SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
Autobiographical solo performances may sometimes seem to be a dime a dozen in L.A. (or at the very least during Fringe Festival season), but when was the last time you saw an autobiographical magic show by one of the finest actors in town?
Unless you’ve caught Albie Selznick’s Smoke And Mirrors, the answer is probably “No”—all the more reason not to miss this hour-and-a-half of mysterious card tricks, furniture and humans levitated without a cord in sight, and handkerchiefs turned into birds of many colors, birds, birds, and more birds, enough to fill a mini-aviary, or at least a very large cage. Add to that an otherworldly Oracle (who’d make a terrific stand up comedienne if only she had legs to stand up on instead of just a gigantic, balloon-shaped head), a human-sized bunny rabbit, and a poignant coming-of-age story and you’ve got one uniquely entertaining show, directed with panache by Paul Millet.
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AMERICAN FIESTA
Sunday, September 30th, 2012
When a self-penned solo performance, the kind that Fringe Festival participants seem ever so fond of, proves so popular that actors other than the original writer get hired to perform it, that’s pretty much a guarantee of something special, or at least this is the case with the Colony Theatre’s latest, Steven Tomlinson’s autobiographical American Fiesta.
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FRUIT FLY
Monday, January 9th, 2012
Leslie Jordan answers the age-old question—“Do gay men really become their mothers?”—in his latest autobiographical one-man show, Fruit Fly, and as anyone who’s ever seen the Chattanooga native in Sordid Lives or on Will And Grace can well imagine, there’s not likely to be a more delightful autobiographical one-man show in any foreseeable future.
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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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DAVID DEAN BOTTRELL MAKES LOVE: A ONE-MAN SHOW
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
As a boy growing up in a state whose motto is “If you can catch it, you can fuck it,” young David Dean Bottrell probably never dreamed that he would one day become a successful actor, comedian and screenwriter, pen a monthly column for MetroSource Magazine and write for the Huffington Post, win seventeen awards for his short film Available Men, be one of the stars of the L.A. stage smash Streep Tease, or direct the current Colony Theatre hit Travels With My Aunt. And even if he had dreamed this impossible dream, he probably never would have imagined that just talking about his life on a nearly bare stage would turn into one of Summer 2011’s hottest tickets.
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DONNA/MADONNA
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1980s, John Paul Karliak always knew he was adopted. What he didn’t figure out until a good deal later was that there wouldn’t be a Mrs. Karliak in his future, if you get my drift. Still, despite young J.P.’s cluelessness to his budding sexual orientation, it must have been hard for his family to mistake the signs: An occasional dress. A running gait like Tinkerbell’s. The ability to quote Auntie Mame as if it were the Bible.
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NO WORD IN GUYANESE FOR ME
Sunday, May 29th, 2011
Anna Khaja returns to the stage in Wendy Graf’s powerful solo piece No Word In Guyanese For Me, the recent Ovation-award winner bringing to vivid life a young Guyanese who discovers after her family’s move to New York City that she is a lesbian—and that there is no word in her native language for the person she is.
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JAMAICA, FAREWELL
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
Check the local theater listings and it seems at times that every performer has an autobiographical solo show up his or her sleeve. Few solo shows, however, ever achieve the success of Debra Ehrhardt’s Jamaica, Farewell, with Rita Wilson (aka Mrs. Tom Hanks) as its above-the-title producer and Joel Zwick, the director of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and every single Hershey Felder one-man-show, at its helm.
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