LOCKED AND LOADED

posted on June 5th, 2011 at 10:54 AM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Despite the many positive reviews it has garnered during its extended run at the Santa Monica Playhouse, I did not enjoy Locked And Loaded, Todd Sussman’s existentialist dramedy. I found myself turned off from the get-go by its terminally ill, suicide-bound sexagenarian heroes, two men I wouldn’t enjoy spending time with in real life, let alone as characters in a play. Things perked up a bit, or at least at first, when a pair of hookers appeared magically at their doorstep, one of them sporting an irresistible Spanish accent. Unfortunately, her foulmouthed chick-with-a-dick companion proved entirely resistible, and though I kept hoping to be won over, I found myself less and less involved in the onstage action as the play went on to bizarre extremes, its characters engaging in a mock trial à la Sartre (not one of my favorite writers).
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posted in Comedy, Not Recommended, West Side/Beverly HIlls

YEAR ZERO

posted on June 4th, 2011 at 11:19 AM by Steven Stanley


In fact, our very first glimpse of Vuthy in Michael Golamco’s Year Zero is of a shaggy-haired, hugely bespectacled teenager rapping about his life to said skull. “Everywhere I look, all I see is ghosts,” he syncopates to the prerecorded beats of a cassette tape. “All around me up in here, all I see is ghosts.”
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Drama, WOW!

FUNNY GIRL

posted on June 3rd, 2011 at 12:48 AM by Steven Stanley


If the best reason to see Broadway’s Funny Girl in 1964 could be summed up in a name (Barbra Streisand, for those living under a rock), then the same can be said for its current revival at Downey Civic Light Opera. That name is Karen Volpe, the triple threat who first caught this reviewer’s attention as Ado Annie in DCLO’s Oklahoma! a few years back and now dazzles in the proverbial role of a lifetime.
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, WOW!

LUV

posted on June 2nd, 2011 at 10:57 AM by Steven Stanley


This out-and-out hilarious blend of the absurd, the romantic, and the slapstick opens with a chance late night meeting between old school chums Harry Berlin (Michael Goldstrom) and Milt Manville (Rob Roy Cesar), reunited on a big city bridge for the first time in fifteen years. An overjoyed Milt can’t wait to update Harry on his life, which includes a wife, a home in the suburbs, a twenty-two carat gold watch, a designer suit, silk underwear, the works. As for his college friend’s sorry state of affairs, the crummily dressed Harry gives him the bad news. “It couldn’t be worse. I’m at the end of the line. Everything’s falling apart.” The worst of the worst had to be when a fox terrier peed all over the poor schlump’s gabardine pants, then turned right around and walked off. That’s why tonight, Harry confesses, “I was going to end it all, make one last stupid gesture of disgust and … that would be it.”
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posted in Comedy, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE

posted on June 1st, 2011 at 3:31 PM by Steven Stanley


Of all the hit Broadway musicals of the past decade, there’s none more terrifically fit for school productions than The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. To begin with, it offers student actors a grand total of nine leading roles, each of which has at least one star-turn song and all of which provide ample opportunities for performers to strut their triple-threat talents. In addition, the show’s central conceit (that its elementary school-aged spellers are to be brought to life by actors in their twenties) means that not only its six pre-teen spellers but its three adult characters as well can be played by performers twenty-two and under. Merge this with a BFA program as esteemed as that of UC Irvine and the result is one of the very best Spelling Bees you’re likely to see anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

NO WORD IN GUYANESE FOR ME

posted on May 29th, 2011 at 10:40 AM by Steven Stanley


Anna Khaja returns to the stage in Wendy Graf’s powerful solo piece No Word In Guyanese For Me, the recent Ovation-award winner bringing to vivid life a young Guyanese who discovers after her family’s move to New York City that she is a lesbian—and that there is no word in her native language for the person she is.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Solo Performance, WOW!

FINDING THE BURNETT HEART

posted on May 29th, 2011 at 1:22 AM by Steven Stanley


You’d think by now there’d be no need for yet another teenage coming out story, nor would you be likely to expect a playwright to have anything new to offer on the subject.

You’d be wrong.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy-Drama, WOW!

iGHOST

posted on May 28th, 2011 at 10:13 AM by Steven Stanley


The halls of Canterville Chase are alive with the sounds of spirits in Doug Haverty and Adryan Russ’s tunefully entertaining new musical iGhost, now getting its World Premiere at the Lyric Theatre.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!

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