajectory, he explains, adding that even humidity can affect a bullet’s course. “I’d have to say you have a low chance of success,” he informs the others. Since neither the time nor the place of the assassination can be changed, he concludes that a rifle is clearly not the answer. “If you want to do it, you’ll have to bomb the whole room,” he suggests. Maybe do it with a missile? The oldest of the three plotters has an even better idea—to put someone in the room who is willing to pay the price. He then volunteers to be that man.
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WIT
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
To paraphrase English poet John Donne, Death is not “too proud” to come knocking on 50-year-old Vivian Bearing’s door in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, now making a return visit to Los Angeles in a production by Actors Co-op that simply could not be better.
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THE UNEXPECTED MAN
Saturday, February 27th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
A middle-aged man and woman are strangers seated across the aisle from each other on a train. The man is Paul Parsky, famed novelist and author of a The Unexpected Man, among numerous other titles. The woman is Martha, a Parsky admirer who just happens to be halfway through reading The Unexpected Man, a copy of which she carries in her purse. For the next ninety minutes or so, Paul and Martha reveal their thoughts in a series of inner monologs before finally engaging in brief conversation.
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ANOTHER VERMEER
Saturday, February 27th, 2010RECOMMENDED
Art forger Han van Meegeren has been imprisoned by the Dutch following the end of World War II for having allegedly sold a beloved national treasure—an original Vermeer—to Nazi Reich Marshall Hermann Goering. His defense? That he was in fact a patriot who saved many Dutch lives. The painting, he asserts, was one he had forged, and the fortune Goering paid for it ($7 million in today’s currency) was money that otherwise would have gone into the war effort. Criminal or patriot? Artist or swindler?
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SIDHE
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
A hunky young Irishman and his pretty but droopy young wife arrive at a dark, dingy Chicago apartment for a “look-see.” Since they’ve come baggage in hand, clearly, they’re planning on staying. No matter that the “semi-furnished” flat has only a sofa and a floor lamp. No matter that Conall and Jackie have no references. “Give me some cash, I’ll give you the keys, and then I’ll be out of your way,” offers Louise, the dour 30something landlady, and when the Irishman insists that “I’m not putting this many dollars in your hand without some metal in mine,” the exchange of cash and keys brings Louise and her new renter flirtatiously close. Even without witnessing this, Jackie is not at all happy about Conall’s decision to rent Louise’s upstairs apartment. “She looked at us,” she cautions the Irishman, and again, “She looked at us!”
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THE COLUMBINE PROJECT
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Of all the Los Angeles theater success stories of 2009, perhaps none was greater than that of The Columbine Project, Paul Storiale’s meticulously researched docudrama about the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. World premiering last April at the 48-seat Avery Schreiber theater in North Hollywood, The Columbine Project was extended twice before transferring to off-Broadway with unprecedented swiftness (and with the entire L.A. cast intact). Its July through October New York run at the Actors Temple Theatre was praised by the prestigious New Yorker magazine as a production which “fills the tiny, funky theatre with talent and gravity.” In December, the original North Hollywood production was awarded five ADA (Artistic Director Achievement) Awards including a Best Director award for its creator/writer/director Paul Storiale.
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