StageSceneLA

PASSING PROPER/PASSION AND PRECISION

2011-08-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

A would-be screenwriter attempts to navigate the shark-ridden Hollywood waters in Passion And Precision, the second of a matched set of one-acts by Joe Davis Massingill. That the first of the two, Passing Proper, just happens to be a staged version of the very screenplay the writer is hoping to sell is just one of several reasons to check out the two plays running on a single bill at Theatre 68.

Passing Proper stars Massingill and Forrest Lancaster as Bud and Will, a pair of Arizona outlaws who’ve hopped a California-bound freight train with five thousand dollars in stolen bills and no idea of what their next move will be. Before long, a Spanish-accented stranger named Carl (Ray Cosico) has popped into their car and explained the reason for the stacks of long-untouched boxes surrounding them. “Folks call this the ‘Ghost Train,’” Carl reveals. “This baby rolls back and forth across the Southwest, with twenty five cars that carry tons of nothing. Lost, roaming the desert, lost without a purpose.” Sort of like our ragtag pair of antiheroes.

Carl doesn’t stick around for long, and his place is soon taken by Lily (Alex Oliver), a pretty, guitar-strumming drifter who’s fallen in love with the ghost train and made it her home.

It takes only a short while for Lily to provide Bud with yet another reminder of what it’s like to be sidekick to a hottie like Will. (“Women choose to sleep with you, just for the joy of sleeping with you,” Bud has commented earlier on. “To sleep with me, she's either gettin' something else out of it, she loves me, or she's making a mistake that she won't realize till she sees me naked in the morning.”) With Bud still bleeding from a gunshot wound and sexual sparks a-smoldering’ between Will and Lily, anyone who expects the trio to ride off into the sunset together might want to rethink that notion.

Passion And Precision begins Film Noir style with screenwriter Trick (Massingill) flashing us back to his first meeting with up-and-coming literary agent Jake (Lancaster). “I had been in Los Angeles for six months, spinning my wheels,” he recalls. “I saw an ad on-line for a screenplay contest. The only thing I'd written was a play, about a ‘Ghost Train,’ so I adapted it, best I could. Never heard from the contest, but a couple weeks later, I get a call from a guy…”

The scene then shifts to Jake’s mostly unfurnished office as he interviews (and simultaneously hits on) Michelle (Oliver), a smart, sassy, sexy redhead who’s come about a job opening as his assistant. Since Michelle is not only a looker but can give as good she gets, it’s no wonder the job is soon hers.

Enter Trick, whose excitement about Jake’s interest in his work soon turns to disappointment when he learns what The Edge Network really has in mind—an hour-long dramatic series based on his screenplay. Unwilling to sacrifice his principles even if it means giving up big bucks and waiting another five years for his big break, Trick resists Jake’s every effort to wear him down, unaware that the agent’s motivations may well be even shadier than they seem.

Massingill’s dialog crackles, particularly in the Mametian second act, and he has written Lancaster, Oliver, and himself two terrific pairs of roles. Each play could stand some pruning, however, particularly the rather too talky Passion And Precision, whose length dilutes the impact of its nifty payoff. (A two-hour running time including intermission would be ideal for the two-play package.) This reviewer also found it hard to imagine how “Ghost Train” could be expanded into an episodic series, but then again, I’m not a network exec.

No quibbles can be made, however, about the cast’s crackerjack performances, honed razor sharp under Jamison Jones’ assured direction. Lancaster, like Alec Baldwin in his 20something days, possesses leading man good looks, a sexy edginess, and acting chops to match. Particularly in Act Two, the handsome 6-footer manages Massingill’s rapid-fire dialog with spontaneity, fire, and not a moment of uncertainty. Oliver’s folksy, sultry Lily and her smart, sassy Michelle reveal a promising, highly watchable young actress who can more than hold her own opposite any scene partner. She’s also quite a singer-guitarist (and co-wrote “Over The Border” with Massingill). Massingill is, like Jack Black, a character actor with leading man appeal who just happens to have written himself a bang-up acting showcase. Cosico is so dynamic and appealing as street-smart Carl that one wishes the playwright had figured out a way to use him in Act Two. (Poor guy doesn’t even get a curtain call.)

Danny Darst’s original background music enhances Massingill’s storytelling. Design elements are uncredited. Lighting, sound, and costume designs are all first-rate; however, intimate theater aficionados may be disappointed in the two plays’ merely workmanlike scenic designs. Angelica Santos is producer, Kourtney Sonntag stage manager, and Tanya Wilkins and Dan Hutchinson techs.

Though no writer enjoys deleting pages of dialog he’s worked hard to create (and no actor enjoys losing them), Passing Proper and Passion And Precision represent a case when less might add up to considerably more. Even at a longer than optimum running time, however, they introduce a talented new playwright to Los Angeles audiences and some exciting new L.A.-based performers as well.

Note: Sunday evening performances feature an alternate cast of seven actors, each playing a single role.

Theatre 68, 5419 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. Through August 21. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 3:00 and 8:00. Reservations: 323 960-5068
www.theatre68.com
www.passingproper.com
--Steven Stanley
August 7, 2011

CORPUS CHRISTI

2011-08-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

WOW!
CORPUS CHRISTI

I’ll admit it. I was a Doubting Thomas. As curious as I was about seeing a fresh new take on Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, the one production I’d seen previously at Long Beach’s Garage Theatre had not boded well for a second, nor did the discovery that the show was being helmed by a young actor making his directorial debut. Still, the chance to see Corpus Christi again was too tempting to turn down, and August being the quietest theatrical month of the year, this skeptic decided to give the Garage a second chance.

Now I’m not sure if the Biblical Doubting Thomas had a hat to eat, but having now seen Corpus Christi at the Garage, this reviewer humbly eats his chapeau. I was blown away by Tito Ortiz’s brilliant directorial debut in a beautifully conceived, designed, and executed production of one of McNally’s most loved, hated, and misunderstood plays.

Corpus Christi is the Tony Award-winning playwright’s highly controversial reimagining of the Gospels as set in his hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas—written to be performed by an all-male cast playing both disciples and supporting roles, male and female.

Where McNally and his play drew the ire and protests of religious fundamentalists was in its depiction of Jesus as a gay man, at least some of whose disciples were also gay, including Judas, whom McNally imagines to be the proverbial love of His life.

Protestors, virtually none of whom had seen or read the play, missed the point (as they seem to do so well in matters Biblical). Corpus Christi is not about a “gay Jesus” per se, nor does it “defame His Holy Name” as picketers insisted. What it does do—with humor, drama, and more than a few four-letter epithets—is present Jesus’ life and words in a new context, and to an audience whose experiences with organized religion may have made them resistant to what is in essence a very humanity-affirming message.

This message has now come to Long Beach in a production that deserves to be seen by any lover of fine theater within driving radius of the Garage. Corpus Christi’s message spoke so strongly to the production’s 20something fledgling director that he convinced the Garage, not only to include Corpus Christi as part of its current season, but also to entrust him with its staging, a decision whose wisdom is borne out by this quite miraculous production.

Ortiz has reconfigured the black-box Garage so that a mere two rows of thirteen seats each—running lengthwise opposite sides of its rectangle—make its audience an extension of Corpus Christi’s cast of thirteen, a concept particularly effective when the Last Supper is performed at one end of the rectangle, the table extending to include the entire audience as supper guests.

Corpus Christi begins with one of its actors informing those in attendance that “there are no tricks up our sleeve. No malice in our hearts.” Then, as another actor begins to sing “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord,” each performer is welcomed into the play by the actor portraying John The Baptist with the words, “I bless you. I baptize you and recognize your divinity as a human being. I adore you, and christen you …,” followed by the name of the disciple he will be playing.

Ortiz gives his actors free rein to enjoy these opening moments, as the baptized receive anything from a few drops of water to a real drenching, a joyously irreverent (though by no means sacreligious) tone that will be maintained throughout the production’s engrossing, intermissionless hour and forty minutes.

Whatever initial qualms this reviewer had about the production’s entirely non-Equity cast were erased from the moment each one first spoke. Whether BFA grads or theatrical neophytes, Ortiz’s cast display a naturalness and ease with McNally’s words which belies their youth and (in some cases) lack of a lengthy résumé. Twelve very different actors, each with a distinctive take on his role(s), and at their center, Jeffrey Fargo’s revelatory work as Joshua, as McNally has rechristened the Jesus of Corpus Christi.

Words cannot suffice to describe the many ways director Ortiz, his cast, and his topnotch design team have brought Corpus Christi to such vivid life. As a director, Ortiz is unfailingly imaginative, particularly considering the production’s obvious shoestring budget. Yammy Swoot’s lighting design (Swoot’s name seems suspiciously close to assistant director Jamie Sweet’s) and Matthew Anderson’s sound design combined with Geraldine Uy’s costumes and highly ingenious props work wonders with Ortiz and Sweet’s simple but effective set design.

No Corpus Christi can succeed without a commanding leading man, and Fargo’s performance commands attention from his first words, despite (or perhaps because of) being cast against type. Where other productions may have cast a more traditional leading man in the role, Ortiz’s choice of an actor more easily imagined as math geek or theater nerd proves inspired. McNally does after all paint Joshua as a bullied misfit of a child, one more likely to break out into South Pacific’s “I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy” than play football with the jocks, and it’s precisely because Fargo is not the first actor you’d imagine playing Jesus that his performance works so well, that and the indefinable something called talent that commands an audience’s attention and wins their hearts.

Supporting Fargo are Paul Anderson (Bartholomew, Motel Manager, Peggy Powell, Nun), Jeff Budner (James The Less, God, Billy Brown, Poor Woman), Matt Craig (Andrew, Bert Moody, Pilate’s Wife, Crucified Man), Robert Flores (Thaddeus, Room Service #2, Centurion, Barabbas), Will Gorin (Matthew, Coach/Priest, Truck Driver #3, High Priest) , Matt Guerra (James, Woman Next Door, Mrs. McElroy, Little Boy), Brandon Kasper (John, Dub Taylor, Simon of Cyranae), Beau McCoy (Philip, Joseph, Beau Hunter, Truck Driver #2, Carpenter, Pilate), Raymond McFarland (Judas), Will Proctor (Thomas, Room Service #3, Patricia Rudd, Sister Joseph, Lazarus, Soldier), Shawn Stenger (Simon, Room Service #1, High School Singer, Penny, Crucified Man), and Evan Wallace (Peter, Mary, Spider Sloan, James Dean).

While each of the above contributes immeasurably to Corpus Christi’s success, a number of cast members stand out in particular. Gorin’s versatility shines as a bullying coach/priest, a blind trucker with a Texas twang, and a menacing high priest; Guerra’s drama teacher Mrs. McElroy is a fluttery delight; McCoy gives power and stage presence to hustler Philip and a half-dozen others; Proctor makes for an adorably dorky Patricia and a divine Sister Joseph; and Wallace’s chain-smoking tough gal Mary and sexy James Dean are both star turns. Finally, McFarland positively smolders as a smooth-talking, muscular, nipple-ringed Judas, whose interracial relationship with Joshua adds an extra layer of edginess to McNally’s already envelope-pushing play.

A Word To The Wise: A mere twenty-six seats are available for each performance of Corpus Christi’s remaining three Thursday-Friday-Saturday weekends, adding up to a total of only 234 very lucky ticketholders (barring an extension or move to another space, either of which this reviewer highly recommends).

Tito Ortiz and company have turned this Doubting Thomas into a True Believer just as they have turned this production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi into something quite miraculous indeed.

Note: Thursday performances are Trevor Thursdays. 1/2 of all ticket sales will go to help The Trevor Project. www.thetrevorproject.org All Thursday performances will be followed by a talk-back with the cast and crew of Corpus Christi.

The Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach. Through August 27. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Reservations: 866 811-4111
www.thegaragetheatre.org
--Steven Stanley
August 5, 2011
Photos: www.freshframefoto.com

THE DEVIL AND DAISY JANE

2011-08-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

WOW!
THE DEVIL AND DAISY JANE
When Andy Warhol spoke about a future in which everyone would get his or her very own Fifteen Minutes Of Fame, he might well have been talking about today’s World Of Reality TV—a universe in which no-talents like the Kardashians, the Hiltons, and John & Kate can become overnight sensations just by being themselves.

Though admittedly it does take more than mere luck to become a finalist on American Idol, many a gifted vocalist has discovered that talent alone cannot guarantee enough Yes votes to reach even the semifinals, a fact that may have inspired Lisa Marinacci and Jeremy Lewit to write The Devil And Daisy Jane, their clever, biting, always entertaining pop/rock satire of A.I. and its many imitators—a musical that transposes the legend of Faust into the world of 21st Century pop.

Daisy Jane (Marinacci) and boyfriend Ben (Harley Jay) are contestants 9,000,006 and 9,000,007 to vie for a top spot on America’s Next Super Pop Star, a show that has already brought pop stardom to diva divine Zora (Katherine Malak) and The Pop Tartz (Gina D’Acciaro, Jayme Lake, and Cloie Wyatt Taylor). Unfortunately, the acoustic pop sound of Daisy and Ben’s self-penned “Enough” (“The guitar is my blanket, I live inside my song”) gets them cut off almost immediately by judges Zora (“Can we talk about what you’re wearing? Where’d you even get that?”) and Mo (“Take your tambourine back to your local karaoke bar, because that’s as far as you’ll ever get in this business.”) and host Bobby Shrub (“We’ll be back with more stars-in-the-making and pathetic wannabes right after these messages.”).

Daisy Jane’s failure is the only cue needed by Soul Blaze Records president Lucas Smith Jr. (Anthony Manough) to offer the singer-songwriter an exclusive deal—and certain stardom, and all she has to do is drop appendage Ben and become Luc’s exclusive property. Though at first Daisy isn’t all that sure she wants to leave her boyfriend/song partner in the lurch, a glimpse at the homeless subway rider Luc offered a deal to years ago (“but he wasn’t willing to do what it takes”) is enough to convince Daisy to sign on the proverbial dotted line.

Before long, Daisy Jane has become Pop Tart Number Four, taking lessons from Zora in “Altitude” (“You gotta own the stage, you gotta strut and flaunt”) and demonstrating so much starisma that Lucas offers her very own solo album deal, that is after he cancels Zora’s tour, the better to focus all eyes on Daisy.

As for Ben, his every effort to get past Luc’s gay assistant Byron (Patrick Hancock) proves in vain (“The doors are always locked, There’s no way in”), and he can only watch as Daisy begins dating “super-hunk” Chad Hammock, appearing on shows like the Performer’s Pick Awards, making music videos, and becoming America’s “biggest baddest star.”

Will Ben find a way to get even one of his love letters into Daisy Jane’s hands? Will Zora ever get out of rehab and back to the top of the charts? Will Daisy regret her decision to sign with Luc?

The answers to these (and other) questions may not be all that hard to divine, but in The Devil And Daisy Jane, the fun is in the getting there, and considerable fun that is, thanks to Marinacci’s rocking good songs, the clever book she’s written with Lewit, and the all-around sensational work being done on stage by the Daisy Jane cast (under the devilishly inspired direction of Robert Marra) and musicians (under Brent Crayon’s splendid musical direction).

You know you’re in for an evening of fun when even character names (Bobby Shrub, Chad Hammock, Juliette Della Pants) get laughs, but Marinacci’s and Lewit’s book is jam-packed with hilarious lines from start to finish. Here are some personal favorites:

Luc: See Zora, it only took you a month to turn bright and shiny into slick and skanky.

Bobby Shrub: Stay tuned for more updates from inside the litter box. We’re sniffing out the poop and giving you the scoop. I’m Bobby Shrub.

Luc: Remember Alanis Morissette, the queen of anger? She started saying things like “Thank You India” and poof, no one cared.

As the last quote suggests, the talent behind The Devil And Daisy Jane know well the music industry about which they write, and their musical is all the more entertaining for being incisive—as well as loads of fun. It may also be the most PG-13 show (with an emphasis on the 13 for adult language and themes) ever staged at Actors-Co-op , though it comes nowhere near an R, in case you’re worried about taking teens to see it.

The performers assembled on the Crossley Theatre stage by Actors Co-op simply couldn’t be better, or better cast, beginning with Marinacci, whose girl-next-door prettiness and powerful rocker’s voice make her the perfect Daisy Jane. Jay brings his boy-next-door-with-an edge charm and terrific pipes to the role of Ben, leaving one only to wish that the role offered the StageSceneLA Award winner a chance to show off his Footloose footwork. As for the titular Devil, no one in L.A. theater sings more dynamically or soulfully than the charismatic Manough, making Daisy’s decision to sign on the dotted line a no-brainer.

A trio of performers provide the scene-stealingest supporting turns in parts any comedic actor would make a deal with the Devil to book. Byron is easily the most flamboyantly gay character ever seen at the Co-op, and Hancock plays the role with such infectious joie-de-vivre that you want to bottle his performance, take it home, and savor it whenever you’re feeling “a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness.” (Theater queens will get the reference.) Malak virtually redefines Pop Diva in the role of Zora, a part she plays with the ferocity of a tigress and the outrageousness of a Saturday Night Life comedienne at her most outrageous, along with one-of-a-kind dance moves that even a thousand words could not properly describe. Tauzin lucks out with a grand total of eight cameos, ranging from street-talking Mo to dazed-and-confused Homeless Musician, to fabuleux French Music Director to heavy metal guitarist G-String—each and every one a dazzler.

As the Pop Tartz, D’Acciaro (ghetto girl Shalisa), Taylor (dumb blonde Tanya), and Lake (sexy stoner Carmen) are fabulously funny and fiercely fabulous, with vocal chops to match. Kyle Nudo’s hilarious Bobby Shrub is the epitome of every slick-surfaced, vacant-eyed TV personality ever to host a reality show. Lovely Megan Yaleney is a hoot in half-a-dozen cameo roles, my personal favorite being the abovementioned Juliette Della Pants, the amalgam of every glamour-gowned showbiz reporter to red-carpet interview Hollywood celebs.

Orchestrator/music director extraordinaire plays live onstage keyboards alongside guitarist Chris Mello, bassist Oliver Steinberg, and drummer Jim Hardiman, giving cast members the best possible musical backup.

Mark Svastics has designed a dramatically effective set, with metal scaffolding which morphs quickly into a bunch of different locales, aided by Kris Fitzgerald’s visual media design and Svastic’s own Vegas-style lighting design. Ariel Boroff’s costumes are eye-catching treats. Opening night sound problems plagued several characters, making it hard to comment accurately on live audio technician Anna Gramlich’s sound design. Fritz Davis is audio/video technician, Kevin Cantens audio technician, Caitlin Barbieri stage manager, and Jacquie Adorni assistant stage manager. Audio/video systems have been provided by Digital Theatre Technologies. The Devil And Daisy Jane is produced by Marinacci and D’Acciaro.

A Daisy Jane reading last January prompted this reviewer to write, “Can't wait to see it in full production and give it a WOW!” Now a featured selection of the Los Angeles Festival of New American Musicals, The Devil And Daisy Jane does indeed get an enthusiastic WOW! in fully-staged form. As for its future life beyond its current all-too-short two-week run, no pact with Satan need be made to insure its future success. With its combination of pizzazz and bite, The Devil And Daisy Jane makes for one deliciously devilish (and devilishly delicious) show.

Actors Co-op, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood. Through August 14. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8:00. Sundays at 2:30. Saturday matinees are May 14 and 21 at 2:30. Reservations: 323 462-8460 x 300
www.actorsco-op.org
--Steven Stanley
August 4, 2011

HIGH FIDELITY

2011-08-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

WOW!
HIGH FIDELITY

“I just can't understand critics. If a musical isn't completely unique it gets trashed. I read some of the reviews and could not believe what I read. Good Songs, Good Acting, Good Chemistry, Good Creative team, etc, etc, etc. So what was wrong? Well, the answer is … nothing!”

Amazon.com customer Lance J. Hermus took the words right out of my mouth in reviewing the Original Cast Recording of High Fidelity—and for proof that this Broadway flop does in fact do everything right, simply head on down to Fullerton for an out-and-out sensational High Fidelity that puts New York Times Theater Critic Ben Brantley to shame.

Granted, a musical about the owner of “The Last Real Record Store On Earth” may well be TGFB (Too Grungy For Broadway) and ought perhaps to have opted for an off (or off-off) Broadway run. As a matter of fact, High Fidelity probably works best in a venue like Hunger Artists’, hidden inside a Fullerton industrial park and therefore not all that far removed from Championship Vinyl, the used record shop where our antihero Rob and his ragtag band of friends and customers hang out from dawn to dusk.

Even so, with music as eminently hummable as Tom (Next To Normal) Kitt’s, lyrics as clever as those written by Amanda Green (daughter of fabled lyricist Adolph), and a book as winning as David (Rabbit Hole) Lindsay-Abaire’s (based on Nick Hornby’s popular novel), High Fidelity deserved a far, far better fate than a mere month on Broadway, and there ought to have been dozens of regional productions over the past five years, rather than a mere handful before Hunger Artists’ auspicious West Coast Premiere, directed with energy, imagination, and verve by Anthony Galleran.

