THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Transforming The Manchurian Candidate, one of the most lauded suspense films of the 1960s, into a live stage production is no easy feat. John Frankenheimer’s 1962 tale of a Korean War vet brainwashed into becoming a political assassin was not only brilliant film making but tapped into the Red Scare hysteria that brought about the McCarthy hearings and a bunch of anti-communist films like The Red Menace and I Married A Communist. (Frankenheimer’s film was based on Richard Condon’s 1959 novel.) Though John Lahr’s 1994 stage adaptation ends up closer to Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake than to the original, what’s important to playgoers is that Lahr’s suspense drama accomplishes the rare task of keeping a live theater audience on the edge of their seats from its first scene to its shattering conclusion. Even more noteworthy than the success of the adaptation is the fact that August Viverito and T L Kolman’s The Production Company has managed to squeeze a widescreen movie onto a “matchbook”-sized set with truly impressive results.
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GHOSTS
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
The world hasn’t changed all that much in the 127 years since Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts was first performed. As the recent election proved, there are still people who point the finger of condemnation at those who break what they call God’s rules and those with a more humanistic point of view.
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THE MANOR
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
Decades before Watergate began an endless and ongoing series of political scandals bearing the suffix -gate (Irangate, Katrinagate, Monicagate, Nannygate, and the recent Troopergate, to name just a few), the biggest and most shocking scandal of its time was the 1920s’ Teapot Dome scandal. (Teapotgate? Domegate? Teapotdomegate?) The scandal began with oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny’s interest-free $100,000 loan to U.S. Secretary Of The Interior Albert B. Fall (the equivalent of over $1,000,000 in today’s currency!). Not long after that transaction, Fall leased (without competitive bidding) 32,000 acres of oil-rich government-owned land to Doheny.
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THE PRODIGAL FATHER
Friday, March 27th, 2009
In Larry Dean Harris’s world premiere dramedy The Prodigal Father, the Celebration Theatre offers its LGBT audience its best production since last Fall’s Porcelain, not coincidentally directed by Porcelain’s Michael Matthews, fresh off the much lauded The Jazz Age.
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FACING EAST
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
The religious bigotry that led in large measure to the passage of Prop 8 last November is given a human face in Carol Lynn Pearson’s powerful one-act play, Facing East, now being brought beautifully to life by San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre.
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THE BIG FUNK
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
If ever there was a stage/film writer whose work defies easy categorization, it’s John Patrick Shanley. Films like Moonstruck and Joe And The Volcano are fanciful, quirky romances. Recent Shanley plays like Doubt and Defiance are straight-forward albeit complex looks at the “closed societies” of the convent and the military. Earlier theatrical works run the gamut from the dark romantic eroticism of Danny And The Deep Blue Sea to the bizarre surrealism of The Dreamer Examines His Pillow and Beggars In The House Of Plenty.
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TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
Tennessee Williams was a complicated man, to say the least. Not the nicest person to be around. Putting it mildly, he was a screwed-up mess, or at least that’s how he comes across in Joe Besecker’s Tennessee In The Summer. Still, there are far less interesting people to spend an hour and a half with than the multi-award-winning playwright, especially as brought to vivid and complex life by Dan Alemshah in the ”member-initiated production” currently playing Tuesdays through Thursdays at West Coast Ensemble under Justin French’s assured direction.
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DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Adapting Double Indemnity for a 99-seat theater could easily prove disastrous. Make the wrong directorial, acting, or design choices and the enterprise could easily turn into an unintentional sequel to Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Steve Martin’s brilliant parody of film noir.
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