THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA
Saturday, November 10th, 2012
Two men facing imminent death from a terminal illness and a doctor with the means to save only one of them. Who will live? Who will die?
If this sounds like a made-for-TV movie or an episode of a weekly medical drama, think again. It’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, George Bernard Shaw’s smart, funny, still thought-provoking 1906 comedy and the latest classic to be revived—smashingly—by A Noise Within.
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CYMBELINE
Saturday, October 27th, 2012
A plucky young heroine who dons male apparel as disguise. A villain who plots to make our hero suspect his young wife of adultery. A potion that simulates death without that pesky fatal result. A royal father who rejects his beloved daughter. Children separated at birth and reunited at long last in adulthood. An ambitious queen without a moral scruple to her name. A bit of Ancient Roman history thrown in for good measure.
Care to venture a guess as to which Shakespeare play I’m talking about?
The answer, as any true Shakespeare buff will surely tell you, is neither As You Like it, Othello, Romeo And Juliet, King Lear, A Comedy Of Errors, Hamlet, or Antony And Cleopatra (though the abovementioned plot threads appear to have been borrowed from this half-dozen or so of Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits). No, it’s Cymbeline, reputedly Shakespeare’s fifth-from-last play, originally classified as a tragedy, later redubbed a romance, and as performed at A Noise Within under the truly inspired direction of Bart DeLorenzo, about as hilarious a comedic romp as any theatergoer seeking escapist entertainment could wish for.
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SLICE
Sunday, October 21st, 2012
“Hel-lo… It’s the 14th Century!” an exasperated Aiko Matsuda reminds her ne’er-do-well son Kai, invisible phone receiver to her ear, in Paul Kikuchi’s World Premiere screwball comedy Slice, and she’s not kidding. It really is the Age Of The Samurai in Japan, and 20something Kai can’t seem to get with the program. Mom is still waiting for Kai to throw out the trash, “which I asked you to do three days ago,” but Kai would rather while away the hours designing the world’s greatest sword, one which Lord Ito is bound to love … which will mean he’ll endorse it … which will mean that every samurai will want one! “It’s my duty as your mother to give you a sanity check,” declares Aiko in no uncertain terms. “Are you an idiot?!”
If this all sounds too sitcom silly for words, then you should probably skip Slice and opt for whatever Noël Coward revival might be playing locally. If, on the other hand, you simply want to spend a laugh-filled seventy minutes being entertained by a castful of zanies as seen through the eyes of a Japanese-American Mel Brooks, then check out the latest from the playwright who brought us Ixnay and Wrinkles. (Kikuchi does like those one-word titles.)
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CREATION
Monday, October 15th, 2012
Ian and Sarah have had what would seem to be the perfect marriage, not only of hearts but of minds, his work as an evolutionary biologist complimenting hers as a pathologist with none of that religious mumbo-jumbo attached. Then one night Ian gets struck by lightning and all that changes in an instant.
Thus begins Kathryn Walat’s intriguing, thought-provoking new drama Creation, now getting its World Premiere in a production that makes it abundantly clear why The Theatre @ Boston Court is as top-tier as 99-Seat-Plan theater gets.
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UNDER MY SKIN
Thursday, September 20th, 2012
I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for body-swapping flicks. Name a title and I’ve probably seen it. All Of Me. 13 Going On 30. 17 Again. 18 Again! Like Father, Like Son. Big. Chances Are. Vice Versa. Heaven Can Wait. Freaky Friday. Switch. Prelude To A Kiss. Have a character suddenly find him or herself inhabiting someone else’s body or an older or younger version of the one he or she already has—and I am in for the duration, knowing that there’ll be laughter, romance, and maybe even a tear or two as life lessons are learned all the way up to the moment when—inevitably—the switch back is made.
That’s probably why I proved such a sucker for the Pasadena Playhouse’s season opener Under My Skin, a body-swapping comedy by Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser that takes the genre from screen to stage to hilarious effect, even as it updates it to our 2012 world and gives it a particularly inspired twist that only one of the above movies has even vaguely attempted.
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AUGUST WILSON’S JITNEY
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Back in 1979 when it was first written, August Wilson’s Jitney was a contemporary slice of African-American life as lived in Pittsburg, PA, and the first of a projected series of ten plays, each set in a different 20th Century decade. By the time Wilson completed his ambitious labor in 2005 with Radio Golf (set in the ‘90s), Jitney had morphed into a period piece, perhaps even more noteworthy for the look back in time it now offered.
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THE CHILDREN
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
When Susan Smith confessed to having drowned her two small children back in 1994, it was hard not to draw parallels between this murderous mom of today and that lethal lady of mythology known as Medea. Though their motives were different (Susan wanted to get rid of her kids, the better to fool around with a man who didn’t want a “ready-made” family; Medea killed hers to punish her husband for an adulterous affair), the results were tragically the same.
Perhaps inspired by this tale as old as Greek tragedy and as recent as today’s headlines, playwright Michael Elyanow has written an extraordinary (if a tad too intricate) new play, The Children, which Theatre @ Boston Court is now World Premiering under the inspired direction of Jessica Kubzanky.
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THE HEIRESS
Monday, April 30th, 2012
The Heiress may have reached the ripe old age of sixty-five, but you’d hardly know it from the latest revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s 1947 Broadway hit, adapted from Henry James’ classic novel Washington Square and currently engrossing and delighting audiences in equal measure at the Pasadena Playhouse.
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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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