High Fidelity opens with the introduction of the aforementioned Rob, a 30ish dude whose life consists of “cable and a girlfriend who is pissed off (but she's hot), records that it's taken me a lifetime to amass,” and Championship Vinyl. Assisting Rob in his day-to-day labors are Barry and Dick (“They came as temps. But then they started showing up here every day! It's been four years. They just won't leave.”) As for the threesome’s lives afterhours, Rob’s rent check has just bounced, Barry still lives at home, and Dick stays up all night watching Mary Tyler Moore. Not unexpectedly, their love lives aren’t all that much better. (Rob’s girl holds out, Barry’s inflates, and Dick thinks he had sex once but he’s not sure.)

All this we find out in “The Last Real Record Store,” an opening number so exciting and imaginative that most musicals could only wish they had one half this good. With thrilling melody, rhythm, and key changes coming one after another, Kitt and Green’s humdinger of a song gives us ten of the most exhilarating minutes ever to open a tiny little musical, fills us in on exactly what life inside Championship is like, and promises one heck of an entertaining ride to come.

Rob soon informs us (in one of his many heart-to-hearts with the audience) that a) his girlfriend Laura has broken up with him and that b) if he were to make up a list of his Top Five Breakups, she wouldn’t even make the Top Ten. (Of course we know he’s lying, since it’s clear from the get-go that he and Laura are MFEO.) In any case, regardless of the veracity of his claim, it serves as a pretext for a Musical Number #2, one that nearly matches the first in sheer high-spiritedness, as Rob enumerates his “Desert Island Top 5 Break-Ups,” backed by a quintet of exes who can sing and move as good as they look—which is pretty darned good indeed. (We’ll see more of this “Greek Girl Chorus” as the show progresses, and ingeniously so.)

Rob's story arc, as conceived of by Hornby in his novel and Lindsay-Abaire in his ingenious musical stage adaptation, is far more a journey towards adulthood, towards adult commitments, than a simple boy loses girl, boy gets girl back cliché—and is all the richer for not taking the easy romcom route (though we do indeed follow Rob’s efforts to win Laura back as well as his two coworkers’ attempts at forging lives for themselves outside the shop). Supporting characters include Rob’s ballsy best friend Liz, his new-agey upstairs neighbor Ian (who has a thing for Laura), and Championship Vinyl denizens Middle-Aged Guy, TMPMITW (The Most Pathetic Man In The World), Hipster, and Mohawk Guy.

In addition to their opening pair of showstoppers, Kitt and Green have written a number of terrific follow-up songs, including the joyously rocking “Nine Percent Chance” (these are the odds Laura gives Rob of coming back to him), “I Slept With Someone (Who Slept With Lyle Lovett” (which has Rob nearly jumping for joy to be “sleeping with a rock star. Well, a rock star once removed…”), the power-ballady “Cryin’ In The Rain,” and the soft-rocking “Turn The World Off (And Turn You On).” “Conflict Resolution” crosses over to Heavy Metal territory, and therefore is one I usually skip over on the CD, but with its repeated fast-rewinds performed live by some amazingly dexterous actors, it adds up to a good deal more fun on stage than on disk.

Of course none of the above would matter a whit were Hunger Artists’ intimate staging not blessed with a star-making lead performance by Sheldon Morley heading an all-around splendid cast, a trio of rockin’ good onstage musicians, and designers who make the very most of an obviously limited budget.

About Morley’s performance in The Full Monty a few years back, I wrote, “Sheldon Morley is the first Jerry I’ve seen who truly looks the part. (He) is also an excellent actor,” remarks which explain just two of the reasons he once again merits raves for his star turn as Rob. It’s easy to buy this big, scruffy dude as owning a rundown record shop, loving his 45s more than life itself, and screwing things up with a babe like Tara Pitt’s Laura (just as it’s easy to believe that Laura would fall for this Rob’s big big heart). Effortless at chewing the fat with the audience and never anything less than spontaneous in his interactions with other characters, Morley happens also to have just the right rocker pipes to belt out Rob’s songs precisely the way they should be belted.

Pitt is as lovely and engaging as ever, making the pre-Broadway excision of Laura’s big ballad “Too Tired” all the more regrettable. (Pitt deserves that song, and I would have loved to hear her sing it.) Lindsay Lee Lusk, Andrea Martyn, Katt McLaren, Sandy Moore, and Jennifer Pearce are Rob’s five exes, and as super as they are individually, they are even more terrific as a group, their “girl power” multiplied by five. Martyn doubles to fine effect as Rob’s tough-love bestie Liz, a sweet, sexy Moore also gets to play songstress Marie (the one who slept with Lyle Lovett), and the charming Lusk’s second role is as Anna, a cute nerdette who gives Dick hope that there may be a “a point, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, one percent chance she'll say yes.” As for Dick, Max Obita looks like he could easily have wandered in from a nearby record shop (or video arcade) were it not for his first-rate acting chops and vocals that make you realize, “Hey, the dude is a bona fide performer!” Duncan Hutchinson and Rocky Balboa too are absolutely believable as daily fixtures at Champion Vinyl.

A pair of supporting performances deserve special mention. Jeffery R. Rockey is a hoot and a half as Ian, milking the love guru’s every hippy-dippy moment for all its worth, and Topher Mauerhan, in addition to his bang-up work as Big Bad Barry, makes the show his own for five or so minutes as The Boss himself, Bruce S., in the showstoppingly Springsteenesque “Goodbye And Good Luck.”

Steeve Jacobs (TMPMITW) performs in the production’s excellent onstage three-piece band led by musical director Sarah Weinzetl, and sings a mean Neil Young. Though there’s more “movement” than dancing in High Fidelity, choreographer Katheleen Switzer has her entire cast moving to energetic perfection.

Ashley Martin’s scenic design has the look and feel of a rundown record store, and converts effortlessly and effectively into the High Fidelity’s other locales. Designers Nicholas Saiki (lighting) and Kris Kataoka (sound) get thumbs up for their excellent work, as does Mary Poplin for costumes that are exactly what you’d expect these folks to have bought for themselves. Jessica Kelly is stage manager.

Though High Fidelity may never be able to completely overcome the stigma of its untimely death by Brantley on the Great White Way, it more than merits a long afterlife in regional theater. St. Louis, Chicago, and Washington DC productions have garnered it the kind of positive notices that might have made it a New York hit the first time round. Then again, perhaps High Fidelity was never meant for a Broadway audience, but rather for folks like Rob and Barry and Dick themselves, each of whom would surely give the show a high five of approval. Then again, I’m as big a musical theater fan as they come, and it gets a high five from me too—and who knows? It might even get one from Ben Brantley, that is if he could ever be persuaded to give the show another look-see.

Hunger Artists Theatre Company, 699-A South State College Blvd, Fullerton. Through August 28. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 7:00. Special Thursday Night Performance, August 18 at 8:00. Reservations: 714 680-6803
www.hungerartists.com
--Steven Stanley
July 31, 2011
Photos: Thai Chau

ON GOLDEN POND

2011-08-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

WOW!
ON GOLDEN POND

Hal Linden and Christina Pickles as Norman and Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond. What more needs to be said? With stars like these in a play as beloved as Ernest Thompson’s Drama Desk Award-winning Outstanding New Play of 1979, Burbank’s Colony Theatre could well have its biggest hit ever, and justifiably so. Linden and Pickles deliver award-caliber performances in a play that hasn’t lost an iota of its humor or charm, directed to pitch perfect perfection by Cameron Watson, and featuring a supporting cast every bit as wonderful as its two stars.

If ever there were a play that hardly needed synopsizing, it’s On Golden Pond, the reason being of course its 1981 film adaptation, second only that year to Raiders Of The Lost Ark in box office receipts. Is there anyone who hasn’t seen Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn as the long-married Thayers enjoying perhaps their last vacation On (Lake) Golden Pond, accompanied that summer by their daughter Chelsea’s thirteen-year-old stepson-to-be? It’s hard to imagine a Colony theatergoer who doesn’t remember Ethel’s “Don’t be such an old poop” or Norman’s “‘Ethel Thayer.’ It thounds like I'm lithping, doethn't it?,” or teenage Billy’s revelation to Norman that when he and his friends “cruise chicks,” it’s cause they want to “suck face”?

Yes, indeed, On Golden Pond is the kind of play that brings back a flood of memories … to people who may well never have seen it live on stage—all the more reason to not to miss this superb revival.

Diehard movie fans may carp that some of the film’s most famous scenes are missing. You won’t witness Norman’s immediate terror as he finds himself lost in the woods, or Chelsea’s finally managing the back flip she could never do as a child, or the slap Ethel gives Chelsea when she feels her daughter has disparaged her father once too often. Missing too, for obvious reasons, are the film’s many scenes On Golden Pond itself, including those wonderful bonding moments between Norman and his surrogate grandson, fishing poles in hand.

Even in its original one-set form, however, On Golden Pond is about as sure-fire a crowd-pleaser as you’re ever likely to see on stage, and play-to-movie buffs will relish seeing how then thirty-year-old playwright Thompson was able to tell the same story he did in his screenplay without ever leaving the Thayer’s summer living room, and how he explored themes of mortality, marriage, and intergenerational miscommunication with equal depth and finesse.

It takes two powerhouse performers to stand up to memories of Fonda and Hepburn, but Linden and Pickles deliver the goods from delightful start to poignant finish, TV’s Barney Miller and (St. Elsewhere’s) Nurse Helen Rosenthal possessing the requisite charisma and virtuosity to make Norman and Ethel their own. That Linden and Pickles are the ages of the characters they play (and in one case several years older at that, though you’d never guess) adds to the production’s realism—and power. (The original Broadway stars Tom Aldridge and Frances Sternhagen were respectively 29 and 20 years younger than their roles back in 1979.) Not only are Linden and Pickles on top of their parts in a way actors half their age might fail to be, they make us feel almost as if we were discovering these iconic characters for the very first time, the two stars convincing us that this cranky old man and his long-suffering but adoring wife have truly been married for forty-eight years.

Supporting these two virtuosos are four of L.A.’s finest acting talents, beginning with the incandescent Monette Magrath as Chelsea, whose powerful scenes opposite Linden and Pickles reveal decades of a daughter’s built-up hurt and resentment. Brentwood School sophomore-to-be Nicholas Podany is, as they say, a find, bringing to the role of Billy a real-life teenager’s spontaneity, authenticity, and bravado. (It’s a shame the talented newcomer is given less to do than Doug McKeon was in the movie, because who wouldn’t want to spend more time with such a great kid?) As Chelsea’s fiancé Bill, Jonathan Stewart takes a part that might well come across a caricature in less skilled hands and makes the loquacious California dentist a real, sympathetic individual. Last but most definitely not least is Jerry Kernion’s brilliantly achieved featured turn as Charlie, Maine’s jolliest mailman, whom Kernion (so memorable a few years back in Rounding Third) gives a hilariously syncopated six-beat laugh that is only one of multiple reasons his work earns him a spontaneous round of applause on his first exit—and eager anticipation of his next entrance.

As for the sense of place so gorgeously rendered on film three decades ago, the Colony’s crackerjack design team come pretty darned close to matching it without a single exterior scene. Scenic designer John Iacovelli has created a living room set rich in the lived-in look the Thayers’ lakeside home would have had after half a century or more of use, with MacAndME’s marvelously detailed properties design and set dressing aiding immeasurably. (Only a 1990s-style cassette player seems out of place.) Lighting designer Jared A. Sayeg bathes the set in vivid summer hues, with distinctive patterns for each month and time of day, and a gorgeous approximation of the ripples of Golden Pond between scenes. Rebecca Kessin’s excellent sound design situates us smack dab in the middle of lake country, with its haunting loon calls, so integral to Thompson’s script. Ryan Shores’ original music has just the right “watercolored memories” feel to it. Terri A. Lewis costumes the cast in just-right late 1970s garb, with attention paid to each character’s age and personality traits. Alexander Berger is production stage manager.

On Golden Pond harkens back to the plays and productions that made the Colony’s reputation back in its 99-seat plan days, with the bonus of a considerably larger Equity budget. Older subscribers will find this particular Colony offering particularly up their alley, but anyone of any age will discover characters with whom to identify. Many are going to dub this production “Broadway caliber,” however since these days that might not be the compliment it once was, I’ll simply say that the Colony Theatre’s revival of On Golden Pond is Los Angeles theater at its very finest—and that is very fine indeed.

Colony Theatre, 555 North Third Street, Burbank. Through August 28. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00, Saturdays at 3:00 and 8:00 and Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00. Reservations: 818 558-7000X15
www.colonytheatre.org
--Steven Stanley
July 30, 2011
Photos: Michael Lamont

OUT OF MY HEAD

2011-07-31T15:12:00.000-07:00

WOW!
OUT OF MY HEAD

Five 20somethings work on resolving personal issues via "free group therapy" as Mechanicals Theatre Group presents Out Of My Head, Ryan Scott Oliver’s highly enjoyable “song-cycle about breakdowns and breakthroughs.”

Though technically Out Of My Head's Los Angeles Premiere, all but three of the songs come from Oliver’s Making Beautiful, which played the Powerhouse Theatre back in 2005, about the time the Pasadena native and UCLA grad moved to New York to pursue his MFA studies at NYU. Unlike Making Beautiful, however, Out Of My Head gives each character a more clearly defined storyline thanks to Kirsten Guenther’s and Oliver’s fresh new book (and several new songs).

Under Jacob Harvey’s nuanced, imaginative direction, Out Of My Head introduces Angelinos to fourteen RSO creations as performed by an all-around terrific cast.

Jeni Incontro is the The Therapist (the only character who doesn’t sing), to whose “Facing Our Issues Head-On” therapy group our quintet have come, each with different issues to face.

They are (in order of first solo):

Anna Bowen as Woman 1, a painter struggling to get her inner thoughts and feelings out of her head and onto canvas, a young woman seeking to find herself as both artist and human being.

Gary Brintz as Man 2, a “Love Killer” who’s looking for someone “smarter and funnier and better” than he is, yet so unwilling to lower his standards that he ends up cheating on the perfect woman—because of her “cankles.”

Saro Badalian as Man 1, a young gay man attempting to reconcile his religious beliefs with his sexuality, someone who hears sexual innuendos everywhere, all the while dreaming of finding a Jesus Freak who’s “hot as hell.”

Emily Clark as Woman 3, who calls herself the “Helen Keller of gaydar” for her inability to distinguish between straight and queer. Although she’d rather date “someone who’s not homosexual,” it may be easier to be rejected for being the wrong gender than for being the wrong woman.

Robyn S. Clark as Woman 2, a hypochondriac’s hypochondriac, who imagines how perfect her life would be if she could find someone who’d love her in spite of her “Overly Dramatic Ways.”

Over the course of Out Of My Head’s seventy-five minutes, these five very different young people sing their hearts out—and grow stronger and braver and more fulfilled in the process.

Song highlights include the opening ensemble number “Making Beautiful” (“I can make something out of me. I’ll show the world that I’m making beautiful.”), Anna’s “Crayon Girl” (“She said it was the neatest bird a sky had ever seen. And I said ‘Mom, it’s not a bird at all. It’s me.’”), Gary’s “Love Killer” (“I’m a love killer, cause I kill love”), Emily’s “Perfect” (“Justin, Blake, Timmy, Beau, they were perfect … and they were perfectly queer.”), Saro’s “Deny Your Creation” (“How can you deny your creation? Why put the apple there and forbid it?”), and Robyn’s “Hypochondriac Song” (“If you can catch it, then I’m sure I’ve caught it, or at least I’ve thought it.”).

“Quartet” has Emily, Gary, Robyn, and Saro revealing all their doubts and confusions about love in gorgeous four-part counterpoint. The amusingly titillating “Kama Sutra” has Saro reading from the infamous love manual as the three woman (faces hidden by feathered masks) undulate to Sydney Blair’s cleverly choreographed moves. “Some Other Way To Feel,” sung in Making Beautiful by the gay character and Woman 3, is now a duet between Men 1 and 2, thereby expressing even more effectively that love is essentially the same for us all, regardless of our sexual orientation.

By the end of the evening, Out Of My Head has allowed us to know all these characters a bit better, even as they themselves have done the same. We’ve also gotten a glimpse of songwriter Oliver’s talents, and those of the all-around terrific ensemble, each of whom couldn’t be better cast, or perform his or her role with greater finesse and pizzazz.

Ryan Cantwell provides impeccable musical direction, accompanying the cast on offstage piano with help from Brian Boyce on drums.

Maxwell T. Robin has designed a splendid therapist’s office set which looks great on the Pico Playhouse stage, especially as lit by the oh-so talented Ric Zimmerman. Cantwell gets additional snaps for his excellent sound design. Kudos too to costume consultants Kathie Urban and Alexander Cole Gottlieb. Out Of My Head is produced by Courtney Bell. Sabba Rahbar is stage manager.

If I have any gripe with Out Of My Head, it’s with its choice of setting. Since there’s nothing intrinsically Big Apple-esque about its characters or songs, why not set it here in L.A., particularly since it was originally written here, by an Angelino no less, and is being performed in Los Angeles by an L.A. theater company? Robin’s excellent projections could just as easily have shown the Los Angeles skyline as Manhattan’s, so why not?

Other than this minor caveat, I heartily recommend Out Of My Head as an introduction to Ryan Scott Oliver’s clever songs, and to some particularly talented young triple-threats, most or all of whom may be new to you, but certainly won’t be for long.

Pico Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. Through August 21. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 7:00. Reservations:
www.mechanicalstheatregroup.com
--Steven Stanley
July 29, 2011
Photos: Matthew Murphy www.MurphyMade.com

WATSON

2011-07-31T00:48:00.000-07:00

WOW!
WATSON

You don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes fan to deem Jaime Robledo’s Watson theatrical magic, as its return engagement at Sacred Fools Theater Company makes abundantly clear. No wonder Watson (aka The Last Great Tale Of The Legendary Sherlock Holmes) won a pair of coveted LA Weekly Awards—for Robledo’s direction and Henry Dittman’s bravura comedic work—in its initial run last fall. Robledo’s comedy thrills and astonishes again and again, making its midsummer encore the best possible news for Los Angeles theatergoers in the mood to be dazzled.

Developed over a period of twenty-one weeks as part of Sacred Fools’ hit late night series Serial Killers, Watson features a plot that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have been proud to call his own.

We first meet our titular hero (Sherlock Holmes playing second fiddle for perhaps the first time in his life) in the purportedly deceased detective’s Bakers Street digs. The discovery of a journal of the pair’s last adventure together sends Watson (and us) flashing back in time, back to when Her Majesty Queen Victoria sent detective and sidekick on a journey across Europe to the Middle East. Their mission: To transport a mysterious puzzle box to an international conference between Ottoman chief Abdul Hamid and Russian Czar Alexander III, both of them vying for possession of Cyprus. Watson and Holmes’ seemingly simple task soon turns into a transcontinental chase, the adventurous pair pursued by legions of evil Turks and various other villains—including arch Holmes nemesis Professor Moriarty, aka The Napoleon Of Crime.

Got that?

No matter if you didn’t. The real fun in Watson are in the theatrical pyrotechnics unleashed by Robledo, his cast (in particular a quartet of thesps who give new meaning to the term “ensemble”), and the production’s gifted designers.

Here’s a taste of what’s in store for you in the 99-seat house Sacred Fools calls home:

• Holmes and Watson searching in vain for each other in possibly the densest London fog in theatrical history.
• A thrilling fistfight between hero and villain atop the cars of a speeding train.
• A band of treacherous Turks pursuing our intrepid heroes on horseback.
• Holmes and Moriarty engaged in a daring duel of wits at the edge of the Cliffs Of Dover.
• Our heroes on a sky-high hot air balloon ride over Europe.
• Two of the above clinging for their lives from the rooftop of a Turkish minaret.

As to how all this is accomplished, I will simply say that none of it could be done without the abovementioned quartet of ensemblists, who work hard indeed for their gas fare as they maneuver assorted trunks, chairs, a chandelier, and a particularly large white bed sheet (courtesy of prop master C.M. Gonzales). Add to that the contributions of composer Ryan Johnson and a trio of prerecorded musicians, designers Matt Richter (lighting) and Ben Rock (sound), and fight choreographer Andrew Amani, and you’ve got one heck of a team of creative artists creating theatrical marvels on a shoestring budget.

Besides adventure, Watson offers laughter galore thanks to some of the most brilliant comedic performances of the year (and some off-the wall dialog thrown in for good measure).

A seemingly inexhaustible Scott Leggett gives us a Dr. John H. Watson no longer the bumbling sidekick we remember from countless Sherlock Holmes adaptations, but rather a loving husband, faithful friend, and courageous adventure hero. As Holmes, rubber-bodied Joe Fria is every bit as outrageous as Leggett is understated, Sherlock’s cocaine addiction offering the award-winning actor the chance to perform some of the most inspired physical comedy since the silent movie greats showed us how back in the 1910s and ‘20s. LA Weekly-awarded Dittman makes for a deliciously fiendish Moriarty, but it’s his tour de force turn as a Londoner, his wife, a train conductor, a pint-sized street urchin, a police “bobby,” and a pair of foppish twits—all in the space of a few dazzling minutes and achieved only with the switch of hats and some breathtaking acting versatility—that make his the production's most talked about performance.

Eric Curtis Johnson (Mycroft Holmes), Rebecca Larson (Irene Adler), and CJ Merriman (Mrs. Dr. Watson) provide Grade A support, while the one-and-only French Stewart brings both Queen Victoria and Sigmund Freud to outrageously quirky life, stopping the show time and again with his inimitable French Stewartisms.

