Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’
THE WHIPPING MAN
Saturday, March 22nd, 2014
On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, at long last ending what is still the deadliest war in United States history. Five days later, President Abraham Lincoln was dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet. And during this fateful week in our country’s history, Jews in both North and South observed Pesach, the festival of Passover, celebrating the freeing of the Israelites from centuries of slavery in Egypt.
Inspired by this bit of historical coincidence, and armed with the knowledge that there were indeed Jewish slaveholders (and Jewish slaves) in the pre-Civil War Deep South, playwright Matthew Lopez sat down to write The Whipping Man, a gripping, eye-opening look at three Jews—two black, one white—in the days just following Appomattox, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere at the Pico Playhouse.
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CINNAMON GIRL
Monday, March 17th, 2014
Velina Hasu Houston and Nathan Wang transport us to another time, another place, another world in their magical, mystical, marvelous new musical Cinnamon Girl, now playing at the Greenway Court Theatre.
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FLYIN’ WEST
Sunday, March 16th, 2014
12 Years A Slave’s recent Oscar wins make Flyin’ West, Pearl Cleage’s post-Civil-War slice-of-African-American-life-on-the-Kansas-plains, a particularly serendipitous choice as International City Theatre’s latest crowd-pleaser. That director Saundra McClain and her cast of six have come up with a particularly fine production of Cleage’s 1992 hit is icing on the cake, or in the case of Flyin’ West, ice cream on the apple pie.
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TOP GIRLS
Sunday, March 16th, 2014
English playwright Caryl Churchill examines what it takes to be a “top girl” in the dog-eat-dog world we call business in her challenging, thought-provoking 1982 drama Top Girls, the terrific latest from The Antaeus Company and a tailor-made showcase for a baker’s dozen of L.A.’s finest working actresses.
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CARNIVAL
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014
Bob Merrill and Michael Stewart’s 1961 hit Carnival may have run a healthy 719 performances on Broadway, but unlike its fellow early-’60s Tony winners The Sound of Music, Gypsy, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed .., Funny/Forum, and Oliver!, regional revivals of Carnival have been few and far between, hence its inclusion in Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series as a one-night-only concert staged reading, one that reminded those in attendance on Sunday that even forgotten Broadway gems have much to offer.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Monday, March 10th, 2014RECOMMENDED
A talented young cast and some imaginative directorial touches highlight Spring Awakening at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson, a laudably bold programming choice for the venerable Westside community theater despite certain deficiencies in design, particularly sound, that prevent the Steven Sater/Duncan Sheik musical from being an unqualified success.
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50 SHADES! THE MUSICAL
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014RECOMMENDED
Performances are all-around sparkling, a few of them quite impressive indeed; songs are catchy, their lyrics a mix of cleverness and four-letter-word raunch; a live band provides expert musical backup; and the cocktail-swigging, mostly female audience goes nearly as wild as they would at a bachelorette party. Still, whether or not you decide to see 50 Shades! The Musical, the often outrageously funny spoof of the phenomenally popular Fifty Shades Of Grey, will depend on your wiliness to pay as much as $85 a ticket for an under-90-minute show with all the production values of a Fringe Festival offering produced on the cheap, on the very cheap.
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TARTUFFE
Tuesday, March 4th, 2014RECOMMENDED
A Noise Within opens its Spring 2014 season with the classical theater company’s own distinctive take on Molière’s classic French farce Tartuffe*, and though not the inspired revival audiences were treated to in Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Beaux Stratgem, this entertaining if at times overly dark production does at the very least make relevant points about the hypocrisy, greed, and corruption of (at least certain members of) the clergy.
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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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