EQUUS
Saturday, July 4th, 2009
Let’s play a game of word association. I say “Equus” and you say the first thing that pops into your head. Here goes. “Equus.” All right, what was your answer? Was it
a) Horse? b) Richard Burton? c) Psychiatrist? d) Nudity? e) Broadway?
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INSANITY
Sunday, June 28th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Dorian, The Ghost And Mrs. Muir, Lizard, Yo Ho Ho—A Pirate’s Christmas, Pest Control, Insanity. Has any theater company created and staged more world premiere musicals than the NoHo Arts Center Ensemble, and all in the past five years? We’re not talking just world premieres here, but ambitious, big-cast Broadway-style musicals. I somehow doubt that anyone else has a track record to top James J. Mellon and Scott DeTurk’s. No wonder there’s excitement whenever book writer-director Mellon and composer-lyricist DeTurk debut a new show.
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THE UNSEEN
Friday, June 26th, 2009NOT RECOMMENDED
My idea of a perfect theatergoing month would be one in which twenty shows out of twenty would merit a WOW! review. I realize that this would only bolster the erroneous impression that, as one person put it, “Steven Stanley has never met a show he didn’t like,” but I’ve never understood reviewers who consistently pan what they see and then keep going back for more. I go to the theater because, quite frankly, nothing makes me happier.
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THE APPLE TREE
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s The Apple Tree, one of Broadway’s forgotten gems of the mid-60s, gets a small stage revival worth remembering in this charming, funny, tuneful, and sparklingly performed production by North Hollywood’s Crown City Theatre Company.
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THE MUSCLES IN OUR TOES
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
The last time there was a 20th high school reunion at the El Portal Forum Theatre, the returning grads were a quartet of 60s-hits-singing housewives who called themselves The Marvelous Wonderettes. In Stephen Belber’s just opened The Muscles In Our Toes, the returnees are four male buddies and the music providing a soundtrack to their reunion is performed by Culture Club, Eurythmics, and other 1980s icons. Whereas The Marvelous Wonderettes was light and fluffy fun, The Muscles In Our Toes makes for far darker fare, at times shocking, but often hilarious in its own edgy way.
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BREAKING THE CODE
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Superbly directed by Robert Mammana and featuring a tour de force lead performance by M Butterfly’s Sam R. Ross, Breaking The Code is, simply put, must-see theater. Despite its 1930s to 1950s English setting, Hugh Whitemore’s biodrama remains vital and relevant to 21st Century America, both as a reminder of a time not so long ago when a confession of homosexual acts could send a man to prison, and as proof that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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THE COLUMBINE PROJECT
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
Paul Storiale’s The Columbine Project attempts the impossible—to document, explore, and try to make sense of the 1999 massacre of twelve students and one teacher at Columbine High School, outside of Denver, Colorado. Against all odds, The Columbine Project proves a triumph for the writer-producer-director and his cast of twenty-one mostly very young actors. That Storiale has been able not only to explore the hows and whys of that most horrific of days, but that he has also somehow managed to fill his stage with nearly two dozen gifted performers is nothing short of miraculous.
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NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
A serial killer is on the loose in New York, strangling elderly women one by one, and leaving a lipstick kiss on the forehead of each of his victims. Hardly the stuff of musical theater, you might think.
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