HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND
Sunday, May 1st, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Theatre @ Boston Court’s Southern California Premiere of Fin Kennedy’s How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found has so much going for it, I wish I could say I enjoyed it more. Performances are superb, beginning with a tour de force star turn by Brad Culver. Direction by Nancy Keystone is imaginative and even inspired at times. Design elements, particularly John Zalewski’s striking sound design, are way up at the level of excellence theatergoers have come to expect @ Boston Court. The play was the first ever to win the prestigious John Whiting Award before being staged. British critics were ecstatic at the play’s World Premiere and I expect the Boston Court production will garner equal praise. And yet I failed to be engaged by its story or characters and in the end (and this is something I rarely say), I would have been happier accepting a different press invitation this past Sunday afternoon.
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SPEECH & DEBATE
Saturday, February 19th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Stephen Karam’s comedy Speech & Debate points a webcam lens at three teenage outsiders living up Salem, Oregon way, while at the same time making strong points about hypocritical politicians, “ex-gay” ministries, and the importance of coming out. Having seen two brilliant productions of it, this reviewer finds its current Orange County Premiere at Theatre Out a letdown.
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THE CRADLE WILL ROCK
Thursday, February 17th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Corruption and corporate greed are nothing new to the 21st Century. Composer-playwright Marc Blitzstein wrote about both in The Cradle Will Rock, his 1937 “play in music,” now being revived by the company that won the LA Weekly Award for Musical Of The Year for its first production of it back in 1994.
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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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ISLAND OF BRILLIANCE
Sunday, December 19th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
Eighteen-year-old Evie is reputed to be one of the top students in her New Jersey high school, but you wouldn’t know it from her college interviews. She tells the Princeton interviewer that she applied to the Ivy League school because her guidance counselor “thought I might get in.” She tells the Dartmouth interviewer that he applied there to see if the school is worth attempting suicide for. (Someone she knows tried to off himself when the school rejected him.) As for Yale, she tells the boy next door that she can’t remember whether she applied there or not.
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THE BLUE ROOM
Thursday, December 9th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
When David Hare’s The Blue Room was staged at the Pasadena Playhouse in 2002, it ran about 90 minutes without an intermission. The same play now being presented at The Moth Theatre on Melrose lets out at about 10:50. Even figuring in an 8:10 start time (par for the course in 99-seat L.A. theater) and a 15 minute intermission, that’s a whopping 55 minutes longer—without adding new dialog.
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FDR
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
The Pasadena Playhouse has reopened only nine months after the sad announcement that it was closing its doors for good, news worth celebrating in the streets with fireworks to light up the sky. If only FDR, the production chosen to welcome back Playhouse subscribers and friends, were equally deserving of a celebration.
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THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HEDDA GABLER
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
A crackerjack theatrical design can make the difference between a very good production and a great one, and can sometimes even make a so-so script seem better than it actually is. I loved Jeff Whitty’s surrealistic comedy The Further Adventures Of Hedda Gabler when I caught its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in January of 2006. Having now seen it for the second time at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre, I begin to wonder how much of my enjoyment of Hedda’s adventures in the afterlife came as a result of SCR’s superb set, lighting, and sound design. Take these away from the play, and what ends up on stage is something considerably less successful, despite a committed director and cast.
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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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