ARIAS WITH A TWIST
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
The proscenium of the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater has been reduced to about one-sixth its normal size, your second clue that you’re in for something completely different tonight. (The first clue was the young, trendy, a tad pansexual audience milling around the theater’s lobby, bar, and art gallery pre-performance.) Then, as music from another time, another place fills the auditorium, one reduced-size curtain rises only to reveal another, which opens to reveal yet another and another and another … until finally, you see before you a lifelike tuxedoed marionette coaxing out notes on the trumpet, a sensual, dreamlike tune with a 1940s Latin sound. Stars spin around the scrim which separates the audience from the mini-trumpeteer, colored lights flashing and galaxies exploding. We are told that we’re about to meet “an astrologer, a time-traveler, a polymorph.”
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EQUIVOCATION
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Imagine if you will that on or about the one-year anniversary of 9/11, an emissary from the President Of The United States visited the most popular contemporary American filmmaker (insert whatever name you wish here) with an order—that a movie be made about the events leading up to the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, a movie which would place the blame on Saddam Hussein and his “weapons of mass destruction.” The President, continues his envoy, has himself written a draft of the screenplay, and our filmmaker needs only spice it up with some dialog—and with witches thrown in for good measure. (Oh, and the President can’t be in the flick.) The filmmaker knows that if he makes the movie the President is demanding, he will be telling a deliberate lie, as well as demonizing “enemies” who just may be blameless. On the other hand, to refuse the President’s demands will mean being accused of treason, and punished accordingly.
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NOISES OFF
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
As noted last week, A Noise Within’s current production of Shakespeare’s Richard III proves once again that nobody does the Bard better than “California’s Home For The Classics.” A Noise Within now proves itself equally adept at contemporary British farce in their concurrently running revival of Michael Frayn’s 1982’s Noises Off, the latest (and most recent) of the modern classics ANW intersperses amongst its productions of Shakespeare, Shaw, and The Greeks.
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DAVID BURNHAM CABARET
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
From Fontana farm boy to CLO favorite to Broadway star. That’s the journey David Burnham has been on since his growing-up years spent halfway between San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga, and quite a journey it has been. A little less than six years ago, Burnham was starring down in Long Beach in Musical Theatre West’s production of Hot Mikado, following appearances in MTW’s La Cage Aux Folles and Children Of Eden. He then strutted his dramatic stuff in The Woman In Black at NoHo’s The Road Theatre, one of a long list of pre-Broadway credits. The Great White Way came calling in 2005 when Burnham appeared in the original cast of the multiple-Tony-winning The Light In The Piazza, and when the National Tour played the Ahmanson with Burnham as Fabrizio, it was a fanfare-worthy homecoming for the local boy turned Broadway star. Then came Burnham’s year as Fiyero in the Broadway production of Wicked, all of the above adding up to more than enough reason for Fontana’s favorite son to headline his very own cabaret show at L.A.’s Upright Cabaret.
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LITTLE WOMEN THE BROADWAY MUSICAL
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
Little Women The Broadway Musical has been a favorite of mine since I first heard its tuneful score (music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein) and later saw a performance of the National Tour. Book writer Allan Knee somehow managed to compact Alcott’s 400-plus-word novel into a two-and-a-half hour musical which retains the book’s most memorable moments (Jo’s stealing a Christmas tree from the neighboring Laurence family’s property, jealous Amy burning Jo’s manuscript, Jo’s shame at finding a scorch mark on her gown the night of the big party, etc.) while adding songs which run the gamut from Jo’s feisty “Better” to the bouncy “I’d Be Delighted,” to the rousing Act 1 closer “Astonishing.”
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HAMLET, SHUT UP
Friday, November 20th, 2009
For everyone who’s ever said, “Wouldn’t it be great if Shakespeare didn’t have all that Elizabethan English and iambic pentameter?”, Sacred Fools has concocted the perfect solution. Hamlet Shut Up is the world famous action/ghost/lust/revenge/murder-packed tale of the Prince Of Denmark unsullied by the spoken word—and what a brilliantly conceived and executed concoction it is!
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THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD III
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
No L.A.-area theater company does Shakespeare better than Glendale’s A Noise Within. Fans of the Bard need only check out their latest production, The Tragedy Of King Richard III, for proof positive that ANW is indeed “California’s Home For The Classics.” From its stellar cast of classically trained pros to its masterful direction by Geoff Elliott to its absolutely stunning design, this is a Richard III that’s beautifully acted, brilliantly conceived, and as exciting as any classic Hollywood adventure epic.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
The arrival of Spring Awakening at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is welcome news indeed for anyone who missed the Tony-winning smash in its initial Los Angeles run a year ago. It’s equally exciting news for Spring Awakening fans like myself who simply couldn’t get enough of the Steven Sater/Duncan Sheik musical adaptation of Frank Wedenkind’s groundbreaking 1891 drama the first time around.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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