Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’

BARBECUE

Trailer trash knows no color in the sordid lives brought to booze-chugging, drug-snorting, profanity-spewing life in Barbecue, Robert O’Hara’s outrageously twisted, hysterically funny new comedy now making its West Coast debut at the Geffen Playhouse, and that’s just Act One.
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A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, this year’s Best Revival Tony winner, has arrived at the Ahmanson in a production likely to leave audience opinion split between “brilliantly innovative” and “pretentiously boring.” Though it took me a while to get there, I ended up veering towards the former point of view. Still, unless you’re lucky enough to be sitting either onstage (an option here) or up close (if you’ve got the bucks), the Ahmanson proves far too large a venue for a production as intimate as this one.
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THE FANTASTICKS

The world’s longest-running musical (aka The Fantasticks) makes for a crowd-pleasing Pasadena Playhouse season opener thanks not only to its time-tested appeal but also to an excitingly contemporary director’s concept and cast choices that celebrate diversity in the most refreshing of ways.
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ARCADIA

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia can prove quite a head-scratcher when not done right. Fortunately, despite brain-teasing elements that can challenge even the sharpest intellect, all-around superb acting and incisive direction make A Noise Within’s 25th-season opener as entertaining and accessible as Arcadias get.
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ANDREW LIPPA’S WILD PARTY

Kristina Miller ignites the stage as Queenie in Quentin Garzón’s passion-project intimate staging of the 2000 off-Broadway musical adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 epic poem The Wild Party, one which Garzón and company have redubbed “Andrew Lippa’s Wild Party,” the better to distinguish it from the Michael John LaChiusa Wild Party that played on Broadway the same year.
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CHARM

Edward J. Olmos’s Jaime Escalante did it in Stand And Deliver. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Louanne Johnson did it in Dangerous Minds. Sidney Poitier’s Mark Thackery did it in To Sir With Love. And now Lana Houston’s Mama Darleena Andrews does it in Charm, transforming the lives of a classroomful of rebellious teens, only this time round the teacher in question is a transgender sexagenerian and her students an unruly bunch of homeless LGBT teens. Talk about a setup for an edgy, funny, and (you guessed it) heartstrings-tugging crowd-pleaser, the latest all-around winner from Celebration Theatre.
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NOSFERATU, A SYMPHONY IN TERROR

A silent horror movie classic inspires Crown City Theatre’s excitingly original Nosferatu, A Symphony In Terror, arriving just in time to greet the Halloween season with its stunning blend of movement and dance performed to a gloriously symphonic soundtrack.
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LIKE BLOOD FROM A CHEAP CIGAR

An effective use of reverse chronology and a luminous Genevieve Joy are the two best reasons to catch Like Blood From A Cheap Cigar, Joy’s short, bittersweet look at love gone bad, now concluding a limited run at Hollywood’s Hudson Guild Theatre following its Hollywood Fringe Festival debut this past June.
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