A HOUSE NOT MEANT TO STAND
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
The McCorkles of Tennessee Williams’ A House Not Meant To Stand would seem to have more in common with the trailer trash of Del Shores’ Sordid Lives than with the lost souls of The Glass Menagerie or other early Williams’ plays. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed Tennessee’s last play, now getting its West Coast Premiere nearly thirty years after it first opened in Chicago, so much. That, and the fact that it’s the latest offering by the only Intimate Theater in Los Angeles to win the L.A. Ovation Award for Production Of The Year four times.
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WRINKLES
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
The Fukutani-Komiyamas are your typical middle-class Pasadena family. Mom Nancy is a divorced single mother and successful attorney. Teenaged Jason is a high school student who’d rather listen to his iPod and play video games on his laptop than write the university essay his mom is always on his case about. “Why don’t you just bang me over the head with a blunt object,” retorts his frustrated mom when Jason informs her that his essay is (pointing at head) “up here.” Grandpa Harry shares digs with daughter and grandson, the better to provide Jason with a mature male influence. Yes, the Fukutani-Komiyamas are your typical middle-class Pasadena family with one exception.
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MR. KOLPERT
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
When a play gets a 5-star review in London’s The Guardian yet fails to impress in an intimate Los Angeles production, one can’t help wondering, “What went wrong in the transatlantic transfer?”
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MLLE. GOD
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Though Frank Wedekind’s name may not be as well-known as Bertolt Brecht’s, the German playwright is making a comeback nearly a hundred years after his death, first with the Broadway smash Spring Awakening and now with Nicholas Kazan’s Mlle. God, a contemporary stage adaptation of Wedekind’s Lulu Plays, perhaps best known as the basis for silent film star Louise Brooks’ most famous flick, Pandora’s Box.
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A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
Thursday, January 20th, 2011RECOMMENDED
In the time-honored tradition of “The Show Must Go On,” the gifted students of USC’s justifiably-lauded Musical Theatre Repertory have overcome a major setback (being assigned an unfriendly-to-musicals off-campus venue for their current production) in this entirely student produced, directed, choreographed, and performed revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music.
greedy
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
Some of Hollywood’s busiest and best TV/film actors return to their stage roots in the West Coast Premiere of greedy, Karl Gajdusek’s dryly amusing though frustratingly cryptic dark mystery suspense comedy given about as fine a West Coast Premiere as can be imagined by the talented bunch who call themselves Red Dog Squadron.
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A CHRISTMAS TWIST
Monday, December 27th, 2010
What Blazing Saddles did to the western, what Young Frankenstein did to the
horror movie, what High Anxiety did to Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre, this is what A
Christmas Twist does to Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol … and the result is the
funniest Christmas show of this year’s holiday season.
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CELEBRATE ME HOME 2
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
The second Sunday of the month turned out once again to be an evening to remember when Aaron Jacobs’ Spotlight Cabaret presented its second annual Christmas cabaret—Celebrate Me Home Deux—at downtown L.A.’s Café Metropol.
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