As for the ensemble, the stellar Lisa Anne Nicolai, Colin Willkie, KJ Middlebrooks, and Laura Napoli get the workout of their lives creating illusions it would take multi-millions of dollars to bring to the silver screen, acting various minor roles, and giving new meaning to the word “stagehand.” (The window-frame scene in Freud’s office alone is nearly worth the price of admission.)

Choreographers Natasha Norman and Caesar F. Barajas add to Watson’s many visual delights, aided by Merriman’s dance gifts in simulating Holmes’ cocaine trances. Jessica Olson’s costumes are yet another treat for the eyes, and Ruth Silveira’s puppets are terrific too. Watson is produced by Brandon Clark, Stewart, and Brian Wallis. Monica Greene is assistant director, Suze Campagna stage manager, Nicole Agredano scenic painter, Fria Suzuki trainer, Padraic Duffy dramaturg, and Joseph Beck associate producer.

With a publishing deal already signed, it’s a sure bet that Watson’s return to Sacred Fools is only the latest step on its road to national and maybe even international hit status. If you’ve not seen Watson yet, do it! And if you’re one of the lucky ones who caught it the first time around, here’s your chance to do it again. Newbies and return visitors are likely to find themselves in perfect agreement that there's not a more magical show in town.

Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., Hollywood. Through August 20. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Reservations: 310 281-8337
www.sacredfools.org

--Steven Stanley
July 29, 2011
Photos: Brian Taylor

BLACKBIRD

2011-07-27T09:56:00.001-07:00

WOW!
BLACKBIRD

A 30ish woman confronts the 60ish man who had sex with her when she was only 12 in David Harrower’s harrowing Blackbird, now shocking, disturbing, and dare I say entertaining audiences in equal measure in its Los Angeles premiere by Rogue Machine Theatre.

Before I’m accused of giving too much away in my first sentence, let me assure you that this startling bit of information comes out a mere ten minutes into the play, and any attempt to discuss Blackbird without revealing its central conceit would be frustrating at best. In any case, whatever preconceived notions you might have of Blackbird as a staged version of a cable TV revenge melodrama will quickly be dispelled by the playwright’s unclichéd (and even poetic) dialog and unpredictable plot twists, especially as directed to razor-sharp perfection by Robin Larsen and performed by a pair of utterly brilliant actors.

Our first glimpse of Peter (Sam Anderson) and Una (Corryn Cummins) finds them mid-conversation in the trash-strewn break room of an unnamed company, and though we’re at first unaware of the reason for their confrontation, one thing is crystal clear. Peter wants out and Una is not about to let him get away. Peter’s coworkers, whose shadowy figures are glimpsed through the room’s translucent windows, seem as curious as we are about what’s going on between this disparate pair, but we have the advantage of being inside the room with them. Indeed, because Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s scenic design in Theatre/Theatre’s smaller space is so utterly realistic, it seems almost as if chairs and risers had been added to a preexisting factory room, and not the other way around.

Were Blackbird a novel, a writer like Jodi Picoult (whose 400+ page tomes deal with precisely this type of dark, twisted subject matter) would fill us in with every detail of Peter and Una’s past relationship from both points of view, and from the points of view of the people who surrounded them, and quite a compelling novel it would make.

The challenge—and the excitement—of Blackbird as an eighty-minute, two-character play is that whatever we know about the older man and younger woman comes from what they tell each other during their real-time encounter. We hear her story as she remembers it, and his as he does, or at least in the way that each one wants the other to think that he or she remembers it. As for the details of Peter’s current life or Una’s, we have to take their word on it, and do so with a grain of salt, since the potential for prevarication is very real indeed. Thus, playwright Harrower keeps us particularly on our toes, filling in the blanks as best we can, and his play is all the stronger for making its audiences think.

Blackbird is far too complex for clichés, and anyone expecting a black-and-white predator-victim tale will have to search elsewhere. Is Peter the serial molester that child abuse advocates would like him painted as, or was Una (as he insists) only a one-time thing? Is he being honest about the man he claims to have become, or merely describing a life he wants her to see him in? Is Una a grown-up abuse survivor looking simply for closure, or does her visit hide far different urges? Be prepared to hash over these questions with your fellow playgoers as you exit the theater following Blackbird’s disquieting blackout.

One more thing about Harrower’s script as published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. and staged by Rogue Machine. Whoever tweaked it for American audiences deserves major props, as there’s not a moment you’d think that it was written by a Scottish playwright, save the unlikelihood of Una's surname.

Lead performers Anderson and Cummins can now be added to the list of the year’s stunning dramatic duos, which have included Johnny Clark and Michelle Clunie, Mike Farrell and Jim Parrack, and Morlan Higgins and Adolphus Ward.

Anderson, StageSceneLA Award winner for his unforgettable work in The Bird And Mr. Banks, is equally unforgettable here as a man whose seeming harmlessness (he looks to be the last person any parent would worry about leaving their child with) makes his past transgressions all the more shocking, and whose air of sincerity makes his claims of redemption all the more credible should we choose to believe him. It is as tough a role as Anderson has ever undertaken, emotionally and physically draining (credit fight choreographer Edgar Landa for the latter), and he is as on top of it as you’d expect an actor half his age to be.

The remarkable Cummins is equally well cast. There’s a toughness to her that makes you wonder how she could ever have been a victim, yet the lone tear that falls unexpectedly down her cheek reveals the wounded child within. The talented young actress brings a feline fierceness to the role, matching Anderson in power and depth every step of the way, so that when …

I’ll stop myself before giving anything more away. Suffice it to say that Anderson’s and Cummins’ work must surely match the best of any actors who may have tackled these roles in previous productions.

Casey Burke makes a highly effective eleventh hour appearance. Dana Lyn Baron and Alec Tomkiw are seen mostly only as distorted images through frosted glass, but their presence adds significantly to the realism of Larsen’s staging.

Leigh Allen’s lighting design is remarkably varied considering the one-set, real-time nature of Harrower’s script. Christopher Moscatiello’s sound design adds subtly to the suspense. Jocelyn Hublau Parker’s costumes suit each character to a T. Property designer Ilona Piotrowska gets a round of applause for filling Schwartz’s set with fast food detritus like you may never have seen on the legitimate stage. Sasha Sobolevsky is stage manager, David Mauer technical director, Amanda Mauer production manager, and Darryl Johnson assistant director. Blackbird is produced by John Perrin Flynn, Matthew Elkins, and Edward Tournier.

I had avoided Blackbird when it first opened, the darkness of its subject matter suggesting a play that might prove overly disturbing to this somewhat faint-hearted reviewer. Disturbing it is indeed, but (as mentioned in the first paragraph) highly entertaining as well, and well worth seeing for that reason alone. Even amidst the darkness and despair, it is a theatergoing treat to savor the superb work being done by Anderson and Cummins—literally within touching distance. Blackbird gives playgoers one more reason to sample the many treasures of Los Angeles theater.

(Note: Blackbird’s current schedule—Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00 and Mondays at 8:00—makes it particularly easy to program into even the busiest theatergoing schedule.)

Rogue Machine, Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles. Through August 15. Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00, Mondays at 8:00. Reservations: 855 585-5185
www.roguemachinetheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
July 25, 2011
Photos: John Flynn

THE INSIDIOUS IMPACT OF ANTON

2011-07-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

WOW!
THE INSIDIOUS IMPACT OF ANTON

You could hardly call Francesca “The Girl Who Has Everything,” but she for one is not complaining. She has a job and a small circle of sort-of friends, and while she doesn't have a husband or a boyfriend, what she does have is a life which includes "people, cable, books on occasion, sex when required. And an apartment that always gets compliments.” And then she meets Anton.

Francesca is the 30something heroine of David Hilder’s highly entertaining romcom The Insidious Impact Of Anton, whose snappy World Premiere production at the El Centro proves a terrific showcase for the New York playwright’s quirky spin on life and a just-right star vehicle for its leading lady Tracy Eliott under Richard Tatum's ingenious direction.

Francesca spends her days not particularly challenged by the office job her uncle Victor offered her when she got tired of retail—and not particularly interested in anything or anyone else. Conversations with co-workers Miranda and Adele rarely go farther than who’s cute on this season’s American Idol. Richard, her ex, still carries an obvious torch for “Chess,” and though the possibility of a roll in the hay for old-time’s sake does exist, it’s unlikely to lead to an honest-to-goodness rekindling of old flames. Gaybor (i.e. gay neighbor) Nate does add a certain sparkle to Francesca’s evenings at home, but unlike Francesca, Nate has a dating life, so his visits tend to be pop-bys that don’t last all that long.

Then comes that meet-cute with Anton in the office kitchen. (“I wish you to move aside when you put milk in your fucking coffee,” she informs him in a sarcastic imitation of his Eastern European syntax which flies right over Anton’s seemingly fresh-off-the-boat noggin.) And that’s just the start of a series of seemingly chance meetings—at the bus stop, at the dry cleaners... You name it, he's there. Before long Francesca has agreed to dinner with the ubiquitous gent, “which is not a date” because she has “absolutely no romantic interest in him, and if he wants to have sex with me, he can fall off the nearest log.”

Dinner does indeed turn out to be just dinner that first time, but before long Anton has turned into considerably more than a mere dinner companion. Having lost her job due to her “halfhearted work ethic and frequent—and on occasion truly stunning—expletives,” Francesca now finds herself working for Anton as his personal assistant. And that’s not all that changes in Chess’s life. Instead of sitting around an office all day with boring coworkers, she’s picking up dry cleaning for a living, and even more surprisingly, she’s starting to use expressions like “for the love of Mike” instead of her habitual “oh for Christ’s sake.”

Who the heck is this Anton (who by the way no one in Francesca’s life has ever seen) and why is he having such an insidious impact on her life?

Far be it for this reviewer to spoil the end-of-Act-One surprise playwright Hilder has in store for you or the many comic delights of Act Two. Suffice it to say that the surprise is probably not what you’re expecting—and there are numerous reasons to return to your seat after intermission, not the least of which are the performances of Insidious Anton’s two leading players, and several delightful supporting turns as well.

The role of Francesca proves a terrific showcase for Eliott, who like Katharine Hepburn before her combines a gift for the acerbic with snappy comic timing and off-center romantic appeal. It’s a huge role, one that has the actress never leaving the stage, frequently addressing the audience, zipping from scene change to scene change, and never missing a beat.

Opposite her, Mikhail Blokh is a foreign-accented, English syntax-mutilating charmer, just the sort to wear a girl’s resistance down in a case of opposites attracting—with sizzle!

Daniel Montgomery is so utterly winning as Francesca’s gayboy-next-door that you wish Hilder would write a spin-off play just for Nate—on condition that Montgomery be guaranteed the role. June Carryl and Patty Jean Robinson provide solid office support for Eliott, with a cast-against-type Carryl particularly funny as flighty flibbertigibbet Adele. Warren Davis is spot-on as Francesca’s all-business, no-charm uncle Victor. As Robert, an amusing John Gale does his best to embody the lovable hetero lug of Hilder’s script.

Hilder’s script requires instantaneous scene changes (“shift to a bus stop,” “shift to a restaurant,” “shift to work,” etc.) that could easily bog down a production less inventively directed and designed than the one the splendid Tatum and his crackerjack team have come up with here. Katie Polebaum’s cleverly off-kilter set cues us in from the get-go that we’ll be in the not-quite-real world, and together with Corwin Evans’ ingenious projections—which show us what’s atop whichever location we’re supposed to be in—make for lickety-split scene changes. (I love the way Victor is pushed on and offstage on his castered office chair.) Christopher Moscatiello’s sound design is a winner too, working in precision tandem with Michelle Stann’s lighting design to create a whimsical, occasionally otherworldly mood, though Stann’s lighting could do a better job at flattering Eliott in her “close-up” moments. Sarah Le Ferber’s costumes are just the character definers they ought to be. Shelley Delayne is scenic painting assistant, Antonina Flowers costume assistant, Stephanie Boltjes stage manager, and Rachel Landis assistant stage manager.

The Insidious Impact Of Anton is precisely the kind of under-the-radar production that might easily escape notice in the more theatrically crowded seasons of fall, winter, and spring. Fewer summer offerings give it considerably more of the visibility it richly deserves, and theatergoers in search of romantic comedy with a bite could do no better than to seek it out. Anton’s impact may well be insidious, but it’s pretty darned appealing as well.

El Centro Theatre, 804 North El Centro Avenue, Hollywood. Through August 28. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 7:00. Reservations: 323 230-7261
www.absolutetheatrela.org
--Steven Stanley
July 24, 2011
Photos: Sarah LeFeber

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

2011-07-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

Recommended
ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

If America is the land of opportunity, nowhere is this more true than in the world of community theater. There’s probably nowhere else in the world where software developers, college math teachers, office workers, Air Force officers, and children’s book illustrators are offered so many opportunities to take to the stage and enjoy the delights of performing live theater—without having to quit their day jobs.

For an example, check out The Aerospace Players’ revival of perennial community theater favorite Once Upon A Mattress, now providing nearly forty Southern Californians with their moments in the spotlight in a production sure to entertain friends and family members alike.

Mattress shares key elements with its sister show, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Both debuted in the late 1950s, both are based on classic fairy tales (Mattress comes from The Princess And The Pea), both are about royal offspring, and both feature a Rodgers score, though in the case of Once Upon A Mattress, the Rodgers in question is the legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers’ daughter Mary—who wrote a supremely catchy bunch of tunes you’re guaranteed to leave the theater humming.

Mattress features an absolutely hilarious book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer. Add to that Barer’s clever lyrics, a scene-stealing leading character originated by Carol Burnett on Broadway, and a supporting cast of fairy tale archetypes tweaked just enough to make them memorable, and you’ve got a family musical which even adults can love.

In “Many Moons Ago,” the Minstrel (Stephen Cathers) recounts the tale we’ve heard time and time again. (“‘I will test her thus,’ the old queen said, ‘I’ll put twenty downy mattresses upon her bed. And beneath those twenty mattresses I’ll place one tiny pea. If that pea disturbs her slumber, then a true princess is she.’”) Once Upon A Mattress then proceeds to tell us “the real story.”

Mattress’s medieval kingdom is ruled by a Queen (Jennifer Pawlikowski) who won’t shut up and a lecherous King (Ken MacFarlane) who is mute. Courtiers of marriageable age are getting antsy because not a one is allowed to walk down the aisle until cute and cuddly Prince Dauntless (Joe Essner) finds a bride, and candidate number twelve has just struck out. (In “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” fashion, she lost on the final question “What’s the middle name of the daughter-in-law of the best friend of the blacksmith who forged the sword that killed the dragon killed by St. George?”, ending up with only a rubber chicken as a consolation prize before being thrown into the moat.)

Particularly peeved are a pregnant Lady Larkin (Erin Callaway) and her bun-in-the-oven’s dad, Prince Harry (Brian Grundy). “Why should we both suffer because you had a moment of weakness,” wonders Harry in a way not likely to win friends amongst medieval women’s-libbers.

Fortunately, though, when all seems doomed, who should climb out of the moat but the brash and brassy Princess Winnifred The Woebegone (Kristin Towers-Rowles), who informs the populace in a voice matching Merman’s in volume that “I'm actually terribly timid and hoooribly shy!” (She’s obviously not.)

Will Winnifred (aka Fred) fail Queen Aggravain’s test of “Sensitivity” by falling fast asleep atop twenty mattresses and a single tiny pea? Will Winnifred and Dauntless live happily ever after or will the Princess end up back in the moat she climbed out of? Will Lady Larkin give birth to a royal bastard?

Anyone not familiar with the answers to these questions must have fallen asleep too quickly at bedtime. Fortunately, in Once Upon A Mattress, the fun is in the getting there, particularly for cast members, who are clearly having a fairytale ball bringing these characters to life.

Michael-Anthony Nozzi’s direction is often clever indeed, adding to the abovementioned characters and supporting players—which also include a Jester (dance captain Drew Fitzsimmons) and a Wizard (Kevin Wheaton)—a number of fairytale and fairytale-adjacent figures not in the Broadway original: the Three Fairies from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, a Notre Dame-style Hunchback, Disney Cinderella’s two ugly stepsisters, Nanny McPhee, and (in a tip of the hat to the original Winnifred) a Charwoman out of the Carol Burnett show.

A number of performances stand out, particularly those of velvet-voiced Cathers, pantomime whiz MacFarlane, Lancelot-like Grundy, and blonde charmer Callaway. Essner is a hoot as the Prince, Fitzsimmons a terrifically soft-shoeing Jester, and Wheaton a suitably mysterious Wizard. Pawlikowski’s Queen has a number of divalicious moments, but this is a case where even bigger and broader would make the role the true scene-stealer it has the potential to be.

Still, all of the above must bow in the presence of Towers-Rowles, who follows Best-Of-Show performances in Kiss Me Kate and Sunday In The Park With George with a Princess Winnifred which pays tribute to the Burnett original, all the while making the part very much her own. “Fred” offers Towers-Rowles the chance to show off tiptop slapstick skills, charisma that belies her petite stature, and one heck of a Broadway belt.

The cast is completed by José Acain, Nancy Arnold, Shari Bennett, Crystal Boyer, Susane Button, Mark Bruce-Casares, Conna Condon, Lisa Golden, Kathleen Hart, dance captain Laura Hecht, Michael Heidner, Jacob Helfgott, Brittany Hooper, Mary Kay, Arthur “Bud” Krause, Amparo Lomas, Tony McQuilkin, Ida Miller-Krause, Bib Minnichelli, Joey Minnichelli, Flora Morin, Katie Neagle, Ryan Raleigh, Cynthia Reyes, Jason Stout, Lisa Stout, Tim Wade, Rachel Claire Willenbring, and Robin Wohlman, all of whom perform with high energy and dedication.

As choreographer, Nozzi has astutely designed moves which fit an ensemble with few trained dancers, e.g. the jitterbug fingers in “Opening For A Princess.” Particularly inventive is “Spanish Panic,” which the Queen hopes will make Winnifred dance until she drops, a production number to which Nozzi has added salutes to Saturday Night Fever, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Madonna’s “Vogue,” and even a bit of Beyoncé. The show’s liveliest production number, “Song Of Love,” gives Towers-Rowles the evening’s biggest weightlifting, drinking, wrestling, and playing the lute as courtiers and cheerleaders sing, “I’m in love with a girl named Fred. She wrestles like a Greek. You will clap your hands in wonder at her fabulous technique. With an F and an R and an E and a D and a F-R-E-D Fred YEAH!”

With a running time of nearly three hours, this Once Upon A Mattress could definitely benefit from snappier pacing. As is, it runs twenty or so minutes longer than the 1996 Sarah Jessica Parker Broadway revival, far too long for a musical as frothy as this one. Scene/scenery changes drag, despite some clever mini-skits added to keep the audience entertained while set pieces get moved behind a curtain—again and again—throughout the production. Perhaps because of the slow pace, several numbers, including “The Swamps Of Home” and “Very Soft Shoes,” end up making a long show feel even longer, despite the talents of their performers.

Singers are music directed by (Bob) Minnichelli and accompanied by a twenty-four piece orchestra under the baton of Joseph Derthick. The uncredited sound design needs to up the volume of vocal performances to insure that they are heard loud and clear over musical instruments.

By far the finest design elements are Maria Cohen’s imaginative, colorful fairytale costumes and Arlene Cohen’s equally fanciful hats. Kudos go too to Miller-Krause’s properties design and to an uncredited lighting design. Nozzi’s set design is a strong one considering the size of the stage to be filled and a budget which must have been considerably less than a professional production’s.

While Once Upon A Mattress does not reach the heights of a CLO revival or National Tour, it offers many entertaining moments, a stellar lead performance, a good number of laughs, and one of the most tuneful scores of the 1950s. Audience members are sure to be cheering friends and family through the end of the production’s limited two weekend run.

James Armstrong Theatre, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance.
www.aeaclubs.com/theater
--Steven Stanley
July 23, 2011
Photos: Kris Maine

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

2011-07-23T15:40:00.000-07:00

WOW!
THE SOUND OF MUSIC

The hills of Thousand Oaks are alive with _____.

If anyone reading this is incapable of filling in the blank, this reviewer can only wonder where you’ve been during the half century since The Sound Of Music made its Broadway debut. Is there anyone in America who hasn’t seen either the 1964 movie adaptation—the third biggest moneymaker in film history when adjusted for inflation—or any one of a gazillion regional, community, or school productions of the Rodgers And Hammerstein classic?

It’s no wonder then that the Fred Kavli Theatre for the Performing Arts was jam packed for last night’s gala opening of the gazillion-and-oneth revival of the Tony-winning smash—one so impeccably staged and performed that it might even sway those who’ve suffered through a mediocre amateur production or two and vowed never to see another.

Yes, there are still moments in The Sound Of Music that will prove too sugary for theater sophisticates. Yes, a stageful of singing nuns can still at times be about a dozen too many. And yes, historical purists still have every right to carp about the show’s factually inaccuracies. (How’s this for fudging with geography? An escape over Maria’s beloved mountains would have taken her and the von Trapp Family Singers smack dab into Nazi Germany and not into Switzerland, 200 miles away.)

Still, with performances as rich and layered as those of Shannon Warne and Tom Schmid (who also happen to have some of the Broadway-readiest pipes around), direction as spot-on as Lewis Wilkenfeld’s, a terrific supporting cast of theater pros and relative newbies, and a Broadway caliber orchestra under the impeccable direction of Darryl Archibald, even the grumpiest theatergoer may fall under this Sound Of Music’s spell.

