Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’
WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS
Friday, September 12th, 2014
The 1973 election of Maynard Jackson as Atlanta’s first African-American mayor is merely the backdrop for Pearl Cleage’s What I Learned In Paris, a romantic roundelay Noël Coward could have confectioned, its made-for-each-other exes J.P. and Evie giving Private Lives’ Elliot and Amanda a run for their money, albeit with a good deal more soul.
Following its 2012 World Premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, Cleage’s entertaining if overlong comedy now arrives at Burbank’s Colony Theatre with some sparkling performances and an often fascinating look back at the heady changes wrought by the previous two decades’ Civil Rights crusade and the then burgeoning Feminist Movement.
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ANIMALS OUT OF PAPER
Thursday, September 11th, 2014
A woman who has become a virtual recluse in the months since the breakup of her marriage and the disappearance of a cherished pet. A high school calculus teacher who’s been keeping a written record of his life’s every blessing since the age of twelve. The teacher’s star student, an Indian-American math nerd who fancies himself a black rapper.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph weaves these three ordinary lives into something quite extraordinary in his 2008 dramedy Animals Out Of Paper, now being given a pitch-perfect Los Angeles Premiere as the opening salvo in East West Players’ two-year-long celebration of its 50th season of offering Angelinos of every ethnicity the finest in Asian-American theater.
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THE WESTERN UNSCRIPTED
Saturday, September 6th, 2014
They’ve improvised Shakespeare. They’ve improvised Film Noir and The Twilight Zone. They’ve improvised Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Chekhov. They’ve even had the chutzpah to improvise Stephen Sondheim, music, lyrics, and all. And now the improv geniuses who call themselves Impro Theatre are back for business at the Falcon Theatre with their latest (and one of their very best) confections to date—improvising a full-length “feature film” live onstage in that most quintessential of American movie genres: The Western UnScripted.
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IT’S JUST SEX
Monday, September 1st, 2014
A dinner party that morphs into a spouse-swapping swingers’ bash may well be the hook that has attracted audiences to Jeff Gould’s It’s Just Sex – A Comedy About Lust & Trust since its World Premiere at the Whitefire back in 2002, but it’s the playwright’s perceptiveness about male-female relationships, the depth he gives his characters, and the unexpected life changes each couple ends up undergoing that has turned It’s Just Sex into L.A.’s longest-running comedy (factoring in its later runs at the Zephyr and the Two Roads), sent it off-Broadway in 2013, and have now brought it back to NoHo’s Secret Rose Theatre with an upcoming Las Vegas run likely in the cards.
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BULRUSHER
Monday, September 1st, 2014
The power of live theater to transport an audience to another time, another place, while exploring and revealing the mysteries of the human heart, is made gorgeously, magically clear in Skylight Theatre Company and Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s co-production of the Los Angeles premiere of Eisa Davis’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Bulrusher.
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PSYCHE: A MODERN ROCK OPERA
Saturday, August 30th, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
A sensational cast, phenomenal choreography, a spectacular production design, and Michael Matthews’s imaginative direction do everything possible to make the most of Cindy Shapiro’s Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera. Unfortunately, the gifted team’s best efforts can’t rescue “Psyche The Musical” from its ponderous libretto, mostly tedious tunes, and lyrics that clunk where they should soar.
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THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE
Friday, August 29th, 2014
For a Broadway hit that won six Tony awards (including Best Musical of 2002), Thoroughly Modern Millie has made relatively few Southland appearances in the intervening twelve years, just one of many reasons to celebrate the Thoroughly Modern (circa 1922) Miss’s arrival at Glendale Centre Theatre under the thoroughly marvelous co-direction of Danny Michaels and Orlando Alexander.
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SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD
Wednesday, August 27th, 2014RECOMMENDED
Inland Valley Repertory Theatre celebrates the end of summer with Jason Robert Brown’s Songs For A New World, the song cycle that put the future Tony winner’s name on the map, and if not the inspired vision of Brown’s 1995 debut that I’ve seen previously, a number of fine performances (and one in particular) make this a mostly effective, ultimately affecting revival of the very first JRB hit.
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