LITTLE WOMEN
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
There’s scarcely a girl or woman alive who hasn’t at one time read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Add to that the millions who’ve seen at least one of its filmings, whether 1933’s with Katharine Hepburn as Jo, or 1949’s with June Allyson, or 1994’s with Winona Ryder, and you have a built-in audience for Little Women The Musical. L.A.’s Lyric Theatre scales down the Broadway production to 99-seat theater dimensions (a full orchestra becomes a single piano here), the more intimate setting providing a particularly appropriate fit for Alcott’s family tale. A quartet of talented recent musical theater grads bring the four March sisters to vibrant life, surrounded by an all-around excellent supporting cast to make for an evening of theater sure to enchant not only Little Women’s legion of fans but just about any musical theater aficionado.
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BRIGADOON
Saturday, April 11th, 2009
Anyone wondering where to see great musical theater without having to pay a fortune would do well to check out the USC Theater Department’s upcoming schedule. If the just closed production of Lerner and Lowe’s Brigadoon is any example, USC’s theater kids are some of the best musical theater performers around, and working under famed professionals like director John Rubinstein and choreographer Troy Magino, they are doing sensational work indeed.
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STICK FLY
Friday, April 10th, 2009
The wealthy LeVay family are having a weekend get-together at their Martha’s Vineyard home away from (Manhattan) home. Housekeeper’s daughter Cheryl is removing slipcovers just in time for younger son Kent to arrive with fiancée Taylor, who is awestruck at the home’s opulence. “I was going to marry you for love,” Taylor tells her handsome beau with a smile, “but now I’m going to marry you for money.” Next to arrive is older son Flip, a successful plastic surgeon, soon to be joined by Kimber, his latest girlfriend. Last to show up is patriarch Dr. Joseph LeVay, who greets Taylor with old world manners—a slight bow and a kiss on the hand. Absent from the weekend gathering are Mrs. LeVay and Cheryl’s mother, for reasons that will eventually become clear. Over the next day or two, family secrets will be revealed and no one will prove to be quite the person he or she has seemed on first impression.
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HERE LIES JEREMY TROY
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
About 25 years ago, a young thespian named Tim Dietlein read a 1965 comedy called Here Lies Jeremy Troy and said to himself, “That’s a show I’d like to do someday.” Now, in 2009, Dietlein’s dream has come true in a laugh-out-loud hilarious production of playwright Jack Sharkey’s “forgotten gem.”
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LAND OF THE TIGERS
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Land Of The Tigers is a realm where tigers walk on two legs, wear wigs (some of them powdered), hats (some of them three-cornered) and assorted 18th Century garb—and speak English. It is a land where the only enemy is the dreaded swan, and because “the ‘Swan Alert’ remains as high as ever,” guards are thankfully keeping watch day and night. In Land Of The Tigers, reproduction is strictly controlled, and mating rituals keep bloodlines strong. Thus, when one of the elite, Fang Stalkington, complains to the Tigressional Congress that his sister Sheba is not doing her duty by mating with him, it is serious business indeed. Though Fang has peed on Sheba to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that she belongs to him and him alone, the beauteous Sheba is having none of this. ‘You cannot spray our troubles away,” she growls at him.
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WOMEN OF MANHATTAN
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
30ish best friends Billie, Rhonda Louise, and Judy have gotten together at Rhonda Louise’s beautiful Manhattan apartment for girls’ night. When Billie wonders out loud where the men are, Rhonda reminds her that Billie had said precisely not to invite any men, the whole point of the evening being that “the three of us would just deck out and look great for each other and fuck the men.” “But don’t you feel we’re wasting our gorgeousness on each other?” asks Billie.
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THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Transforming The Manchurian Candidate, one of the most lauded suspense films of the 1960s, into a live stage production is no easy feat. John Frankenheimer’s 1962 tale of a Korean War vet brainwashed into becoming a political assassin was not only brilliant film making but tapped into the Red Scare hysteria that brought about the McCarthy hearings and a bunch of anti-communist films like The Red Menace and I Married A Communist. (Frankenheimer’s film was based on Richard Condon’s 1959 novel.) Though John Lahr’s 1994 stage adaptation ends up closer to Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake than to the original, what’s important to playgoers is that Lahr’s suspense drama accomplishes the rare task of keeping a live theater audience on the edge of their seats from its first scene to its shattering conclusion. Even more noteworthy than the success of the adaptation is the fact that August Viverito and T L Kolman’s The Production Company has managed to squeeze a widescreen movie onto a “matchbook”-sized set with truly impressive results.
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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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