I’ll forgo the usual synopsizing (for obvious reasons) and simply list the five best reasons not to miss Cabrillo Music Theatre’s smashing Sound Of Music revival.

Reason #1: Warne, whose starring roles over the past five years or so have taken her to the top echelon of L.A.-based musical theater stars. Few can match Warne’s blend of captivating stage presence, bona fide acting chops, and an instantly recognizable voice that can slide imperceptibly from pop to legit and back again. Needless to say, Warne makes the future Baroness von Trapp so feisty, fun, and fantastically her own that you’ll likely forget any previous Marias—at least for the duration of the show.

Reason #2: Schmid, whose performance captures all of the Captain’s complex mixture of coldness, repressed pain, military bearing, and fatherly adoration, and whose golden pipes make his Captain von Trapp one of the best sung ever.

Reason #3: The von Trapp children (Alison Woods, Michael Kennedy, Lyrissa Leininger, Mason Purece, Audrey Miller, Natalie Esposito, and Kristina Van Horst), who perform with professionalism, harmonize to perfection, and for the most part avoid child actor precocity. Woods makes for an absolutely enchanting Leisl, and Tyler Matthew Burk (Rolf) displays triple-threat talents to match his song-and-dance partner's.

Reason #4: The nuns, whose exquisite harmonies are the closest thing to heavenly Cabrillo audiences have likely heard since the CLO’s 2001 revival, with Mother Abbess Marilyn Anderson’s “Climb Every Mountain” every bit the inspirational showstopper it’s supposed to be. Along with Anderson, the delightful trio of Farley Cadena (Sister Margaretta), Becca Cornelius (Sister Sophia), and Karen Sonnenschein (Sister Berthe) join voices (and opposing viewpoints) in a futile but very funny attempt to "solve a problem like Maria" in song.

Reason #5: The musical numbers, including the now standard “The Sound of Music”, “Edelweiss”, “My Favorite Things”, and “Do-Re-Mi,” backed by Cabrillo’s Broadway-caliber Music Theatre Orchestra and vocalized to perfection by a cast of thirty-nine. Add to that “Sixteen Going On Seventeen,” a charming showcase for Woods and Burk—and for choreographer Heather Castillo, whose Agnes DeMille-inspired dance moves give the iconic puppy-love duet added beauty and depth. “I Have Confidence” and “Something Good,” written for the movie adaptation, have shrewdly been inserted into the Cabrillo revival. “How Can Love Survive” and “No Way To Stop It,” sung by von Trapp family friends Max and Elsa, were cut from the movie but not in Cabrillo's staging, providing here a needed dose of tartness amidst the sweetness around them.

Michael G. Hawkins and Laura Cable furnish dandy support as the acerbic duo, though why Cable should be the only major player with vaguely foreign diction is anyone’s guess. Gloria Bennett, John McCool Bowers, David Gilchrist, Patrick J. Saxon, and Robert Weibezahl do first-rate work in smaller roles.

Ronni Coleen Ashley, Carol-Lynn Cambell, Carolyn Freeman Champ, Judi Domroy, Lori Merkle Ford, Heidi Goodspeed, Stephanie Hayslip, Julie Jones, Laura Leininger, Maegan Mandarino, Jacqueline Elyse Rosenthal, Christanna Rowader, Catherine Wallet, and Emily Works are marvelous as singing nuns and other assorted female characters. The male contingent is brought up by David Kennedy, Mark David Lackey, Bart Leninger, and Jesse Test.

The production looks great, with sets originally created in the early 1970s for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and provided by Musical Theatre West, and costumes provided by FCLO Music Theatre and supervised by Christine Gibson, all of the above lit to perfection by Rand Ryan. Jonathan Burke’s sound design is one of his best, filling the Kavli with as celestial a blend of voices as might be heard in a Salzburg cathedral. Thumbs up too to hair and makeup designer Mark Travis Hoyer, production stage manager Allie Roy, assistant stage managers Taylor Ruge and Jessie Standifer, technical director Tim Schoepfer, and crew captain Char Brister.

The Sound Of Music may never end up on every Rodgers And Hammerstein fan’s list of their “Favorite Things.” Still, even those who prefer Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, or The King And I will likely concur that you’d be hard-pressed to find a better TSOM than the one currently on stage in Thousand Oaks. I defy any heart not to melt when the Captain’s own is thawed by his children’s voices raised in song, or any theatergoer not to be moved as the von Trapps begin to ascend that mountain towards whatever destiny awaits them on the other side.

Cabrillo Music Theatre, Kavli Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard, Thousand Oaks.
www.cabrillomusictheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
July 22, 2011
Photos: Ed Krieger

I'M JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY

2011-07-20T20:52:00.001-07:00

WOW!
I’M JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY

Take an 1892 British farce that broke records with its 1466-performance London run. Add to it nearly two-dozen song hits from the 1900s, ‘10s, and early ‘20s. Cast it with a terrific bunch of actors who can also sing and dance. Add to the mix a director, musical director, choreographer, and trio of designers, each of whom is blessed with ingenuity and flair. Do all of the above and the result is I’m Just Wild About Harry, Gary Lamb and William A. Reilly’s delightful jukebox musical now playing at the duo’s Crown City Theatre Co.

The British farce in question is Brandon Thomas’s classic Charlie’s Aunt, originally adapted for the musical stage by Frank Loesser in 1948 as Where’s Charlie, a show which has mostly disappeared into musical theater limbo and whose songs (other than “Once In Love With Amy”) have largely gone unremembered.

I’m Just Wild About Harry takes the same rollickingly farcical plot but makes sure that its songs ring musical bells (in addition to being in pre-1923 public domain). The result is a show which doesn’t cost its creators a dime in royalties—both a savvy business decision and one that yields considerable artistic rewards.

Lamb and Reilly’s adaptation sticks close to the original’s plot, though it switches the setting from 1890 Oxford to 1910 Old Milwaukee U., and changes co-protagonist Charley Wyckeham’s name to the more American-sounding Harry Whitman, the better to match the show’s (and its title song’s) title. The rechristened Harry still has a roommate Jack Chesney, but the duo’s girlfriends are now named Margie and Katy. (Three guesses why.)

As in Thomas’s original, our two heroes are aiming to propose to their ladies fair, but there’s a hitch: Neither girl is willing to visit Harry and Jack’s campus digs without a female chaperone on hand. Fortunately Harry receives word that his wealthy widowed aunt, Donna Lucia d'Alvadorez, is arriving from Brazil just in time to be of assistance. Unfortunately Donna Lucia is delayed. Fortunately their music professor Benjamin Babberey (aka Babbs) happens to be appearing as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest, and has shown up at Harry and Jack’s door, costume in suitcase in hand. Fortunately too, Babbs has just put on his costume to run lines when Margie and Katy return, and Harry and Jack, clever chaps that they are, introduce him/her as Aunt Lucia.

Adding to the madcap mix are Katy’s uncle (aka Old Spettigue), Jack’s father Frank, Babbs’ sweetheart Ida Delahay, and the real Donna Lucia d'Alvadorez, giving the boys a pair of dueling Aunt Lucias to juggle as they make their way towards the happy ending any farce fan worth his or her salt can see coming from lights up.

Lamb and Reilly open the show with a series of deliberately corny jokes to set the farcical mood (A: Where can you find a one-legged dog? B: I don’t know, where? C: Right where you left it.) blended into a song-and-dance number featuring the entire cast warbling and tapping their feet to “I Love A Musical Comedy Show,” a song so fresh and new sounding that it comes as a surprise to learn that it was written way back in 1919.

Under Joanne McGee’s snappy direction, I’m Just Wild About Harry never stops entertaining with its razor-sharp timing, clever running gags, and the one of the funniest cross-dressing leading men (leading ladies?) ever. It is sophisticated enough to please your most Broadway-savvy musical theater queen and sufficiently family-friendly to charm your churchgoing maiden aunt.

Among the musical chestnuts which fit so nicely into I’m Just Wild About Harry’s deliciously convoluted plot are “Look For The Silver Lining” (Harry’s and Jack’s advice to Babbs when they learn that the girl he loves skipped town before he got a chance to propose), “Runnin’ Wild” (the fake Donna Lucia’s done-with-love mantra), “Abba Dabba Honeymoon” (which has Margie and Katy attempting to explain love in simian terms to Lucia, who comes from “a veritable monkey, nut banana land”), “Spanish Love” (one of Donna Lucia’s late husband’s favorites—even though he was Portuguese); and “You Made Me Love You” (Ida’s second chance at declaring her love to Babbs). “Margie” is Jack’s way of proposing to his intended (no wonder they changed her name from Kitty) and “K-K-K-Katy” serves the same purpose for Harry, who has conveniently revealed in an early scene that the very idea of p-p-p-popping the question to his b-b-b-beloved makes him stutter.

Director McGee has made sure that her entire cast remain on the same page stylistically, playing their roles (relatively) straight yet just heightened (and campy) enough to give a wink to the show’s present-day audience. Mikhail Roberts (Jack) and Matthew Thompson (Harry) make for an utterly delightful pair of leads, with Sarah French (Margie) and Melanie Taylor (Katy) matching them in adorableness and charm. Louis Silvers makes the part of Mr. Spettigue uniquely, outrageously his own, Dave Berges (Frank) and Carol Jones (Donna Lucia) are a terrific pair of “older” lovers, and Lisaun Whittingham is not only lovely as Ida but the evening’s vocal standout. Finally, there’s the stellar Douglas Thornton doing Milton Berle, Harvey Korman, and Flip Wilson proud as both Babbs and Donna Lucia.

Stephanie Pease’s choreography pays tribute to early 20th Century dance steps while giving them a contemporary, campy pizzazz. Musical director/arranger Reilly provides splendid live piano accompaniment (with occasional help from Roberts on percussion). Keiko Moreno’s set design (a cleverly detailed 1910 campus apartment) is a winner as are costume designer Tanya Apuya’s early 20th Century fashions and Zad Potter’s lighting design. I’m Just Wild About Harry features additional lyrics by Reilly. Potter and Moreno serve as stage managers.

I’m Just Wild About Harry proves yet another winner from North Hollywood’s Crown City Theatre Co., a company that never fails to surprise and impress with its varied assortment of offerings. A definite crowd-pleaser, their latest is not only a thoroughly entertaining evening of Los Angeles musical theater, but one that ought to prove attractive to community, college, and regional theaters nationwide. Hats will be eaten if you’re not wild about it too.

Crown City Theater, St. Matthew’s Church, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood. Through August 14. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 3:00. Reservations: 818 605-5685
www.crowncitytheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
June 10, 2010
Photos: Ben Rovner

AFTER THE AUTUMN

2011-07-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

WOW!
AFTER THE AUTUMN

If horse-blinder Alan Strang was a tough nut for psychiatrist Martin Dysart to crack in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, then the nameless Army Captain in Matthew Kellen Burgos’ engrossing new dramatic one-act After The Autumn proves an even greater challenge to the doctor assigned to his case.

Now getting its World Premiere production by Vanguard Rep under the La Canada Flintridge stars, After The Autumn takes us on a non-linear journey, introducing us in flashback to the Doctor (Sam R. Ross), his patient (Clay Wilcox), two nurses (Alice McFarland and Adam Burch) charged with the Captain's daily care, and the officer’s former subordinate (David Ross Paterson), as the actors recite from a redacted (i.e. heavily censored) report from the Doctor’s malpractice hearing. (We hear only beeps whenever a name is mentioned.)

The Captain’s day nurse fills us in on the facts. The officer has recently been transferred to the Ascension Military Recovery Clinic, “where they send the ‘ghosts,’” his symptoms including, “but not limited to insomnia, lasting depression, disturbing nightmares, difficulty in social settings, and anger management issues.” And if that weren’t already enough, the Captain appears virtually mute, that is except for outbursts of anger during which words emerge from his mouth that seem to make little or no sense.

We learn that the Doctor has been given the Captain’s case by the Medical Licensing Board as a probationary assignment to be fulfilled while attempting to recover from an addiction to sleeping pills and pain relievers. Should he not be able to kick the habit, the Doctor’s medical license will be permanently revoked.

In words eerily reminiscent of Dr. Dysart’s in Equus, the Doctor recalls his initial reaction to his troubled patient: “I have to get closer. Just a little closer. Just as I’m close enough to hear what he’s saying, suddenly his mouth opens wide. Impossibly wide. He screams with many voices all at once. God, the noise. Loud. So loud.”

As the Doctor begins his attempts at therapy, he discovers that the Captain has been so heavily sedated as to make communication virtually impossible. Vowing to wean his patient from his overprescribed meds, the Doctor is surprised one day when the Captain speaks words that seem far too formal for an Army officer. “Better be with the dead whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,” begins the officer, “than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.” Though the words mean nothing to the man of medicine, the Captain’s night nurse recognizes them. “Crazy bastard’s rehearsing a one-man Macbeth.”

Somehow, the Doctor now realizes, the Captain is using the words and themes of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play to express some secret inner torment, and feeling inspired for the first time in a good long while, the Doctor vows to root out the cause of the Captain’s trauma before his patient is committed to spending the rest of his life as a sedated vegetable. What he does not initially realize is that this may mean uncovering secrets the military would do anything not to see made public.

Playwright Burgos takes considerable risks in having his Army Captain speak only in the words of Shakespeare, courting protests that something like this would never happen in real life. Still, as a theatrical conceit we go with it, particularly since Burgos has come up with that rarity, a World Premiere play which proves absolutely apt for a Shakespearean season. As for the performances director Burgos has elicited from his stellar cast, they simply could not be better.

Ross, StageSceneLA Award winner for his Dramatic Performance Of The Year in Breaking The Code is utterly compelling as a man charged with healing a wounded soul, all the while dealing with inner demons virtually as relentless as those of his patient. Wilcox matches Ross every step of the way as the Captain, his eyes at once hollow and filled with pain, a shell of a man still possessed of the strength to do violence, though perhaps not enough strength to face life once again among the living.

The elegant Paterson disappears inside the Sergeant’s considerably coarser skin in a performance that transcends stereotype. McFarland gives the day nurse an Upper Midwest accent you could slice with a knife and layers of caring and warmth. Burch is terrific too as the night nurse with a junior college minor in theater and little tolerance for the Doctor’s efforts to save a patient he thinks would be best left to vegetate.

Ric Zimmerman’s lighting is as striking as Jason Knox’s sound design, with its censorship beeps and tape rewind whirs. Bethany Richards gets high marks for well chosen costumes. Elisa K. Blandford is stage manager.

Opening the evening is a brief performance piece, Tragic Women, adapted from Shakespeare by Ross, who directs it as well. The short one-act has the spirits of Ophelia (Eliza Kiss) and Desdemona (Kirstin A. Snyder) mentoring suicidal neophyte Juliet (Chelsea Taylor) entirely in words from Hamlet, Othello, and R+J. It features graceful choreography by Elizabeth Ross set to Nino Rota’s theme from Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo And Juliet. A worthy experiment, Tragic Women offers its three actresses the chance to do first rate work, with Kiss exhibiting a fine singing voice as well. Vocal arrangements are by Kathryn Gallagher and piano arrangement by Ben Coria. Richards costumes Tragic Women as well.

Still, the evening belongs to After The Autumn, a play that stands on its own and deserves future stagings. You will likely admire the imagination that went into Tragic Women, but it is the powerful After The Autumn that will stay with you long after the lights have dimmed.

Byrnes Amphitheater, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, 440 St. Katherine Dr., La Cañada Flintridge.
www.vanguardrep.com
--Steven Stanley
July 17, 2011

DOUBTING THOMASON

2011-07-18T10:58:00.001-07:00

WOW!
DOUBTING THOMASON

Los Angeles theater buffs may recall one of the biggest Ovation Award upsets ever, when the under-the-radar West Coast Premiere of Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe went on to win four crystal statuettes, including Best Production, Best Ensemble, and Best Direction. Far fewer will be aware that, at about the very same time as that production was set to open, another group of L.A. actors were rehearsing the very same play, only to discover a week before their own opening that someone else (the future Ovation winners) had the rights to Killer Joe—and they didn’t.

Writer/actor Christopher Brewster was part of that ill-fated second production, but in a storybook example of turning lemons into lemonade, a brand new script was written to fit the five-actor cast in one frenzied week.

Doubting Thomason is playwright Brewster’s look back at that experience, and a more hilarious comedy could not have been come out of near disaster than the one now provoking gales of laughter at North Hollywood’s Avery Schreiber Theatre.

Doubting Thomason opens with two of its actors pummeling a third to shouts of “Kill her! Kill her, Joe!”—only to have company member Thomason (Brewster) read aloud this blurb from The Acting Thespian: “New this week at the Sacred Tostada Theater is our Pick of the Week, Killer Joe, by Tracy Letts.”

Six weeks into rehearsals with only a week remaining before their first performance, five desperate actors suggest possible substitutions (including Sexual Perversity In Chicago, Love! Valor! Compassion!, 12 Angry Men, Key Exchange, and Beyond Therapy), but none of the above has exactly three male and two female roles, and as one of the thesps comments, “Even if we think of a play we still have to get the stupid rights.”

Blonde bimbo Kate (Kelly Kemp) is in near hysterics; after all, Days Of Our Lives casting director Marnie Siatta is coming to see her. Pseudo-Brit Teddy (Paul Storiale) refuses to jeopardize his “Equity-eligible” status by doing a show illegally. Stoner dude Jake (Artie Ahr) finds their situation a “serious buzz kill,” and contemplates making his move to Hawaii a few months ahead of schedule.

When Thomason announces his plan to save the day (“I will write a play this week. We will rehearse it as I write it and we’ll perform it on opening night!”), skeptics Kate and director/cast member Lynette (Bree Pavey) remind the would-be playwright that his last opus took him two years to write (“and you didn’t even finish it”). Still, Thomason is bound and determined to put his plan into action since, unbeknownst to the others, he’s used Teddy’s $1000 investment to buy his unsupportive parents a pair of first-class plane tickets to Opening Night.

In the immortal words of whoever first said them, “The Show Must Go On,” and go on it does, though Teddy has provisions. “I will agree to proceed with this theatrical carrion on one condition,” he informs the playwright, “that you include a man-man kissing scene,” then goes on to add, “Don’t forget the nudity. That auspicious little disclaimer on an ad that reads, ‘Warning: This Play Contains Violence And Nudity’ is good for at least half a house per night.”

The storyline that Thomason comes up with bears a certain resemblance to Killer Joe’s, though instead of having a down-on-his-luck drug dealer plot his mother’s murder with the help of his father and his mother-in-law, “Murderin’ Ted” has trailer trash lovers Bonnie and Lee hiring the titular hit man to bump off Bonnie’s hubby Robert, who unbeknownst to them is having an affair with Lee’s wife Blake. Got that?

Avid L.A. theatergoers will relish Doubting Thomason’s tongue-in-cheek look at our local stage scene, where “Equity-eligible” divas like Teddy insist on their 99-seat plan stipends (a grand total of $108 to be paid in addition to reimbursement of his $1000 investment) and TV-star wannabes like Kate break the “No Cell Phones” rule because “it’s a business call. It’s about a seminar at Actors Acting in Action with someone who knows a casting director really well.” (In the interest of accuracy, it should be noted that this does not reflect the Best-Of-L.A. productions spotlighted here on StageSceneLA.)

Thomason’s clever script alternates between behind-the-scenes looks at a production in chaos and the equally chaotic script they are rehearsing, giving each of the company’s actors two very different roles to play … and play quite dandily, credit shared with director Pavey (who starred in both previous productions of Doubting Thomason) and co-director Steve Jarrard (who directed those earlier stagings).

The evening’s standout performance belongs to Ahr, StageSceneLA Award winner for his devastating work in the original production of The Columbine Project. Looking like a cross between a young Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey, the charismatic Ahr makes for the most hilarious dazed-and-confused stoner since “Dudes” Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott went looking for their car, then turns things around to downright scary effect as Murderin’ Ted, a cold-hearted killer who could give Arnold in Terminator a run for his money.

Brewster merits four rounds of applause for a) creating Doubting Thomason in a moment of crisis, b) playing quite niftily both harried Thomason and self-described “stallion” Robert, c) producing the whole kit and caboodle, and d) being quite a looker both in and out of his clothes. Kemp, who provided some of the few bright moments in a recent Three Sisters, is a delicious hoot as a) an actress more interested in booking a soap gig than in honing her craft and as b) trashy-but-sweet sexpot Blake. A delightfully droll Storiale has tremendous fun with both Teddy’s pretentions and Lee’s dimwittedness. Pavey, in a 180 degree turn from her dramatic roles in The Columbine Project, proves herself an deft comedienne as both Lynette and Bonnie, the latter role providing her with the opportunity to strut her dramatic stuff as well.

Doubting Thomason does indeed deliver on its promise of a man-man kissing scene. There are in fact two of them, though not perhaps what Teddy had in mind when he made his stipulation. There is also blink-and-you-miss-it full frontal male nudity from Thomason and Storiale, though Kemp and Pavey are considerably less coy than the men in their topless scenes.

The production’s uncredited set and costume designs are precisely what you might expect from the ragtag group of actors putting on Murderin’ Ted. In other words, they are just right for Doubting Thomason. Cory Price gets thumbs up for equally bare-bones but entirely appropriate lights and sound. Behind-the-scenes personnel do not receive program credit.

