BEDROOM FARCE
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Alan Ayckbourn is back at the Odyssey Theatre, the British playwright’s West Los Angeles “home away from home,” with his 1975 smash Bedroom Farce, While not exactly a farce per se (there are no slamming doors or mistaken identities), Bedroom Farce nonetheless provides two hours of frothy fun, particularly in its wild-and-crazy second act.
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NEVERWONDERLAND
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Imagine a world in which Peter Pan and Alice are brother and sister, he off to his Neverland, she into her Wonderland, the entire tale imagined in dance—and you have some idea of Boom Kat Dance Theatre’s NeverWonderLand, as gorgeous an evening of music and visual imagery as I’ve seen since Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands.
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CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Monday, July 19th, 2010
How’s this for a clever idea? Gather a bunch of famous performers and have each one read a passage from the autobiography of a famous person, for example Brooke Shields reading from Touch Me: The [Autobiographical] Poems Of Suzanne Somers, emoting poetic gems like “we were making wild and crazy love before the ice had settled in our drinks … though I can barely remember your name …” And that’s only the start of ninety minutes of non-stop fun.
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BECKY’S NEW CAR
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
“When a woman says she wants new shoes, what she really wants is a new job. When she says she wants a new house, what she really wants is a new husband. And when she says she wants a new car, what she really wants is a new life.”
Imparting these words of wisdom is Rebecca (Becky) Foster, middle-aged wife and mother and the title character of Steven Dietz’s Becky’s New Car, now getting a splendid Southern California Premiere production at Venice’s Pacific Resident Theatre.
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A CHORUS LINE
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
Try to think of a musical where the hopes, fears, challenges, and dreams of a dozen and a half characters are explored in dialog, song, and dance … and chances are the first (and possibly only) show that will come to mind is A Chorus Line, the first Broadway musical to explore the intimate stories of Broadway’s “gypsies”—while dealing with race and sexuality and featuring big, flashy production numbers to boot. Just as Oklahoma! and West Side Story revolutionized Broadway in the 1940s and ‘50, so too did A Chorus Line change the face of musical theater two decades later.
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AGATHA CHRISTIE’S BLACK COFFEE
Monday, June 7th, 2010
Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot give Theatre 40 one of its best productions with the Queen Of Crime’s classic mystery thriller Black Coffee, one which delivers at least as many laughs as thrills, the entire cast delivering sparkling performances with just the right amount of tongue in cheek.
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SARAH, SARAH
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
“How often do you see a comedy that’s not only consistently hilarious but is also a work of real substance, a play that makes you both laugh and think at the same time? Not often, I’d venture to guess.”
Thus began my review of Daniel Goldfarb’s Modern Orthodox a little under three years ago, and the same can be said of the playwright’s Sarah, Sarah, now delighting audiences as part of West Coast Jewish Theatre’s 2009-10 season.
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THE ICE-BREAKER
Sunday, May 16th, 2010RECOMMENDED
Global warming is both a matter of scientific concern and a metaphor for Sonia and Lawrence’s relationship in David Rambo’s The Ice-Breaker, now playing at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40. Though ultimately too talky to hold this reviewer’s attention as much as I would have liked, the production is distinguished by fine acting, direction, and design.
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