APPLE
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Theatre 40 offers its subscribers something out of the ordinary in their latest production, the Los Angeles premiere of Vern Thiessen’s Apple. Far more “theatrical” than their customary bill of fare, and rated R for liberal use of the “F” word, Apple is the kind of drama that could easily have become a “Disease Play Of The Week” if not for its unusual structure/staging and a trio of accomplished performances.
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THE SEAFARER
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009NOT RECOMMENDED
Once in a great while, I see a show which, despite first class acting, direction and design, just doesn’t work for me. This is the case with Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, now playing at the Geffen. The London Observer called The Seafarer “succinct, startling and eerie, and the funniest McPherson play to date,” and Ben Brantley of the New York Times wrote about the Broadway production, “McPherson is quite possibly the finest playwright of his generation.” As someone who would prefer all his theatergoing to provoke wows, I wish I could understand their enthusiasm.
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THE MANOR
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
Decades before Watergate began an endless and ongoing series of political scandals bearing the suffix -gate (Irangate, Katrinagate, Monicagate, Nannygate, and the recent Troopergate, to name just a few), the biggest and most shocking scandal of its time was the 1920s’ Teapot Dome scandal. (Teapotgate? Domegate? Teapotdomegate?) The scandal began with oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny’s interest-free $100,000 loan to U.S. Secretary Of The Interior Albert B. Fall (the equivalent of over $1,000,000 in today’s currency!). Not long after that transaction, Fall leased (without competitive bidding) 32,000 acres of oil-rich government-owned land to Doheny.
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MISALLIANCE
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance comes sparklingly alive in Rosalind Productions’ smashing revival of his 1910 comedy.
Unlike the recently reviewed “all-talk, no-action” Candida, Misalliance has enough unexpected plot twists to perk up even the most easily bored theatergoer and enough couplings and un-couplings to make this a precursor of the contemporary “romantic comedy.” It’s not every Shaw play that has eight wedding proposals, a handsome young gun-toting anarchist hiding in a portable Turkish bath, and an airplane crash-landing into the garden of an English country mansion.
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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
I’ve been known to say that I’m not the world’s biggest Shakespeare fan. In last December’s review of Love’s Labor’s Lost, I confessed that “I often get lost in his convoluted plots, whole chunks of dialog whizzing past me or over my head without really sinking in.” Well, just as I thoroughly enjoyed Love’s Labor’s Lost last December, I’m happy to report that I absolutely loved The Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and Circus Theatrical’s new production of The Taming Of The Shrew. It only took the first lines of dialog for me to have that “Eureka!” moment of thinking, “Wow, I’m actually understanding everything they’re saying, and it’s funny to boot!” Precisely what audiences in Shakespeare’s time must have been thinking when Shakespeare’s verse was not that far removed from actual contemporary speech.
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DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Adapting Double Indemnity for a 99-seat theater could easily prove disastrous. Make the wrong directorial, acting, or design choices and the enterprise could easily turn into an unintentional sequel to Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Steve Martin’s brilliant parody of film noir.
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TIME STANDS STILL
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends held a microscope up to the lives of two married couples, a foursome of best friends for a decade. Throughout the course of the play’s two acts, the audience sees the two couples as they see one another … and as they see themselves in the privacy of their own homes.
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TAKING STEPS
Friday, February 6th, 2009RECOMMENDED
With over seventy plays under his belt, Alan Ayckbourn is one of the most prolific (and successful) playwrights ever. He’s also one of the funniest and most original. It’s said that each of his plays has a gimmick. The Norman Conquests trilogy are three separate plays, each with the same set of characters, each taking place on the same weekend, each in a different part of a English country home. Amazingly, each play tells a complete story and can be seen in any order without the need to see either of the others. How The Other Half Loves superimposes two neighboring houses on the same set, so that characters standing within touching distance are often in two completely different locations. Taking Steps, currently at the Odyssey Theater, has a somewhat similar conceit. It places all three stories of a London home (“The Pines”) at the same stage level with a pair of staircases (one of them spiral) on which actors “ascend” or “descend” without ever moving up or down even an inch. With characters slamming doors and barely missing running into each other, this British farce is amusing indeed.
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