Doubting Thomason is precisely the kind of play to inspire the oft-quoted refrain, “It ain’t Shakespeare,” and the equally oft-quoted response of “So what?” I laughed out loud from start to finish, as did Saturday’s nearly sold-out house, and in the words of another oft-quoted remark, “What more can you ask for?”

The Avery-Schrieber Theater, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Through August 13. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Reservations: 818 795-0690
www.doubtingthomason.ticketleap.com
--Steven Stanley
July 16, 2011

MARY POPPINS

2011-07-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

WOW!
MARY POPPINS

Mary Poppins has soared into Costa Mesa (by umbrella of course), the arrival of the London/Broadway hit the best possible news for Los Angeles and Orange County children of all ages, from today’s kindergartners to the 50&60something Boomers who first fell in love with the 1964 Walt Disney film on which it is based. Heck, you can make that children in their nineties, Mary Poppins having first debuted way back in the 1930s as a series of novels by P.L. Travers.

While film purists may protest the excision of Uncle Albert (and “I Love To Laugh”) as well as Mrs. Banks’ extrafamilial role as “Sister Suffragette,” the 2006 Broadway smash restores the novels’ come-to-life statues and a visit to Mrs. Corry’s gingerbread shop. The majority of the now-standard Sherman Brothers songs remain (“A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Jolly Holiday,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Feed the Birds,” “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” and “Let's Go Fly a Kite”), with an extra half dozen or so George Stiles/Anthony Drewe creations added to compliment Julian Fellowes’ somewhat darker book, Mary Poppins’ self-congratulatory anthem “Practically Perfect” and the infectious eleventh hour “Anything Can Happen” proving particular joys.

The very best way to enjoy Mary Poppins The Musical is to cast aside any preconceptions you may have from either movie or books and simply enjoy its magical ride.

And what a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ride it is, this uber-high-end National Tour giving new meaning to “touring production.” No “bus-and-truck” tour this one, with its 11,000-pound Banks House, 350+ lighting cues, 250 complete costumes, and a two-and-a-half day move-in time required for each Mary Poppins stop.

A hit musical must, however, be more than its sets and costumes (though Bob Crowley’s scenic and costume designs are some of the most spectacular you’ll see on Broadway or anywhere else), and Mary Poppins has everything a musical smash must have—hummable songs, unforgettable dance numbers (choreographed here by the masterful Matthew “Swan Lake” Bourne), and performances to rave about, all under Richard Eyre’s and co-director Bourne’s expert directorial hands. Oh, and there’s magic too, and not just when Mary Poppins pulls a roomful of fixtures out of her trademark carpet bag purse.

Pert blonde All-American Steffanie Leigh vanishes inside Mary Poppins’ prim-and-proper brunette (and veddy British) skin, as pretty as a picture and with a voice and acting chops to match. Canadian Nicolas Dromard morphs into Cockney Bert, with a showstopping performance of “Step In Time” that has the triple-threat tap-dancing upside-down from the top of the mile-high Segerstrom Center proscenium—only one of Dromard’s many stellar chimney-sweep moments. Together, Leigh and Dromard make for one of the most enchanting song-and-dance duos since Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke first went on a “Jolly Holiday” forty-seven years ago.

Fellowes' book turns the Banks family considerably more dysfunctional that in the film, making George a near absentee father (and victim of his own emotional childhood abuse) and Winifred a former actress who longs to be more than simply an extension of her stuffed-shirt of a husband. Laird Mackintosh and Blythe Wilson couldn’t be better as the not-quite-happy couple, the stage version giving Mackintosh a big solo moment in “Precision And Order,” which turns into a major production number featuring a stageful of bank clerks, and Wilson a heartfelt center-stage turn in “Being Mrs. Banks.”

In supporting roles, Rachel Izen and Dennis Moench make for a terrific comic duo as housekeeper Mrs. Brill and underling Robertson Ay, Bird Lady Janet MacEwen sings a touching “Feed The Birds,” and Josh Assor may well be the most captivating dancing statue ever as Neleus. Michael McCarty is a fine Admiral Boom, though the role gives him far less to do here than in the movie. Alternating as Jane and Michael Banks (considerably naughtier in musical than in film) are Camille Mancuso and Marissa Smoker, and Talon Ackerman and Tyler Merna. Finally, in the scene-stealingest supporting turn of the year, Q. Smith both dazzles and terrifies as Nanny-From-Hell Miss Andrew, a tour-de-force “Brimstone And Treacle” sending Smith’s powerhouse alto into the stratosphere. In smaller roles, Debra Cardona (Miss Lark), Eric Coles (Northbrook), Mark Harapiak (Von Hussler), Eric Hatch (Valentine), Michael Dean Morgan (Park Keeper), and Michelle E. White (Mrs. Corry) acquit themselves with kite-flying colors.

Completing the Broadway-caliber cast in tracks which require Grade A song-and-dance talents (and countless costume changes to book) are Jacob ben Widmar, Kiara Bennett, Elizabeth Broadhurst, Arielle Campbell, Hannah Chin, Anthony Christina Daniel, Tyler Foy, Molly Garner, Eric Giancola, Koh Mochizuki, Chuck Rea (Policeman), Nic Thompson, Rachel Wallace, and Neka Zang. Swings (who may assume ensemble tracks at certain performances) are dance captains Elizabeth Earley and Geoffrey Goldberg, Lisa Kassay, and Sam Strasfeld.

Particular mention must be made of the show’s remarkable production numbers, another feather in the cap of the choreographic genius that is Bourne, who has statues leaping and pirouetting, toys and bankers kicking up their heels, and chimney sweeps tapping and high-kicking like Radio City Rockettes, not to mention the myriad kites flying high above the stage in “Let’s Go Fly A Kite.”

The fluidity of the production’s innumerable scene changes, aided and abetted by Howard Harrison’s vibrant lighting design, bear mentioning as well, as does Steve Canyon Kennedy’s crystal clear sound design. Musical director Daniel Bowling conducts the Mary Poppins orchestra to perfection. Stephen Mear is co-choreographer. Jimmie Lee Smith is production stage manager. The contributions of other creative and technical artists are truly too numerous to mention.

Even at two and three-quarter hours (including intermission), Mary Poppins keeps its youngest audience members every bit as enthralled as are their parents, grandparents, and other assorted adults. Truly in a class by itself, Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s Mary Poppins is the best kind of family entertainment, i.e. the sort no one is ever too old to love.

Segerstrom Center For The Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scfta.org
--Steven Stanley
July 15, 2011

Photos: Joan Marcus

TWIST: AN AMERICAN MUSICAL

2011-07-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

WOW!
TWIST: AN AMERICAN MUSICAL

Simply put, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of Twist: An American Musical are as breathtakingly thrilling as any I’ve ever experienced inside a theater. An honest-to-goodness overture previews some of the tunes we’ll be hearing, and how exciting it feels to have this mostly lost tradition revived. Then comes “Back By Demand,” the kind of dazzling tap extravaganza one might have seen at Harlem’s legendary Prohibition-era Cotton Club, though here it is set in Louisiana’s Big Easy, aka New Orleans, and the applause it inspires seems to go on forever. Cheers soon turn to gasps of horror as Ku Klux Klansmen set about lynching one of the opening number’s dance duo, an African American about to head north with his pregnant white girlfriend. The expectant mother soon finds herself on the steps of the Parish House Orphanage, where she dies giving birth to a son. A decade later, the parentless mulatto child, who’s been named Twist, has been fooled by his fellow orphans into asking for meat on his tenth birthday, leading to a high-energy song-and-dance show-stopper entitled “Meat On The Bones,” one which outdoes anything Annie’s girls or Oliver’s boys ever did on the Broadway stage.

Though the remaining two and a half hours of Twist: An American Musical don’t live up to those spectacular opening numbers, and though there is room for a good deal of improvement in this not-yet-ready-for-Broadway musical, what is already up there on the Pasadena Playhouse stage provides more than enough entertainment to warrant the standing ovation the show received on its Opening Night.

Book writers William F. Brown and Tina Tippit have taken as their inspiration both the Dickens classic and (unofficially) its stage and screen musical adaptations. Twist (Alaman Diadhiou) is sold by orphanage caretakers Potlatch (Paul Aguirre) and Miss Cotton (Diane Delano) to an undertaker named Crazah Chesterfield (Cleavant Derricks), only to end up on the streets of The Big Easy. There he meets Artful Dodger stand-in Pistol (Joshua Bolden), who introduces Twist to bootlegger Boston (Matthew Johnson), who just happens to have been the dance partner of the lynched Roosevelt (Jared Grimes). As a fledgling member of Boston’s gang of youthful rum-runners, Twist is soon sent to jail, then rescued by Mr. Prudhomme (Cliff Bemis), who just happens to be lawyer to Twist’s mother’s family, and who recognizes something in the ten-year-old that rings a bell. Meanwhile, Twist’s evil uncle Lucius (Pat McRoberts) plots to prevent his nephew from inheriting his late sister’s half of the family fortune, his own half of which he has squandered till there’s hardly a cent left.

The closer Twist adheres to Dickens’ original, the better it is. It’s when introducing its own characters and plot twists that the show could stand a return to the source. In the musical Oliver, we know exactly whom to root for (Oliver and Nancy), whom to hiss (Bill Sykes), and whose comic presence to simply enjoy (Fagin). Here, the lines aren’t so clearly drawn, with Boston’s moral ambiguity proving particularly frustrating. Also, in Oliver The Musical we knew exactly where our young hero’s happy ending lay—with Mr. Brownlow, his grandfather. By making Twist a biracial child in the segregated 1920s, there’s little likelihood of a happy reunion with his Caucasian mother’s family, and the book writers seem stumped about what constitutes happily ever after for young Twist. As of Opening Night, it’s frustratingly unclear who will take care and custody of the lad.

Make no mistake, Twist has a heck of a lot going for it, first and foremost Debbie Allen’s dynamic choreography, executed by a cast who don’t seem to know the meaning of “No Can Do.” Among the evening’s dance showstoppers are a spooktacular “Coffin Nightmare” (though opening night technical difficulties prevented the deceased from levitating as shown in production stills), “Heir To The King” (featuring Pistol, Twist, Boston’s Boys, School Girls, and just about everybody else in the 32-member cast), and a “Mardi Gras” celebration with an entire stageful of N’Orleans revelers.

Twist’s songs (lyrics by Tena Clark and music by Clark and Gary Prim) are full of hummable hooks, but there are just too many of them—seventeen songs in Act One alone, some of which stop the show (literally) when they ought to be advancing the plot. An Act Two song-and-dance dream sequence featuring Roosevelt, Al Jolson, and Josephine Baker, while performed with ample pizzazz by Grimes, Robert Loftin, and Vivian Nixson, seems ill-conceived from the get-go. Are we really supposed to believe that a white 1920s lawyer has converted one room of his house into a shrine to African-American performers, and that he has hung a huge framed photograph of a blackfaced Al Jolson next to equal sized photos of Roosevelt and Miss Baker? Though the number does allow Twist to get to know his late father, it truly needs rethinking.

Still, despite its current “Diamond In The Rough” status, Twist shines brightly due not merely to the dazzle of director/choreographer Allen’s dance sequences but also to an all-around phenomenal cast.

Diadhou, who originated the role of Twist in its World Premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater last September, is such a natural charmer that he earns audience love and sympathy from his first appearance. Johnson and Grimes deserve a standing ovation simply for their amazing, seemingly inexhaustible footwork in “Back To Demand,” Johnson getting extra points for vocal prowess in several solos and duets. McRoberts, who created the role of Lucius in Atlanta, makes for a vocally strong, easy-to-hiss villain, and Bemis is an equally strong though considerably more sympathetic Mr. Prudhomme.

Adding Broadway/TV star power to the Pasadena Production are the stunningly beautiful Gray and legendary powerhouse Derricks. Gray, of American Idol fame, combines Dorothy Dandridge glamour, phenomenal vocal chops, and first-rate acting to make Della the moral center of Twist. Dreamgirls’ original James Thunder Early, Tony-winner Derricks is a veritable force of nature as funeral director Crazah, working himself and the audience into a frenzy in “Death Is Alive And Well” and “Ashes To Ashes.”

Aguirre and Delano are comedic standouts as an oh-so-colorful pair of orphanage caretakers, Aguirre exhibiting gorgeous pipes, and baritone-voiced Delano (so memorable in the Playhouse’s Mask) scoring bonus comedy points for an unbilled and virtually unrecognizable gender-bending turn in Act Two. As Twist’s doomed mother Angela, Ava Gaudet sings a beautiful, gut-wrenching “Why?” before joining the ensemble for the remainder of the show.

The kids in the cast are all-around stupendous teen and preteen performers, headed by a trio of young firecrackers: Bolden as Pistol, Kyle Garvin as Skillet, and Chase Maxwell as Yancy.

Completing the terrific ensemble in both younger and older roles are Kevin C. Beacham, Jr., Nickolas Eibler, John Fisher, Chantel Heath, Joshua Norton, Holly Hyman, Olivia-Diane Joseph (who originated the role of Della in the Atlanta production), Wayne Mackins, Micah Patterson, Malaiyka Reid, Carla Renata (who plays Naomi), Julianna Rigoglioiso, Isaac Spector, Terrance Spencer, Dougie Styles, Dempey Tonks, and Armando Yearwood, Jr. Coco Monroe performs the role of Twist at certain performances.

Though several of Clark and Prim’s songs seem more designed for Adult Contemporary Top 40dom than as representations of a specific 20th Century time and place, they are a highly hummable lot, particularly as performed under the musical direction of Jim Vukovich, who also did the vocal arrangements and conducts the show’s sensational thirteen-piece orchestra.

Tony-winning set designer Todd Rosenthal and costume designer ESosa repeat from the Atlanta production, creating together a vivid sense of Prohibition-era New Orleans. Howell Binkley lights both designs to perfection, with Peter Fitzgerald’s sound design insuring that vocals and instrumentals blend to perfection.

Joe Witt is production manager, Alex Britton production supervisor, and David Blackwell production stage manager.

If Twist: An American Musical still needs work, then so has just about every other Broadway-bound musical in its early, out-of-town stages, including Pasadena Playhouse premieres Sister Act, Baby It’s You!, and Vanities, all three of which moved on to the Big Apple. Even in its still imperfect form, Twist is quite a show, and well worth seeing for its powerhouse performances. (And don’t you dare arrive late, or you’ll miss the most thrilling opening numbers of the year.)

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena.
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org
--Steven Stanley
June 26, 2011
Photos: Craig Schwartz

THE TROUBLE WITH WORDS

2011-07-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

WOW!
THE TROUBLE WITH WORDS

“If I could find the words… If I could speak my heart. If I could open up… If I could sing my love…”

Anyone wondering who the next Jason Robert Brown, William Finn, or Adam Guettel might be need look no further than Hollywood’s Actors Circle Theatre where Gregory Nabours’ The Trouble With Words has just opened to standing ovations.

Like Brown’s Songs For A New World, Finn’s Elegies, and Guettel’s Myths And Hymns, The Trouble With Words is a “song cycle,” a collection of solos, duets, and ensemble pieces with relatively little book but a through-theme, in this case (to quote press materials) “the relationships people have with words as well as with each other.” However you want to describe The Trouble With Words’ nineteen songs, they make for exquisite musical theater and a breathtaking introduction to a talent we’ll be hearing about (and from) for years to come.

Directed with consummate imagination and flair by Patrick Pearson, The Trouble With Words features a center-stage Nabours leading a six-piece orchestra on piano as a sextet of supremely talented young performers bring his music and lyrics to life.

Combining a quarterback’s physique and the voice of an angel, Josh Eddy solos “Never Let You Fall” to an unseen newborn child, following that later with the sexy double-entendred “The Kid With A Heart On” (“I’m just a kid with a big heart on…his sleeve”) which he croons in classic lounge singer mode.

Stunning soprano Julianne Donelle impresses with the bittersweet “I Remember Christmas” (which ends up sung in counterpoint with “Never Let You Fall”) and a deeply moving “Johnny,” whose melodic inspiration may be the patriotic “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” but whose antiwar message (“Blood is dripping from our hands as we raise them to salute”) rings as powerfully as ever in 2011.

Boy-next-door Ryan Wagner entertains with the amusingly seductive “Tongue Tied” in nerdy horn-rims (“You haunt my daydreams in the light, then grace my nightmares come the night”), then both dazzles and wrenches hearts with his vocal and dramatic tour-de-force performance of “The Silence And The Rain.”

Pert blonde Sarah Phillips opens with a quietly introspective “Here We Go Again,” backed by Brian Cannaday on vibes, then amuses with a comedic “The Ballerina’s Lament,” a blues-with-a-beat number that shows off her big belt of a voice to Nabours’ witty lyrics: “When the shit hits the fan, you pick up a pen and draw a new floorplan.”

Quirky Christopher Roque’s gorgeous tenor is showcased in the jazzy pop “Listen,” to which he accompanies himself on guitar, and in the transcendently beautiful “Raincloud.” (“If I’m not afraid of bleeding, then I won’t be afraid of blood… And maybe there’s a way to find the man that I once was, before I learned to lie… and let life pass me by.”)

Rich-piped stunner Aimee Karlin completes the sixsome, first as a picket-carrying social activist in “The Busiest Corner Of The Street,” set to a medieval-sounding waltz with lots of strings, and then with the seductive “Fool’s Gold,” a torch song (“Baby loves me like Fool’s Gold”) with a honky-tonk beat.

Wagner and Karlin duet “You’re The One,” a gorgeous romantic ballad with a pulsating beat. Eddy and Phillips blend voices to the tango rhythms of “Don’t Try To Go,” which sends two of the three onstage couples for a walk on the gay side. Roque and Donelle score laughs with “The Haircut,” which has the former informing the latter that her new haircut is “different” and “nice,” a war-between-the-sexes duet which takes a surprisingly serious turn.

The entire cast open the show in six-part harmony with its bluesy title song (“The trouble with words is when things get rough they carry you away”), close it with “No Words” (“No words to make you understand: The scent of the rain, the longing to dance...”), and blend voices mid-cycle to the Dixieland blues strains of “Gotta Get Laid” (“A little sex goes a real long way”) and the sensual Brazilian cha-cha/samba rhythms of “Sextet” (“I love the way you love me. I love the way you hate me”).

The Trouble With Words moves dazzlingly from the comedic to the sensual to the profoundly moving and back again, Nabours’ exquisitely varied songs combining the best of the three supremely talented gentlemen mentioned in the opening paragraph—the complexity of Guettel, the hummability of Brown, and the humor and sheer gorgeousness of Finn.

A savvy Pearson makes sure that there’s always a spotlight on the unassuming composer-pianist, allowing him to face his six performers (and the audience) from his upstage center keyboard. The Trouble With Words is about Nabours and his music, and this inspired bit of blocking keeps us ever aware of the creative force behind it.

In addition to Nabours and Cannaday, The Trouble With Words’ superb orchestra is made up of orchestrator Brian Morales on reeds, Benjamin Coyote on cello, Daryl Black on violin, and David Lee on guitar.

Tiffany Cole merits big thumbs up for her imaginative and varied choreography, as does stage manger Michelle Stann for her vivid lighting design. The cast’s eye-catching costumes are by Debbie Dufour and Erik McEwen, with quintuple threat McEwen scoring bonus points for his hair and makeup design. Kudos go also to Jeremy Lewis (assistant director), Ric Perez-Selsky (technical director/sound design), Gedaly Guberek (web design), Brian Ludmer (scenic design), and Wagner (graphic design). The Trouble With Words is produced by Jeremy Lelliott.

The Trouble With Words represents the greatest achievement to date of Coeurage Theatre Company, which bills itself as “Los Angeles’ only pay-what-you-want theatre.” (They’ve even trademarked the slogan.) No one will be turned away for lack of big bucks, however those with deep pockets will likely be more than happy to dig deep.

In this reviewer’s humble opinion, it’s not too soon to declare The Trouble With Words well on its way to a New York run. Nabours’ songs beg to be heard again and again (cast album please), and as brought to life by the brilliant Pearson and a couldn’t-be-better cast and orchestra, they represent the first of many great things to come from their creator.

Coeurage Theatre Company, Actors Circle Theatre, 7313 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Through August 27. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Reservations:
www.troublewithwords.com
www.coeurage.org

--Steven Stanley
June 11, 2011

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

2011-07-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

WOW!
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

It takes a good deal of chutzpah to chop an hour off the running time of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a great deal of talent to pull it off, a feat which Vanguard Rep has performed to perfection—and to gales of laughter—in an open-air production certain to delight audiences of all ages, and that includes Shakespearephiles-and-phobes alike.

Credit adapters Matthew Kellen Burgos and Sam R. Ross with the inspiration and director Ross with the execution of a ninety-minute Dream that whisks on by in a flash, is as easy to follow as any contemporary comedy, and features a cast of twelve (plus two) that enchant the eyes and ears and tickle the funny bone in equal measure.

Performing at the outdoor Byrnes Amphitheatre on the campus of La Cañada’s Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, Vanguard Rep trumpets their Midsummer Night’s Dream as “an irreverent reconstruction of the classic summer comedy … complete with music, laughter and pure ridiculousness … all told through the eyes of Puck.”

