HILLARY AGONISTES
Saturday, May 17th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
The year is 2009, Hillary Clinton is our President, and 65,000,000 people have disappeared across the world. “Who are these people who would just disappear without their clothes?” wonders Hillary. And who (or what) is behind this phenomenon? Is it terrorists? Aliens? The Rapture? Female Chief of Staff Morag advises (in a Scottish brogue), “Aliens is the way to go on this. It defuses the Rapture scenario. Some people can’t bear the stigma that the Lord has passed them over. You have to leave them something to believe in. Certainty soothes.”
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NO EXIT
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
Matthew Hannon and two other grads of LACC’s prestigious Theatre Academy have mounted Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit as a tribute to their late teacher/director Brett Gandy. It is Gandy’s concept which director/star Hannon has remounted in a production of the French existentialist classic playing Tuesdays at the Lounge Theatre.
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CARNAGE, A COMEDY
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
The Actors’ Gang webpage describes their revival of Adam Simon and Tim
Robbins’ Carnage, A Comedy as a “raucous satire about televangelism and
the state of religion in America,” yet when the original production of Carnage
went to New York in 1989, Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote, “There may
have been a more amateurish work than ”Carnage” on a professional stage in
New York this year, but somehow the gods spared me from seeing it.”
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PUTTIN’ ON THE FRITZ
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
Puttin’ On The Fritz, now playing off-nights at Sacred Fools, is a pair of new one-
acts which premiered at the Fritz Blitz of New Plays at San Diego’s Fritz Theater.
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KERR PACKAGE
Sunday, January 13th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
Kerr Package is a program of one-acts by Kerr Seth Lordygan, the best of which is
entitled List, directed by Kevin Fabian. In it, a married couple, Georgie and
Rendell, make a list of celebrities they give each other permission to sleep with.
Georgie’s list includes Steve Carell and George Clooney, while Rendell selects
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Charlize Theron, and a fictitious rock star named Lana
Lenore. When Rendell happens to meet the sexy (and available) Lana, he
makes good on their agreement, only to find that Georgie cannot forgive him.
List moves quickly and cinematically from scene to scene, makes good points
about the differences between the ways men and women regard love and sex,
and could easily be expanded into a full-length one act or even two act play.
Kylie Delre and Kevin Blake are excellent actors who give believable
performances as Rendell and Georgie, and Rachel Castillo has the right sexy
looks and “whatever” attitude to bring Lana to sultry life. Mason Halberg and
Bob Simpson also score in supporting roles, and share a great “surprise!” moment.
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THE DESK SET
Saturday, November 24th, 2007William Marchant’s The Desk Set is an entertaining 1955 Broadway comedy which
revolves around one of the 50s’ biggest fears. No, not fear of communism or of
nuclear war, but rather the fear of the machine replacing man at the workplace.
Here, the machine is a gigantic (especially by today’s standards) computer called
E.M.M.A.R.A.C, nicknamed “Emmy,” and the workplace is the Reference
Department of IBC, a large radio and television broadcasting company in
midtown Manhattan.
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ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE
Friday, November 16th, 2007NOT RECOMMENDED
Imagine a play without a plot or assigned speaking roles. Imagine a script which
does not specify particular locations, simply lines of spoken dialog which the
director can assign to whichever actor he chooses and scenes which take place
wherever the director’s imagination take him. Imagine this kind of play and
you’ve got British playwright Martin Crimp’s Attempts on her Life, the first joint
undertaking of Chris Covics’ Unknown Theater and Bart DeLorenzo’s Evidence
Room.
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THE FASTEST CLOCK IN THE UNIVERSE
Thursday, October 18th, 2007NOT RECOMMENDED
The Fastest Clock in the Universe, by Philip Ridley, is the blackest of black
comedies. Captain Tock, a 50ish bespectacled gent in a black vaguely Chinese
smock and dark trousers, shares an East End of London flat with a much younger
and entirely self-centered hunk named Cougar Glass. Their relationship is
perversely symbiotic. Symbiotic= a close association of animals or plants of different
species that is often, but not always, of mutual benefit. (Emphasis in this case on
the “not of mutual benefit.”) Glass gets adoration from (and gray hairs plucked
by) Tock. Just what Tock gets from Cougar, other than constant humiliation, is
open to debate. Today is the 11th time Cougar is celebrating his 30th birthday,
and he has invited a 15 year old schoolboy as his annual present to himself. When
the schoolboy arrives with his pregnant girlfriend in hand, things get ugly.
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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