BANANAS! A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOSEPHINE BAKER
Friday, December 23rd, 2011
When Halle Berry became the first African American to win a Best Actress Academy Award in 2002, she dedicated her golden statuette to a trio of pioneering black performers—Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Diahann Carroll—for opening the door to Berry’s Oscar win. In retrospect, Berry could just have easily added a fourth name to the list, that of Josephine Baker, the first African-American female to star in a major motion picture, the first to perform before an integrated audience in an American concert hall, and the first to see her fame spread throughout the world.
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THE GAYEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER!
Friday, December 23rd, 2011
The old adage that “timing is everything” proves doubly true for the Paul Storiale-directed production of Joe Marshall’s The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! A not yet fully rehearsed opening weekend was hardly the most propitious time for inviting critics to review its West Coast Premiere, and without sufficient rehearsal, the draggy production I saw two weeks ago lacked (among other things) the razor-sharp timing so essential in a screwball comedy. Fortunately, this reviewer’s schedule has permitted a return visit, and I can happily report that this new, improved The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! merits a largely unqualified WOW! What a difference time and timing can make.
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MY THREE ANGELS
Sunday, December 18th, 2011
A trio of convicts transported to 1910 French Guiana prove Christmas guardian angels to an absentminded shopkeeper, his long-suffering wife, and their lovesick daughter in Sam and Bella Spewack’s charming 1953 comedy My Three Angels, delightfully revived for 21st Century audiences by theGROUPrep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre.
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A SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS
Monday, December 5th, 2011RECOMMENDED
That particularly English form of musical entertainment known as panto is back in North Hollywood for the holiday season, terrific news for the kiddies—and for any adults willing to act like a kid for ninety minutes of fractured fairytale fun.
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DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
Several years before Cher responded to Nicolas Cage’s declaration of love with a “Snap out of it!” and a pair of slaps in the now classic romcom Moonstruck, its Oscar-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley gained theatrical fame with Danny And The Deep Blue Sea, a two-character one-act “Apache Dance” performed by a pair of protagonists who make Moonstruck’s Ronny and Loretta seem positively angelic by comparison. These two characters, Roberta and Danny, are now brought to vivid, gutsy, mesmerizing life by Juliet Landau and Matthew J. Williamson in Crown City Theatre Company’s stunning revival of the early ‘80s Shanley gem.
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POSING STRAP PIRATES
Saturday, November 19th, 2011RECOMMENDED
Imagine a Harlequin romance about a nubile young thing kidnapped by a band of dastardly pirates and desired by their villainous captain, who then catches the eye of a studly cabin boy, thereby inspiring a triangle of love and lust. Make all three characters strappingly virile males whose britches hide not panties, boxers, or jockey shorts but rather that flimsy bit of male lingerie known as the “posing strap” and give the whole affair a campy gay sensibility. Do all this and you come up with Posing Strap Pirates, an hour or so of late night weekend (or Thursday night prime time) entertainment now playing at North Hollywood’s Eclectic Theatre.
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SALLY SPECTRE THE MUSICAL
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011RECOMMENDED
Sally Spectre, the heroine of David P. Johnson’s charming if wispy chamber musical of the same name, has lived her life (sorry, make that her death) with a hatchet in her head for the past fifty years, trapped inside the bedroom that was hers during her short time on earth. Though Johnson’s book is vague on just why she’s unable to flee from her room or what exactly will happen if and when she does make her escape, a bunch of terrific performances and some clever, tuneful songs make Sally Spectre The Musical an entertaining hour and fifteen minutes of gothic froth.
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PEACE IN OUR TIME
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
It’s November of 1940 and the folks gathered at The Shy Gazelle are precisely those you’d expect to run into in a London pub just a month after the Battle Of Britain. Gregarious manager Fred Shattock and his affable wife Nora are offering pub regulars their customary warm welcome as they serve the usual libations to entertainer Lyia Viven and her lover George Bourne, magazine editor Chorley Bannister, chums Janet Braid and Alma Broughton, and middle-aged couple Mr. and Mrs. Grainger. Conversation revolves around the usual topics—news of the Grangers’ soldier son, “still there, on the Isle Of Wright;” the “dreadfully negative” nine o’clock BBC Nightly News broadcast; George’s defense of Lyia’s vocal talents against Chorley’s nasty digs, etc.
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