That this is a reconstructed Dream is evident from the get-go. Burgos and Ross have the inspired audacity to flip-flop Scenes One and Two, opening the show with Peter Quince and his madcap band of strolling players readying their adaptation of “The Most Lamentable Comedy And Most Cruel Death Of Pyramus And Thisbe,” one which we’ll later see performed a la Monty Python by this troupe of comedic whizzes.

It’s only now that we meet A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s two mismatched pairs of lovers in a scene which jettisons a good deal of exposition, the better to get the foursome off into the woods in record time.

The relative simplicity of AMND’s plot makes it one of Shakespeare’s most suitable for pruning. All you really need to know is that when Puck (servant to Oberon, King Of The Fairies) dabs a bit of magical flower juice on the eyelids of any of the dramatis personae, he or she will fall instantly in love with the very first person he or she sees upon awakening—a plot “hook” that could work just as well today as it did in Elizabethan England.

To go into a bit more detail:

Hermia (Elisa K. Blandford) and Lysander (Jeramy Felch) are in love, but Hermia’s imperious father Egeus (Clay Wilcox) is forcing her to marry Demetrius (Zach Kraus). Hermia’s bff Helena (Lauren Dobbins Webb) carries a torch for ex-boyfriend Demetrius but he wants nothing more to do with her. When the quartet of mismatched lovers head off to a nearby forest, Puck (Jason Vizza) mistakenly anoints Lysander’s eyelids with magic juice, causing the young man to fall for Helena. Soon after, Demetrius gets the same love juice applied to his eyelids (just before gazing at Helena) and Helena suddenly finds herself with a pair of lovestruck suitors and poor Hermia with none.

Elsewhere in the woods, Quince (Matthew Burgos) and his band of strolling craftsmen are busy rehearsing their play about Pyramus and Thisbe. When impish Puck transforms the head of their leader Nick Bottom (David Ross Paterson) into that of an ass, then applies some magic juice to the eyelids of sleeping fairy queen Titania (Kirstin A. Snyder), it’s donkey-eared Bottom who becomes the object of her royal affection.

Soon, Hermia and Helena are cat-fighting, Demetrius and Lysander exchanging blows, the troupe of players donning costumes for their hilarious play-within-a-play, as we in the audience enjoy our very own early summer dream of an evening under the La Cañada Flintridge stars.

Even more than usual, this particular Midsummer Night’s Dream belongs to Puck, the charismatic, multitalented Vizza remaining onstage (or in its proximity) from start to finish while providing a running Flamenco-tinged soundtrack on the acoustic guitar, his facial reactions as worthy of attention as the actions of those foolish mortals performing center stage.

The mismatched lovers couldn’t be in better hands than they are here, beginning with Blandford’s poodle-skirted Hermia who is to Webb’s nerdy Helena what Galinda is to Elphaba in a certain Broadway musical smash, prom queen vs. eternal outsider. By the same token, Felch’s Lysander is a big-man-on-campus Fiyero to Kraus’s unrequitedly lovestruck Boq. (Those unfamiliar with Wicked will just have to take my word for it that these are four absolutely delightful performances with plenty of physical comedy thrown in for good measure.)

Paterson’s sensational Nick Bottom is guilty of comic larceny, stealing every scene he’s in, first as a full-of-himself Master Thespian more than willing to undertake every single Pyramus And Thisbe role himself, then as a black-pompadoured, donkey-eared, hip-swiveling, scream-inducing Elvis of an ass (as in long-eared animal, not body part or verbal putdown).

A marvelous Matthew Burgos plays Peter Quince in auteur mode (think a younger, thinner, handsomer Francis Ford Coppola on set), supported by the equally terrific trio of Walter Wolfe (Francis Flute), Eliza Kiss (Tom Snout), and Sean F. Toohey (Snug), as hilarious a band of strolling players as you’ll see this or any Midsummer Night. (Starvling has been axed as have every one of Puck’s fairy attendants.)

Wilcox and Snyder double splendidly as Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, the Rubenesque Snyder making for a particularly fabulous romantic comic foil for Paterson’s Bottom (in donkey mode).

A pair of unbilled teen girls serve as Puck’s assistants, and they are every bit the pros that their more seasoned, credited castmates are.

The unbilled abstract scenic design is simple but esthetically pleasing, and made even more so by Ric Zimmerman’s gorgeous Technicolor lighting design. Bethany Richards’ costumes are marvels of fancy and imagination. Kudos go also to Tracey Bonner’s choreography, Jason Knox’s sound design, and Dennis Kull’s props design. Kristen Salacka is stage manager and Brent Mason scenic painter.

Plan to picnic on the hilltop lawn overlooking the San Gabriel Mountains before the show. Bring along a cushion to sit on during the performance and something warm to wear in case the night should be a chilly one (though at the performance reviewed here, my guest and I were comfortable in short sleeves throughout the evening). Mostly, be sure to make room on your summer calendar this year and next and the one after for Vanguard Rep., an exciting addition to the thriving Los Angeles professional theater scene. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is playing in repertory with a pair of original plays (Tragic Women and After The Autumn), to be reviewed here soon. This is ninety minutes of Shakespearean fun and frolic you won’t want to miss.

Byrnes Amphitheater, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, 440 St. Katherine Dr., La Cañada Flintridge.
www.vanguardrep.com
--Steven Stanley
July 1, 2011

A MEMORY OF TWO MONDAYS

2011-07-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

WOW!
A MEMORY OF TWO MONDAYS

“Attention must be paid to such a person,” declares Linda Loman at the end of Arthur Miller’s 1949 masterpiece Death Of A Salesman, eulogizing a husband who woke up one morning to find that the thirty-four years he’d spent as a traveling salesman had been for naught.

Six years later, Miller paid attention to similar lives of fruitless drudgery in A Memory Of Two Mondays, now being given a rare revival at Santa Monica’s Ruskin Group Theatre. Just as their intimate staging of Miller’s All My Sons last year demonstrated the Ruskin’s expertise at bringing the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright to 21st Century life, so does the sure hand of director Amelia Mulkey make this return to Miller territory an unforgettable one.

A Memory Of Two Mondays’ protagonist is a wide-eyed eighteen-year-old Miller stand-in named Bert (Lane Compton), a young man who, just as the playwright himself did in the early 1930s, has taken a job to set aside money for college. A young man with big dreams, Bert toils in the shipping room of a large auto-parts warehouse at the height of the Great Depression, a period during which he and his coworkers were among the 75% of Americans lucky enough to have a job, no matter how exhausting, boring, and unpleasant it might be.

As its title suggests, A Memory Of Two Mondays takes place on a pair of Mondays, the first the stiflingly hot summer day Adolph Hitler took power in Germany (though only Bert is world-aware enough to know this), the second the bleak winter morning that Bert, about to start his college studies, bids adieu to the friends he has made there. Never without a copy of the day’s New York Times or Tolstoy’s War And Peace, Burt subsists on four dollars a week of his fifteen dollar weekly salary (still only $250 in today’s currency), saving the rest for the higher education he knows is his way up in the world.

There is no way up or out for other men and women working beside him day-in day-out for little or no reward, not for Larry (Jason Paul Field) or for Tom (Conor Walshe) or for Raymond (Gregory G. Giles) or for Gus (Richard Leighton). Newcomer Kenneth (Nick Cimiluca) may still have an Irishman’s stars in his eyes, singing folk songs and quoting from Walt Whitman, but not for long, his spirit too about to be crushed by daily drudgery and a newfound love of “the drinkin’.”

Over the course of the titular Mondays (and a seventy-five minute running time), Miller offers us a slice of these workers’ lives, and though not much “happens” plot-wise to the majority of them, the effect of spending time as flies on a warehouse wall leaves the audience impacted and moved by the experience.

Larry has bought a car he can’t afford because he’s “approaching forty” and “What am I going to be careful for?”, though this means that should one of his kids gets sick, “I’ll be strapped.” Tom arrives at work so drunk he is literally catatonic, and although a scene in which his coworkers conspire to make it look like he’s busy at his desk could fit right into a 1950s sitcom, it is no less heartbreaking for making us laugh. Raymond may have the title “foreman,” but that doesn’t mean his life is any more fulfilling than the others’. As for Gus, the Eastern European immigrant’s good-humored wisecracks may well camouflage the burnout of a man who has slaved for twenty-two years, and for what?

A Memory Of Two Mondays’ large cast of characters is completed by spinster receptionist Agnes (Lynn Wanlass), pretty secretary Patricia (Julia McIlvaine), 70something Jim (Paul Denk), shipping clerk Frank (Jeison Azali), drinking buddies Jerry (Timothy George Connolly) and Willy (Val Masouris), a mechanic (Hamilton Matthews), and warehouse owner Mr. Eagle (Billy Ensley).

Though Arthur Miller is working on a smaller scale than usual this time around, the impact of this mere hour and fifteen minutes of Miller is a powerful one. However brief our glimpses into these lives of quiet desperation might be, each character leaves his or her impression. Our hearts ache for those who remain trapped, and particularly for those whose decline we observe over the space of only a few months, and yet we rejoice in knowing that Miller’s surrogate, like the playwright, may well be making his escape to greatness.

An abrupt midstream shift into memory play territory, one which has Bert suddenly breaking the fourth wall, is about the only awkwardness in an otherwise impeccably written and constructed script, and at the Ruskin there is truly not a weak link in the cast of fourteen, making it one of the finest dramatic ensembles you’re likely to see all year, Field, Giles, recent USC grad McIlvaine, and Wanlass making particularly strong impressions.

Still, a quartet of performances stand out highest among the crowd.

Compton is absolute perfection as Bert, investing the character with such All-American goodness, heart, and charm as to win over even the hardest-hearted audience member. Cimiluca, one of L.A.’s most dynamic young actors, continues a string of terrific performances with a rich and heartbreaking turn as a man whose optimistic flame burns out right before our eyes. Walshe, whose Irish brogue is the one he grew up with, takes a character whose boozy stupor might end up cartoonish in lesser hands, and makes it painfully real, as is his later transformation into honest-to-goodness functioning human being. Finally, there is the towering work of Leighton, a seasoned actor who so disappears into Gus’s worn-out, worn-down (yet still feisty skin) that it seems less a performance than a simple yet highly complex act of being.

Mike Reilly’s lighting design does more than just illuminate Cliff Wagner’s impressively detailed set, it ups the dramatic impact scene after scene. (That the Ruskin Theatre was once a Santa Monica Airport hangar makes Wagner’s set even more believable.) Kudos go too to Lola Kelly’s period costumes, Christopher Richard’s original score and Karen Landry’s scenic painting. An anachronistic coiled phone cord and Patricia’s too short skirts are minor design flaws. Nicole Millar is stage manager and McIlvaine assistant director. A Memory Of Two Mondays is produced by Mikey Myers and Reilly.

No production of A Memory Of Two Mondays, no matter how great, will ever earn it a spot on a list of Arthur Miller’s Greatest Hits. Those will will remain Death Of A Salesman, All My Sons, The Crucible, and A View From The Bridge. Still, this largely forgotten gem is no less a treat for being minor Miller. Like other fans of the greatest American playwright of the 20th Century, I’ll take minor Arthur Miller over major Anyone Else any day.

Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica. Through August 14. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00, Sundays at 2:00. Reservations: 310 397-3244
www.ruskingrouptheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
June 12, 2011
Photos: Agnes Magyari

THE LAST FIVE YEARS

2011-07-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

Recommended
THE LAST FIVE YEARS

His story starts with their first meeting and ends with a farewell note left behind with his wedding ring. Her story begins when she finds the ring and reads the note. Only at the halfway point do the two 20something characters’ onstage lives coincide; only then do they sing to each other, look each other in the eyes, touch.

As any musical theater aficionado will tell you, the show in question is Jason Robert Brown’s semi-autobiographical chamber musical The Last Five Years, quite possibly the most exquisite two-character song cycle ever written, and my own favorite intimate musical of the past decade.

The Last Five Years returns to Los Angeles as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and if this latest production doesn’t reach the heights of previous incarnations, there is at least one very good reason not to miss it.

Writer-composer Brown tells the story of aspiring actress-singer Catherine Hiatt and up-and-coming novelist Jamie Wellerstein entirely in song, with the exception of some one-sided phone calls and a sequence which has Jamie reading from his novel.

From Cathy’s point of view, emotions range from the heartbreak of her opening number, “Still Hurting” to the joyous optimism of her last (i.e. chronologically first) song, “Goodbye Until Tomorrow.” “I’m Still Smiling” captures the mixed emotions of a woman hoping against hope for her marriage to survive and railing against a man who won’t even stay with his wife “on her fucking birthday.” “I’m A Part Of That” is Cathy’s attempt to find some satisfaction in being the wife of a celebrity author. “A Summer In Ohio” has Cathy singing about doing summer stock “with a gay midget named Karl, playing Tevia and Porgy,” and an audition sequence has her trying out for a musical with a lousy accompanist or a padded résumé. “I Can Do Better Than That” is Cathy’s vow that her budding relationship with Jamie will be better than any of the failed ones she’s had before.

Jamie, on the other hand, starts out with a series of upbeat, up-tempo songs. There’s “Shiksa Goddess,” which has him “waiting through Danica Schwartz and Erica Weiss and the Handelman twins and Heather Greenblatt, Annie Mincus, Karen Pincus and Lisa Katz and Stacy Rosen, Ellen Kaplan, Julie Silber and Janie Stein” on his way to the “cute goyishe maid” called Cathy Hiatt. “Moving Too Fast” is Jamie’s ode to the fast life of an up-and-coming writer who’s found “a woman I love” and (even better) “an agent who loves me.” “The Schmuel Song” is Jamie’s Christmas/Chanukah number, a tour-de-force moment which has the aspiring storyteller singing in the voice of a Russian-Jewish tailor named Schmuel. Later, as things between the couple begin to deteriorate, “If I Didn’t Believe In You” is Jamie’s last-ditch effort to convince Cathy he’s on her side and “Nobody Needs To Know” has him singing to the woman he’s cheating on Cathy with, feeling guilty as hell about, and unable to resist.

In the role of Jamie, L.A. newcomer Rory Alexander sings well and has a number of quite effective moments (an amusingly performed “Shiksa Goddess” and “The Schmuel Song” in particular) but his performance could benefit from a more layered interpretation of the character’s complex mix of big ego and goofy charm and a more authentic rendering of Jamie’s sense of anger and loss as his marriage crumbles. Bill Hemmer’s direction is solid and respectful of the material, but he might have found more imaginative onstage connections between Cathy and Jamie despite their being in different time zones. Also, a few scene changes seem deliberate pauses for applause rather than the swift, smooth transitions that Brown intended. Ashley Cuellar’s Cathy, on the other hand, is about as splendid as can be, making the rising musical theater star’s performance the very best reason to catch this imperfect but still powerful The Last Five Years.

Cuellar starts her character’s reverse journey with a bang, crying real tears as a dazed and destroyed Cathy discovers the note and ring Jamie has left behind. In “See I’m Smiling,” Cuellar captures Cathy’s full range of emotions, from hopefulness to confusion to rage. In a highly original touch, Cuellar’s Cathy sings “I’m A Part Of That” martini in hand, a wife who’s had one drink too many as her husband signs copy after copy at a book reading that has her feeling completely left out. As Cathy’s story moves from despair to anger to optimism to joy, Cuellar seems actually to turn younger in front of our eyes. Vocally, The Last Five Years gives the soprano a chance to show off a wow of a belt that recent roles in Children Of The Night and USS Pinafore haven’t explored, though we do get to hear Cuellar’s gorgeous “legit” voice in Cathy’s audition number, “Till You Come Home To Me,” conceived here as if being sung by the kind of perfect 1950s wife Cathy is unwilling to become. Comedically, vocally, and dramatically, Cuellar puts her own personal stamp on Cathy—and unforgettably so.

Several directorial touches work quite well, including having Jamie and Cathy flip-flop stage positions mid-show following their lone meeting halfway through. Since the two characters have rarely been onstage at once, and never in the same timeframe, this one sequence in which they touch, kiss, and share a wedding dance proves particularly powerful. On the other hand, having Jamie nearly fully dressed all the way down to his black leather shoes for “Nobody Needs To Know” doesn’t match lyrics which suggest that Jamie is in still lying in bed next to an unseen paramour and then getting back in bed with her at the end.

Director Hemmer has designed the set, and though it is simple in the extreme (just a pair of chairs on a bare black box stage), this is not necessarily a liability, The Last Five Years being more about the music than anything else. On the other hand, slide projections behind Cathy and Jamie work better in theory than in practice, proving a distraction more often than not. Matt Richter’s lighting is highly effective as are Garrison Burrell’s costume choices, particularly Cathy’s half dozen or so outfits, which mirror the timeframe she’s in as well as her emotions at the time. (Burrell is also responsible for set dressing and props.)

Musical director Ron Snyder plays keyboards alongside violinist Nancy Kuo, guitarist Yuichiro Kevin Asami and bassist Jay Rubttom, a larger than usual orchestra and a highly competent one. Though I’ve seen several productions with a lone pianist, and one with an interesting piano/guitar mix, the original six-piece orchestrations featured not one but two cellos, and here, perhaps because all four other instruments are present, the lack of even a single cello is felt, particularly by anyone familiar with the Original Cast recording.

Rebecca Schoenberg is assistant director and stage manager. David R. Carpenter is credited with set construction and Orlando de la Paz with graphic design.

Though this Bright Eyes Production of The Last Five Years may not reach the heights of previous incarnations, it is worth seeing as an introduction to its luminous leading lady as well as for the musical’s intrinsic pleasures, which are many indeed.

The Lounge 2 Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles.
www.plays411.com/lastfiveyears
--Steven Stanley
June 17, 2011

GYPSY

2011-07-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

WOW!
GYPSY

Ask any true Broadway aficionado to name the greatest musicals ever written and it’s a sure bet that Gypsy: A Broadway Fable (best known simply as Gypsy) will top many if not most lists. Though overshadowed in its original Broadway run by The Sound Of Music and Fiorello, which tied for the 1960 Best Musical Tony, Gypsy has stood the test of time with four Broadway revivals (including two in the 2000s alone), even more cast recordings, and a list of hit songs that seems to go on forever.

Despite this phenomenal success, Gypsy has been largely absent from our L.A. theater scene for at least the last decade, making West Coast Ensemble’s 99-seat revival big news indeed, particularly since the “stripped-down” production continues the WCE tradition of taking big stage musicals and giving them intimacy and pizzazz in equal measure.

Based on the book Gypsy: A Memoir by legendary striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, Gypsy introduces us to the stage mother to end all stage mothers, the formidable Mama Rose, brought to life in the Broadway original by the one-and-only Ethel Merman in what most consider to be her greatest performance. (In what goes down as one of the biggest upsets [i.e. mistakes] in Tony Award History, Merman lost the Best Actress statuette to Mary Martin for The Sound Of Music.)

If ever there was a Broadway show blessed by the musical theater gods, Gypsy was (and is) that show, with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents. “Small World,” “Everything's Coming up Roses”, “You'll Never Get Away from Me,” and “Let Me Entertain You” are just four of the Styne-Sondheim creations to become song standards. As for the show’s original director-choreographer, they don’t come more legendary than Jerome Robbins.

Helming Gypsy: Stripped (as the West Coast Ensemble production has been nicknamed) is its Co-Artistic Director Richard Israel, and anyone who has seen the director’s previous work knows that the show could not be in better hands. (Israel’s direction of Big River, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, High Spirits, and Meet Me In St. Louis won him a Director Of The Year StageSceneLA Award last September for the second year in a row.) Israel understands that Gypsy is at heart a mother-daughter story, and one that translates perfectly to the intimate stage even without the Broadway razzmatazz.

Still, there can be no Gypsy without a leading lady able to hold her own against those who’ve followed La Merman on stage or screen, a list of superstars which includes Betty Buckley, Tyne Daly, Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, and Rosalind Russell. Fortunately, West Coast Ensemble has an ace up its sleeve in Jan Sheldrick, whose unforgettable work in WCE’s Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins won her a StageSceneLA Award for Best Performance By A Featured Actress. Sheldrick turns out to be not only a brilliant dramatic actress but a terrific musical theater performer as well, a fact attested to by a résumé which includes Company, Cabaret, Merrily We Roll Along, A New Brain, and Sunday In The Park With George. Though she may not have Ethel’s or Patti’s power pipes, Sheldrick more than holds her own vocally, even without the aid of amplification, and as a dramatic actress-comedienne she is out-and-out brilliant. Not only that but she’s also got something not every Mama Rose before her has had—likeability. No matter how manipulative and controlling her Mama Rose can be, Sheldrick makes it impossible to hate her, and if the most recent revival darkened the show’s original ending, here, with Sheldrick in the role, the more upbeat finale makes perfect, heartwarming sense. As for those who wonder how Sheldrick fares with “Rose’s Turn,” Mama Rose’s eleventh hour showstopper-to-end-all-showstoppers, suffice it to say that the actress deserves every decibel of the applause she receives.

Every Mama Rose must have her Gypsy, and Sheldrick’s is Stephanie Wall, making a memorable transition from mousy wallflower Rose Louise Hovick to stellar headliner Gypsy Rose Lee in a performance that matches her excellent work in The Light In The Piazza a few years back. Not only does Wall “sing out Louise” with the best of them, she has the same kind of quirky comedic gifts that made Gypsy Rose Lee truly in a class by herself.

