L.A. NOIR UnSCRIPTED
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
They’ve done Jane Austen UnScripted, Tennessee Williams UnScripted, and William Shakespeare UnScripted to rave notices and audience cheers. Impro Theatre now turns its talents to L.A. Noir UnScripted, and the 100% improvised result may well be their very best UnScripted yet.
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THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
Fans of 1930s comedies will want to cheer Actors Co-op’s revival of Philip Barry’s 1939 hit The Philadelphia Story, a title quickly recognized by film buffs as that of the Oscar-winning 1940 movie classic starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart. (Hepburn starred in both stage and screen versions, with the plot of the MGM adaptation sticking much closer to the Broadway original than did, say, the movie versions of You Can’t Take It With You or Stage Door.)
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CRIMES OF THE HEART
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
It’s probably a toss-up as to which group of Southern women are the more famous, the gals who get their hair done at Truvy’s in Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias or the Magrath sisters of Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Crimes Of The Heart. In either case, those with a fondness for Henley’s quirky Mississippi siblings will be happy to know that they are alive and well and performing nightly at Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre.
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HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES
Friday, April 30th, 2010
In the musical theater classic Gypsy, strippers Mazeppa, Electra, and Tessie Tura sing, “You gotta have a gimmick if you wanna get ahead.” No playwright would seem to have taken this advice more seriously than prolific British comedy scribe Alan Ayckbourn, whose hit plays almost always have a gimmick.
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TROG AND CLAY: AN IMAGINED HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC CHAIR
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Michael Vukadinovich’s Trog And Clay: An Imagined History Of The Electric Chair may well be one of the funniest plays ever written about actual events, the ingenious playwright having turned the rivalry between electricity pioneers Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse (which led to the first ever execution by electrocution in the U.S.) into a hilarious fact-based absurdist historical farce.
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FULLY COMMITTED
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
If you haven’t heard that one before, Sam Peliczowski probably has. Sam is, you see, a struggling New York-based actor with the worst restaurant job in the Big Apple. Stuck deep down in a tiny basement cell, Sam is the reservations clerk for one of the city’s most shi-shi établissements. No chance for Sam to be seen by directors, producers, casting people. No chance for him to meet women (or men, if he happens to swing that way). No chance to get even the measliest of tips.
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JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
It’s taken me twenty-eight years to see my first production of 1982’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (and even longer if you count the show’s pre-Broadway incarnations), and now, having finally experienced the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical on the great big stage of the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, it’s rainbow clear to me why the Joseph has become an international phenomenon. The show is one hundred minutes of pure, unadulterated, Technicolor music and fun.
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NINE
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
When Rob Marshall’s movie adaptation of Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston’s Nine came out last year, many reviewers and moviegoers shook their heads. Could this film (rated a mere 6.2 by imdb.com users and a dismal 49/100 by major media reviewers*) actually have been nominated for twelve Tonys and won five (including Best Musical and Best Score) when it debuted as a Broadway musical in 1982? What did the original show have that Marshall’s movie lacked?
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