LANGUAGE ROOMS
Friday, June 15th, 2012
In his dramatic, suspenseful Back Of The Throat, Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi explored the plight of an Americanized young Arab who finds himself caught in the Hitchockean dilemma of being pursued for a crime he did not commit—in this case, of plotting terrorist acts in a post-9/11 world. By making Khaled an entirely likeable boy-next-door type with an American girlfriend and nary the trace of an Arabic accent, El Guindi got his audience firmly on the side of the accused before starting to plant seeds of doubt in our minds. Might Khaled actually be the terrorist he’s accused of being?
Language Rooms, El Guindi’s latest, takes a more comedic approach to the same post-9/11 world, but one no less powerful for the laughter it provokes, and has been brought down to Los Angeles lock, stock, director, cast, designers, and barrel by San Francisco’s Golden Thread Productions.
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LES MISÉRABLES
Thursday, June 14th, 2012
Cameron Mackintosh’s New 25th Anniversary Production Of Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, now playing at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, is not only the most gorgeous Les Miz you’ve ever seen, it’s one of the most gorgeous productions ever, so perfectly realized that it may make you wonder who ever thought this show needed the revolving stage of the London/Broadway original. Then again, designers back in 1985, when Les Misérables opened in London’s West End, could hardly have imagined the technical advances that make this revolutionary return to Victor Hugo-land a reality.
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SHENANDOAH
Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
Musical Theatre Guild closes its strongest season in years with an imaginatively staged, powerfully performed “concert staged reading” of the 1975 Broadway hit Shenandoah.
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HAIR
Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
A 2006 Cal State Northridge production of the 1960s Broadway smash Hair so impacted the student playing Woof that when several years later he established his own theater company, he named it theTRIBE Productions, after the musical’s band of anti-war, pro-peace-&-love hippies who called themselves “The Tribe.”
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THE LONG WEEKEND
Monday, June 11th, 2012
The Long Weekend is one heck of a dull title for a play as hilarious and cleverly written as the one now getting its West Coast Premiere at Theatre 40. Then again, if you’re Canada’s most produced playwright whose 38 scripts receive an average of 150 productions a year, it probably doesn’t matter Up North what you call each new one, your fellow Canadians will turn out in droves for it. Still, for us Americans who may not know the difference between Norm Foster, Jodie Foster, Cheers’ Norm Peterson, or Foster Farms, the title The Long Weekend suggests a dreary dramatic piece, when in fact Foster’s 1994 two-acter is a tantalizing comedic gem of a play, terrifically performed at Theatre 40 by its cast of four and directed with verve by the prolific Bruce Gray.
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THE MUSIC MAN
Sunday, June 10th, 2012
Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre welcomes the upcoming Independence Day holiday with a terrific revival of The Music Man, one of the three longest-running musicals of the 1950s and one of the best Broadway shows ever. Refreshingly sophisticated, surprisingly deep, and more than a tad acidic at times, Meredith Willson’s self-described “valentine” to his home state of Iowa turns out to be far from the saccharine musical some have accused it of being
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VERY STILL AND HARD TO SEE
Saturday, June 9th, 2012
The ghosts are deceased and (relatively) well and haunting the hotel where Steve Yockey has set Very Still And Hard To See, his World Premiere Scary Play and the latest offering from August Viverito and T L Kolman’s The Production Company.
The theatrical equivalent of Disneyland’s Space Mountain, i.e. equal parts excitement, terror, and glee, Very Still And Hard To See provides thrills galore under Michael Matthews’ masterful direction.
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THE SLEEPER
Friday, June 8th, 2012
Among the many changes the events of 9/11 have brought about in American life is the new crop of words we’ve seen added to our daily lexicon, not the least of which is the term 9/11. Foreign words have become part of our vocabulary. Old words have been combined to create new phrases. Network news broadcasts have given us one media slogan after another. Who knew what a jihad was before the “axis of evil” launched its “Attack On America”? Even everyday words have acquired new meanings. Take the colors “blue,” “yellow,” “orange,” and “red,” no longer harmless hues but each one more frightening than the previous when modifying the word “alert.” Take too the word “sleeper,” once merely “a person or animal who is asleep” or perhaps a railroad sleeping car, now considerably more sinister in this post-9/11 world.
It’s this newer, scarier “sleeper” that playwright Catherine Butterfield has in mind in her 2004 comedy The Sleeper, now getting a sensational Los Angeles premiere by North Hollywood’s Theatre Tribe.
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