DINNER WITH FRIENDS
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
“You never know what couples are like when they’re alone.”
Thus speaks one of the characters in Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends, a play which allows us, the audience, to see what its two couples are like behind closed doors. Like flies on the fourth wall, we observe Gabe and Karen’s (and Tom and Beth’s) most private moments. We also see each couple as they see the other, and what they see is often quite different from the other couple’s intimate reality.
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CORPUS CHRISTI
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
MCCV’s brilliantly directed and exquisitely performed production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi is currently thrilling audiences at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, moving them to laughter and tears as it did the many Southern (and Northern) Californians who saw it over the course of its one year journey to Scotland.
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OUT OF THIS WORLD
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Here’s some great news for Cole Porter fans! Even his lesser known musicals are now being given new life by writers who are fashioning fresh new books to fit the fabulous Porter songs. David Lee’s revisal of Can-Can at the Pasadena Playhouse last year won kudos and awards galore. MTW is beginning its 2008-9 season with a newly rewritten Silk Stockings. And MTG (the Musical Theatre Guild) has just presented an absolutely smashing concert staged reading of one of the great Mr. Porter’s least familiar musicals, Out Of This World, featuring a revised book by Greg MacKellan.
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THE ANDREWS BROTHERS
Sunday, April 20th, 2008
Musical Theatre West has come up with the perfect musical for those who found last year’s Altar Boyz a bit too young and edgy for their tastes. In fact, the highly entertaining The Andrews Brothers is the kind of show which the older you are, the more you will love.
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I DO! I DO!
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
If ever there was a musical which relies on its stars and director to work, it’s I Do! I Do! Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s adaptation of Jan de Hartog’s two-character The Fourposter follows 50 years of Michael and Agnes’ marriage, from their wedding day and night in 1898 to the day they vacate their family home in 1948. Without the right team behind it, the show can be a bit of a bore, as a 99-seat production of it proved a few years back. But with a stellar trio like Broadway leading players Brad Little and Barbara McCulloh and multiple Emmy nominated director Will Mackenzie at the helm, I Do! I Do! can sparkle like the diamond in Agnes’ wedding ring, and sparkle this new production at the La Mirada Theatre most definitely does.
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WHAT THEY HAVE
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Thousands upon thousands of actors choose Los Angeles as their career base for the obvious reason; no other city offers them as many opportunities to do film and television work as L.A. does. Nevertheless, even many of the most successful choose to make regular stage appearances for the challenge and joy of performing before a live audience. The same holds true for movie and TV writers who, despite big and small screen success, continue to write for the theater, to the benefit of L.A. audiences.
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THE CONCEPT OF REMAINDERS
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Richard Martin Hirsch proves himself not only prolific (4 plays produced locally in the last two years) but versatile par excellence with his latest (and best) work. After The Quality Of Light (a May-September romance set in France), Atonement (an engrossing character study of a Jewish writer in crisis), and this winter’s The Monkey Jar (a “from today’s headlines” drama about a child accused of threatening his teacher with a handgun), Hirsch now turns his considerable talents to comedy with a sexy adult concoction entitled The Concept Of Remainders.
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SNAKE IN THE GRASS
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
Alan Ayckbourn’s Snake In The Grass is a real change of pace for the “British Neil Simon.” Famed for his clever comedies (Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests, Bedroom Farce), the prolific (at nearly 70 he still averages 2 to 3 plays a year) writer tries his hand at a dark comedy/thriller here and succeeds admirably at darkness, comedy, and thrills.
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