THE HOUSE OF BESARAB
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Fans of those 1960s Hammer Films horror classics like Dracula: Prince Of Darkness, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, and Taste The Blood Of Dracula, all starring Christopher Lee as the blood-sucking Count, will be in Hammer Horror Heaven at The House Of Besarab, now playing at the historic Hollywood American Legion Post 43. Though Terance Duddy and Theodore Ott’s adaptation of the classic Bram Stoker tale does not set out to be Shakespeare, then again, neither did those Hammer screenplays by Jimmy Sangster and John Elder. What lifted the Technicolor/Techniscope extravaganzas out of the ordinary were their stellar casts (Christopher Lee later became SirChristopher Lee, thank you very much) and their lush settings.
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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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SHERLOCK’S LAST CASE
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
The world’s most famous detective takes center stage in Charles Marowitz’s Sherlock’s Last Case, a delightful, clever cross between spoof and homage now playing at Hollywood’s Actors Co-op Theatre. Under Jeremy Lewit’s oh-so ingenious direction, this comic tribute to Baker Street’s sleuth extraordinaire is a winner from its imaginative opening to its deliciously satisfying finale.
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THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Begin as your inspiration with Alfred Hitchcock & Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. (A young woman arrives at a grand and stately manor, the second wife of its handsome owner, only to be surrounded by memories of wife number one, particularly those brought up by the mansion’s housekeeper.) Add a smidgen of The Werewolf. (Among the household staff is a hunchback swineherd who turns half man/half wolf whenever there’s a full moon.) Spice with a dash of Dracula. (Another household worker is rumored to be one of those “beings who never die,” and we all know what that means.) Sprinkle in a tad of The Mummy. (Our widowed, remarried hero journeys to Cairo where his presence brings a long-dead Egyptian you-know-what back to life.) Mix all this together and the resulting soufflé is Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery Of Irma Vep, a hilarious homage to 1930s/40s Hollywood melodrama.
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BIG RIVER
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
Actors Co-op + Richard Israel + Big River = Theater Magic.
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NAKED BOYS SINGING
Friday, September 25th, 2009
It was just over ten years ago that theater-maker extraordinaire Robert Schrock was struck with quite possibly the most brilliant idea of his lifetime. If nudity, particularly of the male variety, filled theater seats, why not create a show in which every single actor performs naked, and not just brief blink-and-you-miss it full frontal flashes, but for virtually the entirety of the production? And since the gays love their musical theater more than just about any other genre, why not make this new show a musical revue? Finally, why not make this a revue about nudity, so that the naked bodies would be integral to the show and not simply gratuitous?
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F*CKING MEN
Friday, September 11th, 2009
With a title like F*cking Men and the promise of full frontal male nudity, the latest Celebration Theatre production will have no problem attracting audiences. Joe DiPietro’s modern gay twist on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1900 classic La Ronde has been filling seats in London for the past two years and counting. What WeHo theatergoers will be getting, however, is much more than merely a sexually explicit title and some briefly viewed private parts. DiPietro’s play, particularly as directed here by the justly admired Calvin Remsberg, is a witty, perceptive, absolutely engrossing look at gay relationships, both sexual and romantic. F*cking Men says much about the way gay men meet and mate, but audiences of either sex or any sexual orientation are likely to recognize themselves in at least one of DiPietro’s diverse cast of characters.
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BLOCK NINE
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
If ever a production could be called unique, then Tom Stanczyk’s Block Nine is just that production. Press materials describe it as “an unapologetically same-sex, retro-noir 1930s gangster homage” and “an exploration of sexuality, gender, stereotype, romance and aggression (in) an underworld full of guns, jail breaks, booze and bodies.” How’sthat for something out of the ordinary?
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