Michael Matthys too provides splendid support to Sheldrick’s Rose as Herbie, her longtime, long-suffering boyfriend, whether joining in on the jaunty “Together Wherever We Go” or revealing Herbie’s hurt and betrayal in one of Gypsy’s most powerful dramatic scenes. That Matthys and Sheldrick have great chemistry together is an added bonus.

Four other roles go beyond cameo status, and each is marvelously played. Lithe-limbed and lanky, L.A. newcomer Eric Allen Smith is everything you want a Tulsa to be, i.e. a classic song and dance man in the Gene Kelly mode. Sara J. Stuckey, on a roll with her performances this year in Caught and The Odd Couple, makes it three winners in a row as stripper Tessie Tura (The Texas Twirler), and not only does Stuckey steal every scene she’s in, she proves herself a twirler extraordinaire in the show’s only PG-13 moment. Kelly Jean Clair is a hoot as brassy stripper Mazeppa as is Jessica Schatz as her electric co-ecdysiast Electra, and when Stuckey, Clair, and Schatz join forces in the Act Two showstopper “You Gotta Get A Gimmick,” there won’t be a straight face in the house.

Gypsy’s Broadway premiere featured a cast of forty-four, and even its most recent revival filled the stage with a grand total of thirty-nine. Gypsy: Stripped cuts that number down to twenty-three, still a big cast for a 99-seat-plan production, but one which requires (or allows as the case may be) many cast members to play double, triple, or even quadruple roles, among them esteemed character actors Larry Lederman and Tony Pandolfo, bringing decades of experience and stage presence to four roles each. Teen and 20something cast members L.J. Benet, Quintan Craig, Amy Lawrence, Dan Pacheco, Zach Salsa, Katie Scarlett, Kailey Swanson, and Ann Villella show off their triple-threat talents, with a special nod to Swanson for her delightful take on Dainty June. Some very talented children complete the ensemble, including Kaleigh Ryan and Caitlin Williams, standouts as Baby June and Baby Louise, as well as Glory Curda, Major Curda, Saylor Curda, and Petey Yarosh.

Aiding director Israel in insuring that stripped doesn’t mean diminished are choreographer John Todd, whose bouncy dance steps bring vaudeville and burlesque to 21st Century life; Stephen Gifford, whose versatile set design reminds us that Gypsy is the story of lives lived almost entirely inside one theater or another; Lisa D. Katz, who lights each scene to perfection, and who shares snaps with Israel and Todd for a terrific flash-forward strobe-and-dance sequence; Zale Morris, who has designed dozens upon dozens of great costumes; and Rebecca Kessin, whose sound design guarantees that instrumental accompaniment doesn’t overpower vocal performances. As for said instrumental accompaniment, audience members may be surprised to learn that it’s a one-woman show, with musical director Johanna Kent tickling the ivories to orchestral tracks recorded specifically for this production. Is a bigger sound missed? Truthfully yes, especially in the Gypsy Overture, considered by many the best in Broadway history. Still, a smaller sound allows for unmiked voices, and hearing Gypsy performed without vocal amplification is a rare treat.

Suzanne Doss is assistant director, Nicholas Acciani stage manager, and Brook Carlson producer for West Coast Ensemble.

Gypsy at West Coast Ensemble should prove manna from heaven for musical theater lovers in the mood for something other than yet another revival of Little Shop, Funny Forum, Pippin, or Cabaret (not that there’s anything wrong with any of them, but enough is enough … please). That Gypsy just happens to be one of the greatest Broadway musicals of all times (and that even “stripped,” it’s still one hell of a show) makes this a production that no true musical theater buff will want to miss.

West Coast Ensemble, The Theatre of Arts Arena Stage, 1625 N. Las Palmas, Hollywood. www.westcoastensemble.org
--Steven Stanley
May 21, 2011
Photo: Carla Barnett

A DEATH IN COLOMBIA

2011-07-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

WOW!
A DEATH IN COLOMBIA

It takes particular skill to write a thriller for the stage. Playwrights can’t rely on chase sequences or camera angles or other cinematic tricks as screenwriters can. Their task becomes all the more difficult if the stage thriller they’re writing is to unfold in real time on a single set with only a handful of characters. Add to the above a political theme, and you’ve got a doozy of a writing assignment.

All the more reason to cheer Shem Bitterman’s edge-of-your-seat political thriller A Death In Colombia, now being given its World Premiere engagement by the Katselas Theatre Company.

An opening scene introduces us to our soon-to-be lady in distress, though at first the only distress felt by expatriate Lisa (Roxanne Hart) is in having to entertain her husband John’s idealistic young colleague Natalie (Sarah Foret) in the couple’s elegantly furnished Bogota apartment. The rather more jaded older woman doesn’t particularly take to the effusive praise heaped by Natalie on the Colombian natives, whose poverty is so different from her own upper middle class upbringing. Where the younger woman can’t help gushing about a recent uprising on Cartagena Boulevard, “a Marxist expression of the people’s will,” Lisa is a good deal more cynical about the future of these 2002 Colombian revolutionaries. If they get what they want, might they not choose precisely what Natalie is against?

It soon comes out that John has been incommunicado in the jungle for the past three weeks, causing Lisa to wonder whether the rebels he’s been working with might have put a bullet in his head and dropped him in a ditch. Despite Lisa’s concern, it’s Natalie who seems the more worried of the two, and when she remarks that “he should have called one of us by now,” her casual use of the plural cues Lisa in on the affair her husband has been carrying on with the much younger woman, who has the nerve to defend herself with a sympathetic “You can’t call what you’re in a real marriage.”

Natalie soon departs, leaving Lisa to light up a joint, put on some music, and settle in for another evening alone—or so she thinks until a knock sounds at the door.

It takes a while for Lisa to become convinced that the man outside is really an old friend of John’s from Harvard, and though she grabs a knife just in case this Roger isn’t who he claims to be, the fellow who comes through the door couldn’t seem more harmless. (He is, after all, being played by Joe Regalbuto, the oh-so-likeable Frank Fontana all ten seasons of Murphy Brown.) Though Lisa has no recollection of having met Roger, she offers him some scotch and the use of the sofa for the night. After all, everyone crashes at John and Lisa’s when they’re in Bogota.

In the course of conversation, we learn a bit more about John’s work with the rebels. As Lisa explains to Roger, her husband is convinced that the best way to preserve the rain forests is to fight against the so-called “War On Drugs,” believing that American industrialists and oil companies have their own ulterior motives for waging it.

Still, despite talk of potential kidnappings (and worse), Roger’s visit seems harmless, with perhaps even the promise of a bit of sexual hanky-panky in the offing. Glasses of Johnny Walker keep getting refilled, the twosome share some pot (hers) and some coke (his), music gets turned on, and they dance a bit.

At the same time, there is something about Roger that just doesn’t sit right with Lisa, and not just the that he works for one of those oil companies John is fighting against. When she comes right out and accuses Roger of lying to her (“I don’t believe that John would have a friend like you”), her visitor drops any pretense of affability, and A Death In Colombia: The Thriller begins in earnest.

There’s a good deal more I could reveal in this review, having taken copious notes just in case they might be needed, but to do so would spoil the many surprise plot twists Bitterman has in store for Lisa, and for us (including just whose death it is in the title).

Besides the playwright’s crackerjack dialog and plotting, A Death In Colombia’s World Premiere benefits from an absolutely terrific trio of some of L.A.’s busiest and best actors.

Casting Regalbuto as villain proves a stroke of genius on the part of producer Gary Grossman and director Steve Zuckerman. Without the Murphy Brown vet’s natural likeability, we might find it hard to accept that Lisa would invite this total stranger into her apartment at night. Like Alan Alda, Regalbuto as bad guy makes for a far more interesting ride than we’d get from say a Willem Defoe type, and when he starts getting rough, watch out.

Opposite Regalbuto, a sensational, supremely watchable Hart brings to her role the same intensity and depth she would if she were playing Shakespeare or Williams or Miller. In a performance with as much happening inside as out, the stage, screen, and television vet makes us believe—absolutely—in Lisa’s distress, her ingenuity, and her pluck.

Foret’s role of “sweet young thing” seems at first a throwaway part, onstage for an expository scene and then sent away to dressing room purgatory, but a) the bubbly actress’s talent at hiding her natural effervescence under Natalie’s passionately idealistic skin makes the part far more than a mere supporting turn, and b) playwright Bitterman has a surprise up his sleeve, one which gives Foret the chance to show off real dramatic chops.

Working with composer Roger Bellon’s suspenseful background score (its Andean flutes are a particularly nice touch), director Zuckerman keeps the tension high from start to finish. Scenic designer Jeff McLaughlin’s Death In Colombia set is every bit as elegant as his Bakersfield Mist set is deliberately tacky, and this time it’s McLaughlin himself who lights it in gorgeously burnished hues. Kudos to Christopher Moscatiello for his top-drawer sound design, and to fight director Steve Ranking for a particularly believable (and scary) tussle or two. Adam Rotenberg is associate producer and Christopher Hoffman production stage manager.

There aren’t all that many stage thrillers that really work. Dial M For Murder, Death Trap, and Wait Until Dark come to mind. Fans of the genre will want to check out A Death In Colombia, a high tension cat-and-mouse game that bears comparison with the abovementioned suspense classics, with bonus points for its fascinating political backdrop.

Kastelas Theatre Company, The Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. www.ktctickets.com
--Steven Stanley
July 3, 2011
Photos: Ed Krieger

CHICAGO

2011-07-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

WOW!
CHICAGO

Just the thought of a community theater trying its hand at the Broadway megahit Chicago is probably enough to send most Kander and Ebb lovers scurrying in the opposite direction, that is unless the community theater in question is Santa Monica’s venerable Morgan-Wixson. As their productions of Urinetown: A Musical, A Chorus Line, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have demonstrated, the folks at the Morgan-Wixson are more than capable of staging quality musical theater on a tight budget—without the benefit of Equity performers, blessed as they are with directors, designers, and technical staff who know their stuff, and the talent pool of an area as crowded with triple-threats as is Los Angeles.

While the Morgan-Wixson’s Chicago isn’t what you’ll see on Broadway (where the 1996 revival has now surpassed 6000 performances in its fifteenth year), it is nonetheless quite a show, and with tickets running about one-fifth of what it would cost to see the show in New York, one well worth seeing.

Though the Morgan-Wixson production reflects changes brought to the ’96 revival by its director Walter Bobbie, Chicago’s story and songs are the same as those which first thrilled Broadway audiences over thirty-five years ago.

It’s late 1920s Chicago, and vaudeville performer Velma Kelly (Krystal J. Combs) is awaiting trial for allegedly murdering her husband and sister, whom she caught canoodling in bed. Blonde vixen Velma is soon joined in the slammer by ditzy chorine Roxie Hart (Ayelet Firstenberg), accused of murdering her paramour following a lovers’ quarrel. Though guilty as sin, Roxie convinces her patsy husband Amos (Steve Hall) that the man she shot to death was a burglar, and Amos agrees to take the blame for her crime. When slow-witted Amos finally puts two plus two together, he vows to leave his murderous spouse to fend for herself in jail. Roxie is arrested and sent to the Cook County Jail where Velma and a bevy of unrepentant murderesses await their day in court. Roxie soon learns that her only hope of acquittal is defense attorney Billy Flynn (Kevin Yarbrough), a flashy hotshot with a perfect track record for getting his clients off scot-free. News that Billy has taken on Roxie’s case doesn’t sit well with his other client Velma, who refuses share the spotlight with anyone, let alone a nobody like Roxie.

Completing the cast of principals are Matron “Be Good To Mama” Morton (Valerie Rachelle), ever willing to help a nubile inmate in exchange for sexual favors, and sob sister crime reporter Mary Sunshine (V. Perez), a woman who believes that every accused murderess has “a bit of good” in her, and takes it upon herself to make sure that Chicagoans’ sympathies remain firmly with Roxie Hart.

Though Roxie’s story (based on real-life 1924 Chicago hubby-killer Beulah Annan) has been around since Maurine Dallas Watkins’s 1926 play Chicago and the 1942 movie hit Roxie Hart, with Ginger Rogers in the title role, it took book writers Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse to come up with Chicago The Musical’s inspired concept—to stage Roxie’s (and Velma’s) stories as a vaudeville show, with precisely the kind of musical numbers that the two vaudevillians themselves would have performed. It’s no wonder, then, that composer John Kander’s and lyricist Ebb’s songs make for one big, brassy production number after another, with song after song now part of our musical theater lexicon: “All That Jazz,” “Cell Block Tango,” “When You're Good to Mama,” “Roxie,” “My Own Best Friend,” “Mr. Cellophane,” “Razzle Dazzle,” “Class,” “Nowadays,” and more.

From the moment the sensational Combs and cast launch into “All That Jazz,” executing (choreographer) Combs’ Fosse-inspired moves with precision and pizzazz, you know you’re going to be in for one heck of a show. A savvy Combs is an expert at creating steps that make her ensemble of dancers and “movers” look like Broadway performers without making demands that only professional dancers could meet. And boy do the “amateurs” on stage at the Morgan-Wixson look darned close to pros, from that dazzling opener to “We Both Reach For The Gun” to “Razzle Dazzle.”

Director/musical director Anne Gesling has been staging productions at the Morgan-Wixson for twenty-five years now, and her experience and talent shine in Chicago, the current production taking its inspiration from both the 1975 original and the ’96 revival but not afraid to try something new.

As for the show’s two leads, Combs and Firstenberg couldn’t be more different, and the production is all the better for their lack of interchangeability. Eschewing the girl-next-doorness of her 2009 turn as (Thoroughly Modern) Millie, Combs is all poise, glamour, and panache, while Firstenberg plays Roxie with a goofy, gauche charm that startles at first and then seems absolutely right for the two-bit chorus girl turned fifteen-minutes-of-fame celebrity. Combs is particularly dazzling in “I Can’t Do It Alone,” which has her singing/dancing two parts at once, while Firstenberg is at her daffy best as a human ventriloquist’s dummy in “We Both Reach For the Gun.” Together, in “My Own Best Friend” and “Nowadays,” the duo make for a perfectly (mis)matched team—and earn deserved cheers.

Yarbrough proves a terrific showman as Billy Flynn, showing off first-rate song-and-dance skills in “All I Care About Is Love” and other numbers. The oh-so-talented Rachelle has great fun as prison matron Mama Morton, Act Two’s “Class” making for a hilarious duet with Combs. Perez is a deliciously campy Mary Sunshine showing off a gorgeous legit soprano in the operetta-spoofing “A Little Bit Of Good.” Hall’s take on Roxie’s patsy of a hubby makes him a much realer Amos than usual, and his rendition of “Mr. Cellophane” is particularly touching for it.

Making “Cell Block Tango” (aka “He Had It Coming”) every bit the show-stopper that it’s meant to be are Heather Biede (Annie), Holly Childers (Mona), Combs, Camden Gonzales (June), Michele McRae (Liz), and understudy Ashley Ann Stephens (Hunyak).

Among the ensemble, assistant choreographer Jonathon Saia does striking work as all six murder victims in “Cell Block Tango,” as dance soloist in “A Tap Dance,” and as each-and-every juror in Roxie’s trial, and deserves to be given an individual bow at curtain calls. Jayson Puls (Aaron) is another dance standout, and Brandon Stanford (Fred Casely), Marc Ostroff (Sergeant Fogerty), Brittany Vaughn (Go-To-Hell Kitty), and Deosick Burney (Martin Harrison) do very well in supporting and cameo roles. Brad Combs is a fine Master Of Ceremonies, though his live piano playing throughout the show is overpowered by prerecorded tracks to the point of inaudibility.

Completing the all-around first-rate ensemble are Steven Flowers (Tailor), Danielle Miller, Danielle Morris, Marc Ostroff (Sgt. Fogarty), Alex Pierdant (Bailiff), Laura Wennstrom Sheehan, and Steve Weber (Judge).

Thomas A. Brown’s multi-level, multi-purpose set design serves Gesling’s vision well, a center section popping out when more specific locations (bedrooms, police headquarters, Mama’s digs, etc.) are needed. Rodney Munoz’s costumes belie budget limitations, particularly with Busby Berkeley-ready feathered fans for “All I Care About Is Love,” and Vegas-ready plumed tails for “Razzle Dazzle.” William Wilday’s vivid, colorful lighting works wonders on Brown’s set and Munoz’s costumes.

Larry Gesling is stage manager, assisted by Courtland Budd and cast member Pierdant. Chicago is produced by Adrienne and Jessica Breslow.

Now that rights to Chicago are finally being released to theaters across the country, there may be justifiable concern that not all will be up to the musical’s considerable challenges. In a production they have been waiting years to stage, the talented folks at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre face these challenges head-on and pass the test with flying colors.

Morgan-Wixson Theatre, 2627 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica.
www.morgan-wixson.org
--Steven Stanley
June 25, 2011
Photos: Joel Castro

CAUGHT

2011-07-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

WOW!
CAUGHT

David L. Ray puts a very real face on this country’s gay marriage debate in Caught, the Georgia-born playwright’s absorbing dramedy now getting its World Premiere at the Zephyr Theatre. Incisively directed by Nick DeGruccio and featuring a couldn’t-be-better cast and one of the best design teams in town, Caught is a terrific holiday gift for theatergoers in search of something other than yet another Christmas Carol.

It’s July of 2008, a month after California began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and 30something boyfriends Kenneth and Troy (Corey Brill and Will Beinbrink) are planning their wedding—to be officiated by their sassy, freshly Internet-ordained best friend Splenda (Micah McCain). Things could hardly be going more smoothly in the couple’s L.A. home when a voice mail from Kenny’s sister Darlene (Deborah Puette) announces that she’s “fixin’” to come for a visit, her first ever to the home of the younger brother who packed his bags and left small-town Georgia for good at the age of eighteen. Troy isn’t all that crazy about Darlene’s visit (she doesn’t even know he exists), but for Kenny, there’s only one choice, since “Mom always said you drop everything for family.” Hardly the easiest thing for Troy to understand, his own coming out years before having kept him permanently estranged from his own kith and kin, though he does admit to thinking it “so cute that you’re still trying to get your family’s approval.”

What worries Troy in particular is the timing of Darlene’s visit, too much of a coincidence given the amount of attention being paid California’s legalization of gay marriage, and even more so since Darlene’s husband J.P (Richard Jenik) is the town preacher. A bit of Googling reveals that Darlene and J.P.’s church has started a new ministry acronymed PPM, short for “Pray To Protect Marriage,” making it even more likely that Darlene may be a woman on a mission.

Still, there’s really nothing Kenny and Troy can do with Sis set to arrive anytime now, which she does later that afternoon accompanied by her teenage daughter Krystal (Amanda Kaschak), recent second runner-up in the Miss Watermelon Pageant. When Darlene, worn out from her very first plane trip, leaves the room, Krystal virtually explodes with glee at the realization that “I have a gay uncle! Momma always said your Uncle Kenny was kind of different. I kinda guessed.”

As for big sister’s reason for the trip west, it turns out that Darlene knows nothing about Kenny and Troy’s relationship, and though this comes as a relief to her brother, it also means that he has no choice but to pretend that he and Troy are just roommates. Fortunately, Darlene has little trouble accepting this, given housing prices in Kenny and Troy’s neighborhood. “No wonder y’all need roommates,” she remarks in all sincerity.

“You need to tell her,” Troy insists, though this is more easily said than done when the mere mention of gay marriage prompts Darlene to exclaim, “Oh sweet Jesus! They are lost, risking eternal damnation.”

If only Darlene could see things through the eyes of eighteen-year-old Krystal, who not only refuses to believe that gays are going to hell but has herself suffered the loss of a gay best friend, an event which only prompted her mother’s judgment that “he committed suicide so he’s in hell.”

Meanwhile, back in Georgia, J.P. continues his anti-gay sermonizing—and the extracurricular hanky-panky that is the real reason for Darlene’s sudden California visit.

If Caught starts out somewhat like a cross between Lifetime and LOGO, it soon develops a very real identity of its own. Though a plea for same sex marriage is at its core, it is also the story of one woman’s journey from condemnation to acceptance, of Darlene’s realization that Biblical “Thou Shalt Nots” are one thing, and unconditional love is quite another.

This journey is made all the more powerful by the presence of the luminescent Puette, doing her most memorable work since her performance as Adelaide in Tryst won her StageSceneLA and LA Weekly Awards as Best Actress as well as Ovation, LADCC, and Garland Award nominations several years back. Watching Darlene’s transformative trek from Bible-spouter to independent thinker is pure joy in Puette’s gifted hands.

Matching her every step of the way is the break-out performance of recent USC grad Kaschak, adding her name to the list of the many Trojan talents whose work has been celebrated on this site. Kaschak’s Krystal is feisty, sharp as a tack, adorable as all get-out, and as much a master of comic timing as she is adept at Krystal’s more dramatic, touching moments.

Brill does deeply affecting work as a man on a rocky journey towards self-acceptance. He has real chemistry with his equally fine costar Beinbrink, and shines particularly in several heart-to-hearts with Puette’s Darlene. As the character (in both senses of the word) who used to be called Sugar till he lost forty pounds and a no-good boyfriend, the splendid McCain brings sass, smarts, and warmth to Splenda in Equal measure. Jenik makes J.P. far more than your everyday hypocritical Bible-thumper, showing us a deeply conflicted man of God unable to resist his baser urges yet all too willing to rationalize them.

