TREE
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
The last thing Louisianan Didi Marcantel expects to find soon after the death of her father is a bunch of letters written to him over forty-years ago … love letters addressed to a woman he knew while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. Even more surprising is the discovery that her Caucasian father’s one-time lover was African American—back in the days when Jim Crow laws made interracial relationships not only “improper” but illegal as well. Tripling the effect of this surprise is the news that the union between Ray Marcantel and his beloved Jessalyn produced a child, Didi’s now 46-year-old half-brother Leo Price, father of Didi’s 20ish half-niece JJ.
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WAIT UNTIL DARK
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
The cell phone may well be the third-greatest invention of the past fifty years, right after the home computer and the Internet. Most of us look back at the pre-cellular 1980s (and before) and think, “How did we ever survive without them?” On the other hand, it’s fortunate indeed for lovers of classic stage thrillers that playwright Frederick Knott lived most of his life in a mostly cell phone-free 20th Century. How could Knott have written 1952’s Dial M For Murder had Margot Wendice had a cell phone in her purse or pocket? 1966’s Wait Until Dark is even harder to imagine in a cell phone age. Knott’s thriller about a blind New York City newlywed targeted by a trio of thugs in search of a heroin-filled doll they believe to be hidden somewhere in her walk-down flat is absolutely dependent on there being only one land-line phone in the apartment and a (now virtually non-existent) phone booth on a nearby corner.
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DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Theatre 40 undertakes something out of the ordinary in presenting the Los Angeles premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, an experimental theater-style adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s classic of psychological suspense. Though Hatcher’s take on the Jekyll/Hyde tale proves problematic, an all-around fine cast under Jeff G. Rack’s frequently ingenious direction, as well as some particularly striking design elements, make this at the very least an interesting venture for Beverly Hills’ premier theater company. (It may also be the first time you’ve heard the title character’s surname pronounced JEE-kul. Apparently we’ve been getting it wrong till now.)
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BENT
Sunday, November 1st, 2009RECOMMENDED
With anti-gay violence spiraling throughout the world, the time seems apt indeed for Diversionary Theatre’s thirtieth-anniversary revival of Martin Sherman’s gut-wrenching Holocaust drama Bent. Though occasionally hampered by some problematic technical/design elements, this beautifully acted production is a powerful reminder of our not-so-distant past, and of the dangers of anti-gay bigotry gone amok.
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HAMLET
Friday, October 30th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Since William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is considered by many to be the greatest play ever written, with just about every major stage actor having at one time or other tackled its title role, it’s noteworthy to say the least whenever a theater company takes on the challenge of staging it. John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes, and Broadway’s latest Hamlet, Jude Law, are hard acts to follow. Nevertheless, on a shoestring budget and without a single “name” in their cast, the Knightsbridge Theatre’s National American Shakespeare Company has staged a highly commendable Hamlet featuring excellent work by a young actor named Joshua Hayden as the Prince Of Denmark.
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
How do you adapt a 550+ page novel like Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment for the stage? If you’re playwriting team Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus, you pare it down to ninety minutes with a cast of three actors to play all the characters. Well, not actually all of them. Of the two-dozen or so major roles in the Russian classic, Campbell and Columbus have chosen the nine they consider most important, given one actor the pivotal role of Raskolnikov the student/thief/murderer, and divvied up the remaining eight roles between the other two cast members.
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BETTER ANGELS
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
An elderly man enters from the back of the theater, climbs slowly onto the stage, and apologizes for his late arrival. Pointing to a star-spangled banner framed upstage center, he declares, “A beautiful flag, is it not?,” adding, “Forty-five stars.” (Program notes give the year as 1909.) This elderly man, John Hay, informs us that he is going to tell us a story … about “a man, a lady, and a man whose secretary I was. The lady will be new to you, but the man will be as familiar to you as the penny in your pocket.”
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AS WHITE AS O
Friday, October 23rd, 2009RECOMMENDED
Synesthesia is a neurological condition involving an involuntary cross-wiring of the senses, in which people may taste what they feel, smell what they touch, and see letters in color, something like this: 
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