THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG
Saturday, October 9th, 2010
Two years after Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical Chapter Two chronicled the widowed playwright’s second-chanceat-happiness marriage to Marsha Mason, his They’re Playing Our Song brought to the Broadway stage a fictionalized version of another real-life romance, that of songwriting partners Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager, this time told as a musical comedy featuring a dozen original songs by the selfsame team.
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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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RUINED
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
Playwright Lynn Nottage puts a human face on the ongoing Civil War in the Democratic Republic of Congo in her Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Ruined, now in its West Coast Premiere engagement at the Geffen Playhouse.
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THE BEDROOM WINDOW
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
REVIEW UPDATE:
There’s a reason why Broadway musicals have out-of-town tryouts and weeks of previews before opening to the New York press. Creating a new musical requires the kind of tweaking that only performances in front of live audiences can suggest. Scenes may need to be cut or rewritten, old songs may have to make way for new ones, and cast changes may need to be made.
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TITUS REDUX
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
John Farmanesh-Bocca’s Titus Redux is William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus like you’ve never seen it before. Yes, there’s still rape, mutilation, and two boys cooked in a pie, and much of Shakespeare’s original dialog remains intact. Still, from the moment Tamora responds to Titus’s “I give him you, the noblest that survives, the eldest son of this distressed queen,” with a very contemporary “Fuck you! You stubborn pigheaded asshole,” you know you’re in for something different.
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ALL MY SONS
Saturday, August 21st, 2010
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is my very favorite 20th Century play, one I have now had the good fortune of seeing staged a half-dozen times. Debuting on Broadway less than two years after World War II ended with Japan’s surrender, Miller’s examination of personal responsibility in time of war remains every bit as powerful—and relevant— today, sixty-three years after its New York premiere.
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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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