Playwright Ray avoids the temptation to divide his characters into Good Guys and Bad Guys. Each has his or her own flaws and foibles, though young Krystal does seem to have her act particularly together for one so young. Caught is an especially well-constructed play, moving forward with nary a dull moment, interspersing brief scenes of J.P at the pulpit with longer ones in California, allowing J.P.’s connection with the other characters to dawn slowly on the audience, and ending Act One with a powerful, come-back-for-more bang.

Design elements are, in a word, superb. Scenic designer Adam Flemming has created an L.A. Southwest/Spanish home and patio that most in the audience would likely take delight in moving into. Lisa D. Katz lights it gorgeously, with particular credit due her distinctive indoor-outdoor lighting plots. Elizabeth Rhodes’ sound design incorporates a well-chosen selection of songs to link scenes. Katherine Hampton Nolan’s costumes are just-right choices for each character, particularly Puette’s ensembles, which reveal her flowering as a person over the course of a very eventful week. Darlene Miyakawa is production stage manager and Miguel Flores is stage manager.

In Caught, David L. Ray has created a play that ought to touch the hearts and minds of audience members of every shade of the political and social spectrum. Far more than simply a “gay play,” Caught is simply fine theater. Fine theater indeed.

--Steven Stanley
December 3, 2010

UNDERSTUDY PERFORMANCE:
There’s something a bit surreal (and at the same time quite thrilling) about going back to see a play when performed the second time around by a completely different cast, whether alternate, replacement, or understudy. I’m not talking here about a brand new production, but rather one in which everything is the same except for the actors bringing the playwright’s creations to life.

The Antaeus Company double-casts all its shows, and I was fortunate to review two very different and equally brilliant ensembles performing in its recent revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Autumn Garden. Theatre @ Boston Court customarily offers special off-night understudy performances which give the show’s covers (i.e. understudies) their own moment in the spotlight.

Similarly, Buttermilk Productions has scheduled several understudy performances of David L. Ray’s smash hit Caught, one of which this reviewer had the great good fortune to catch this afternoon. As performed by a sextet of superb covers, Ray’s justly lauded dramedy maintains every iota of its laughter, its tears, and its power to move.

Doing revelatory work as Darlene, Sara J. Stuckey digs deep and dazzles. As Crystal, Savannah Southern-Smith proves every bit as marvelous whether center stage or simply reacting to other characters. Both Derek Daniels Meeker and Marc Cirillo are wonderful (and absolutely believable) in their roles as fiancés Troy and Kenny. A splendid Andre Martin adds subtle shadings to the very Technicolor Splenda. Michael Craig Stevens completes the cast terrifically as the smarmy J.P.

In the event that any of Caught’s main cast might have to miss a future performance, audience members can rest assured that they will in no way be shortchanged, and as for the many who’ve seen and loved Caught, any future understudy performances should provide good reason to make a return visit.

--Steven Stanley
January 15, 2011

February 26, 2011
Update:

Since its December World Premiere, David L. Ray’s Caught has become that rarity in Los Angeles theater—a show that enters L.A.’s stage scene very much under the radar yet manages despite odds to become a breakout hit. Written by a relative unknown and making its guest production debut in the pre-Christmas theatrical doldrums, Caught was hardly a sure bet for smash hit status when it opened three months ago. True, its director Nick DeGruccio has won more prizes than any just about anyone else in L.A. theater, and yes, its star Deborah Puette did win an LA Weekly Award for her unforgettable work in Tryst, but neither’s name is likely to have marquee value outside L.A. theater cognoscenti. Even less promising was the fact that of the three media reps present on Opening Night, only StageSceneLA’s reviewer recognized what a truly wonderful play and production Caught is.

Fortunately, in the weeks following that December opening, Caught has not only inspired one rave review after another (and a GO from the LA Weekly), but has has—even more importantly—proven that nothing can beat word-of-mouth for putting bodies into seats.

Playwright David L. Ray’s comedic-dramatic-heartwarming-mindchanging gem of a play has resonated with audiences gay and straight alike, prompting many a return visit, often with family members in tow. Caught-lovers keep coming back to re-experience a Southern Baptist wife-mother-sister’s journey from fear and condemnation to understanding and acceptance, and to share it with those who might find themselves where Darlene starts out the day she arrives for an unexpected visit to her baby brother Kenny’s Beverly Hills-adjacent home.

This reviewer has seen the production four times, making it my favorite new play of the past year. Whether performed by its sensational principal cast (Corey Brill, Will Beinbrink, Richard Jenik, Amanda Kashak, Micah McCain, and Puette) or its superb understudies (Marc Cirillo, Andre Martin, Derek Daniels Meeker, Savannah Southern-Smith, and Sara J. Stuckey), Caught has proven itself an enthralling, enriching, inspiring piece of theater—and it’s Southern Fried Funny to boot.

The weeks and now months since Opening Night on December 3 and yesterday’s February 26 performance have only strengthened the work of its main cast. Beinbrink’s Troy is even menschier, Jenik’s J.P even smarmier (and I mean that in the most complimentary of ways), Kaschak’s Krystal even more enchanting, McCain’s Splenda even more fabulous, and Puette’s Darlene more luminescent. Puette in particular gives one of the year’s most memorable performances (as does understudy Stuckey, who’ll be playing the role on certain March/April dates). Brill’s recent departure for Broadway has brought MacKenzie Astin onboard as Kenny and he is positively marvelous in the role, touching in his vulnerability, and absolutely believable in his onstage relationships, particularly in the high-chemistry one he shares with the terrific Beinbrink.

Caught is not about Prop 8. It is not even about Gay Marriage, even though it centers on a gay wedding. It is about love and understanding and the true meaning of family. Profoundly respectful of people of faith yet not afraid to cast stones at those who pervert Christ’s message of love, Caught is one of the few shows I could see on a monthly, if not weekly basis, and never stop enjoying.

All of which prompts the following question: If you haven’t yet gotten Caught, what the blazes are you waiting for?

May 1, 2011 Update:
A fifth visit to what is now the longest-running play in Los Angeles proved every bit as satisfying as visits one through four. Caught is the play to beat for Production and Play Of The Year. Performances continue to be superlative, with Troy’s and Kenneth’s onstage chemistry even more palpable, enhanced by MacKenzie Astin’s two plus months onboard. Tonight’s performance featured newly arrived Kenneth-Splenda understudy Matt Pittenger covering the inimitable Micah McCain’s role as Splenda, and doing so quite splendidly, his more toned-down but utterly charming version of the Internet-ordained marriage officiator nailing every Splenda laugh.

June 19, 2011
Update:

Los Angeles’ longest running play enters the last six weekends of its final extension (yes, the play really must close on August 7) even more powerful than ever. Jason Dechert has joined the cast as Kenny, and anyone wanting a lesson in the basics of brilliance in acting (spontaneity, depth, and the ability to listen for starters) could do no better than to watch Dechert’s superb, absolutely in-the-moment work as a young man caught between two loves, caught between two families, caught between two worlds. There’s an added intensity to Caught these days amidst the laughter and the tears.

Deborah Puette continues to dazzle in her comedic-dramatic tour de force work as Darlene, a career-altering role for the much lauded actress. Will Beinbrink remains the rock in Kenny’s and Troy’s relationship, and having had three fiancés now has added new layers to Beinbrink’s already terrific work. Amanda Kaschak remains absolute perfection as Krystal, an exquisite young comedienne/dramatic actress with a world of roles ahead of her. Richard Jenik’s beautifully played J.P. continues to reveal more sides to this Georgia preacher than we might expect from such a fundamentalist Christian. Finally, the one-and-only Micah McCain has gone from fabulous to out-and-out sensational as Splenda, each week bringing new shadings to the outrageous Internet-ordained man of the (rainbow-colored) cloth.

Playwright David L. Ray has every reason to celebrate this professional and artistic triumph, one which should prove only the beginning for this extraordinary piece of theater. Kudos to director Nick DeGruccio, producer Jason Loh, and the entire Caught team as it moves into the final weeks of an engagement I wish would run forever.

My favorite play of 2010-11 has become Los Angeles theater's Production Of The Year.

August 7, 2011 Update:

Caught has closed, over eight months after its December opening. Having been there for that Opening Night, and six additional times in the months to follow, I couldn't help feeling a mixture of sadness at my eighth and final visit, but joy for the extraordinary experience it has represented for this theatergoer.

Performances by the four remaining original cast members (Deborah Puette, Will Beinbrink, Amanda Kaschak, and Micah McCain) had gained exquisite new layers over the intervening months. Jason Dechert continued to astonish with his performance as Kenny, and newcomer Ian Vogt's take on J.P. was distinctive enough to add new zip to Caught's finial weeks, and every bit as memorable as had been that of the role's originator.

Great things lie in store for Caught. David L. Ray has written a play that people will be talking about, and loving, for years to come.

The Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.CaughtThePlay.com

BROADSWORD: A HEAVY METAL PLAY

2011-07-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

WOW!
BROADSWORD: A HEAVY METAL PLAY

Sixteen years ago, four young New Jerseyans dreamed of a heavy metal stardom that would transport them far away from the Podunk town of Rahway. Then, as these things happen, their lead singer got a too-good-to-resist offer of a solo career and the remaining three were left to pick up the pieces. Now, a decade and a half later one of the the foursome is dead (or at the very least presumed dead), and his surviving bandmates have reunited for his memorial.

No, this isn’t yet another rehashing of The Big Chill or Return Of The Secaucus 7, but rather Marco Ramirez’s highly original Broadsword: A Heavy Metal Play, one which the young playwright could just as easily have subtitled A Supernatural Faustian Thriller.

However you choose to describe it, Broadsword is one humdinger of a play, now being given one humdinger of a West Coast Premiere at the Black Dahlia.

A bravura monolog delivered by a character known only as The Man In White (Armin Shimerman), a sinister fellow who has more than a bit in common with Damn Yankees’ Mr. Applegate, serves as the play’s prologue, after which we meet its protagonists. There’s auto mechanic and Broadsword bass player Vic (Blake Robbins); bartender and former drummer Nicky (Kenneth Allan Williams); rock star wannabe Tony (Tim Venable), the band’s singer who flew the coop; and Becca (Heather Sher), Broadsword’s “biggest fan” and the single mother of a boy who may have more than a passing connection with a member of the band.

The foursome find themselves together again for the first time in sixteen years in the very basement where Broadsword used to practice. Needless to say, it doesn’t take long for old dreams, regrets, and resentments to resurface.

Playwright Ramirez then introduces a fifth character to the underground mix, a mysterious musicologist who introduces himself as Dr. Thorne (Morlan Higgins) and cues the foursome into just what missing-presumed-dead Richie was up to during the years following Tony’s abrupt departure from New Jersey and from Broadsword. As Dr. Thorne explains it, Richie spent the last sixteen years on a black magic search for “certain intervals between the tones. New keys. Undiscovered sounds. Tones between tones,” the very same musical hooks which Richie’s brother Tony has returned to Rahway in search of, tones and keys and sounds which the singer hopes will help him finally achieve rock stardom.

And in the words of the very un-heavy metal Carpenters, Broadsword has “only just begun.”

Though playwright Ramirez hasn’t written a perfect play (it can get a tad too mystical for this reviewer’s tastes and the ending is a bit abrupt), it is nonetheless an exciting one, a work that heralds great things from the 20something Miami-born, Julliard-trained playwright.

If Ramirez hasn’t already seen or made plans to see Broadsword’s West Coast Premiere, he is hereby advised to take train, bus, or plane (or even hitchhike if need be) to L.A.’s teensy-weensy but highly illustrious Black Dahlia Theatre, where director Mark St. Amant has staged a couldn’t-be-better production, one which impresses even before the action has begun.

Kurt Boetcher’s extraordinarily detailed basement set seems to extend back forever in the tunnel that is the Black Dahlia, all the way back from a rock paraphernalia-cluttered “rehearsal space” to a devil-red furnace situated way upstage. It’s a wow of a set that portends terrific things to come.

Performances are all-around electric, beginning with Shimerman’s dazzlingly Mephistophelian Man In White. Williams’ nihilistic Nicky, Robbins’ sweet-natured Vic, Venable’s intense Tony, and Sher’s tough-but-tender Becca are each and every one superb, as is the chameleon-like acting virtuoso that is Higgins, once again vanishing into another man’s skin.

Scenic design prodigy Boetcher, lighting design marvel Leigh Allen, and sound design whiz David B. Marling (here billed simply as Dave) must have had their most fun in ages creating Broadword’s vivid, ever-morphing look and sound. Raquel Barreto’s costumes fit each character to a T. Together, the quartet have put together as exciting an intimate-stage design package as you’ll see this or any year.

Broadsword is produced by Gaalan Michaelson. Steven Barr is technical director, Joel Goldes dialect coach, Thomas Hadju music composer, and Emily Lehrer production stage manager.

Anyone who’s ever badmouthed or belittled Los Angeles theater owes it to him or herself to see Broadsword: A Heavy Metal Play, as does the L.A. Time’s ever-globetrotting Theater Critic. Think New York, Chicago, or any of those other reputed theater towns can do better than this? Think again!

Black Dahlia Theatre, 5453 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles.
www.thedahlia.com
--Steven Stanley
June 30, 2011
Photos: Gaalan Michaelson & Lauren Pasternack

BOOMERMANIA

2011-07-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

WOW!
BOOMERMANIA

Every so often a show arrives unheralded on the Los Angeles theater scene and stays and stays and stays. Boomermania is just such a show. Opening last February at North Hollywood’s El Portal Forum Theatre for an already ambitious eight-week run, it’s now five months later and Boomermania mania shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

Boomermania writer-directors Debbie Kasper and Pat Sierchio have conceived their musical tour through the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s as a series of song parodies, skits, and film clips—a veritable cornucopia of memories for audience members born between 1946 and 1964, and a history and culture lesson for anyone younger than that.

The writers make no pretense of sophistication or subtlety. After all, there are Noël Coward and Cole Porter revues for that. What they do offer is unadulterated fun, and plenty of it.

Other revues (Too Old For The Chorus comes to mind) feature Boomer-aged performers out to prove that you’re only as old as you feel and act. Kasper and Sierchio’s have hired 20something triple-threats, thereby broadening the show’s appeal and providing terrific talent showcases for their young cast of six.

Boomermania opens with a visit to the year 2525 (Boomers will remember this 1969 Zager & Evans hit), where a cute-as-a-button high schooler dressed in silver spandex (exactly as 1950s child would have envisioned his future counterpart) is giving a show-and-tell presentation on the 20th Century ancients known as the Boomers. He shows off 1950s paraphernalia like coonskin caps and Mickey Mouse ears; 45-rpm records, which he first thought were a strange sort of earwear; and a great big purple glass bong, which he assumes is some kind of musical instrument, then goes on to read from a mysterious text whose meaning he can’t decipher: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”

Soon we are seguewayed back in time to Romper Boom, where pre-adolescent Boomer brats celebrate the joys of sugar-frosted cereals to the tune of “I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” retitled “Sugar Pops Cap’n Cruch.” Other ‘50s highlights include a live recreation of TV’s To Tell The Truth, with two identically dressed contestants both claiming to be famed baby doctor Dr. Spock, and a pointy-eared guest introducing himself as a Spock of a different race. PBS-capade has a Masterpiece Theatre-like host reading from Dick And Jane as if it were Shakespeare. “See Dick. See Jane. See Spot. See Dick see Jane see Spot see Dick,” he intones, with an emphasis on Dick. Slogan’s Heroes provides a lickety-split journey through dozens upon dozens of TV commercial catch phrases: “Us Tareyton Smokers Would Rather Fight Than Switch.” “LSMFT. Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.” “Winston Tastes Good Like A Cigarette Should.” And speaking of cigarettes, there’s a hilariously cringe-inducing honest-to-goodness black-and-white Winston commercial featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble puffing away as Wilma and Betty do their chores and yard work. There’s an equally authentic government-produced film cheerily warning 1950s school children of the likelihood of an atomic bomb attack, the best remedy for which was simply to “Duck And Cover” the second they saw a blinding flash in the sky.

Song spoofs include a sing-along “We Are The Boomers,” set to the tune of “We Are The World,” “They’ll Phone You,” to the tune of “Everybody Must Get Stoned,” and “The TV’s On,” to the tune of “The Beat Goes On.”

The ‘60s bring about Flower Hour (and bra burning) as the Boomers become the Peace-And-Love Generation. Signs Of The Times has the cast saluting ‘60s protest movements. The Jetsons Are Coming! has them imagining how their lives would be in the not so distant future. ‘70s segments give us our Boomers at their 10 Year High School Reunion with plenty of dreams yet unfulfilled, then hitting thirty and higher (and getting high in the process) as they Do The Hustle in their discotheque-ready polyester. The ‘80s feature still more spoofs and the biggest hair yet.

Things do get serious for Dark Side Of The Boom, a photo montage of the more turbulent side of the 1960s—Vietnam War protests, slain university students, and assassinated leaders—and it is a powerful moment of reflection. Mostly, though, Boomermania is about having fun, and as much fun is had by those onstage as in the audience.

A sextet of very talented young performers, most of them new to Los Angeles theater and some even to Los Angeles, bring Boomermania to effervescent life. Daniel Amerman, understudy Heather Gonzalez, Anne Montavon, Scott Reynolds, Dylan Vox, and Sarah Weismer each display oodles of charm, terrific singing, snappy footwork, and seemingly inexhaustible energy as they move from scene to scene, song to song, costume to costume, and wig to wig scarcely breaking a sweat.

Choreographer Edward Carignan has created a number of nostalgic, high-energy dance sequences. Musical director/orchestrator/vocal arranger Mary Ekler gets the cast belting and harmonizing to perfection. Among Boomermania’s design elements, Erica D. Schwartz’s costumes score high, both for imagination and for sheer number, aided in great measure by Katy Harvey’s wigs. David S. Goldstein’s scenic and lighting designs score high marks as well, as does Sean Kilian’s sound design, which provides an excellent mix of amplified voices and prerecorded instrumental tracks. Dan J Foegelle’ and Pat Sierchio’s multi-media design makes for a seemingly inexhaustible montage of photos and films sure to spark memory after memory in audience members forty-seven and older. Understudy Gonzales is stage manager, her duties assumed at the performance reviewed by Ryan Mercado.

With 76 million Boomers born between the years 1946 and 1964, the majority of whom are alive and well and looking for weekend entertainment, Boomermania’s positive reviews and even stronger word-of-mouth could well keep seats filled for months to come. And the younger set is encouraged to join in and find out what all the fun is about. It took me a while to get around to seeing Boomermania, and now that I’ve seen it, I can’t help wishing it hadn’t taken me so long.

El Portal Forum Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Through September 25. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Saturdays at 2:00. Sundays at 3:00.
www.boomermaniathemusical.com
--Steven Stanley
July 2, 2011
Photos: Tony Garcia Photgraphy

BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera

2011-07-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

WOW!
BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera

If the words Gay Rap Opera sound to you like a three-way oxymoron, then you haven’t heard Feminem and T-Bag rap to the sounds of DJ Jedi in BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera, now playing at Hollywood’s Celebration Theatre. Take rhymes like “Get off my fuckin’ back okay, I like to suck dick / Now fuck me in the ass and I’ll write rhymes about it,” set them to a gangsta beat, find a pair of hip-hopping triple threats like Sean Bradford and Chris Ferro to bust those rhymes, give the whole shebang one of the most exciting stagings in town, and you’ve got another great big Celebration hit to shout out about.

The brainchild of Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, a pair of white Canadians who’ve performed their gay rap opera off-Broadway and across their native land, Bash’d now makes its U.S. West Coast debut in a production likely to be the best of the bunch now that director/choreographer extraordinaire Ameenah Kaplan is at the helm, adding interracial love, a live DJ, and a dazzling projection design by Marc Rosenthal to an already potent mix.

BASH’d is first and foremost a love story, told hip-hop style by the aforementioned Feminem and T-Bag (Bradford and Ferro). The leather-jacketed duo rap the romance of Jack and Dillon (Bradford and Ferro again), who meet in the early 2000s, fall head over heels, and then tie the knot—legally, this being our rather more enlightened neighbor to the North. Things soon turn dark however (the show is titled BASH’d after all), with it only becoming clear in BASH’d’s final moments exactly who these two rappers are and why Jack and Dillon’s story means so much to them.

It’s hard to imagine a couple of gay men who come from more different homes than our hip-hop heroes. Jack has been raised by a pair of gay Dads who’ve encouraged him to be whoever he’s meant to be, gay, straight, or anywhere in between. Dillon’s opposite-sex parents are of a considerably more conservative bent, and though his Mom is the more willing of the two to accept her gay son, Dad is another matter entirely, and soon Dillon finds himself alone in the big city—alone, that, is until he meets Jack.

In one pulsating hip-hop number after another, Feminem and T-Bag chart Jack and Dillon’s story to the infectious melodies of composer Aaron Macri. Like most young gays discovering big city LGBT life, the couple meet in Boys’ Town, though not before discovering (and rapping about) the multitude of “types” that fill the city’s bars and dance clubs night after night. Flamboyant drag queens, big burly bears, crystal meth-addicted twinks, in-your-face lesbians, preening muscle boys, boyfriendless fag hags, and prowling chicken hawks—all of the above are brought to vivid, often hilarious life by Feminem and T-Bag.

Jack and Dillon’s first meeting soon turns from excitement to love to a proposal of marriage, and if BASH’d has been mostly good fun up till this point, it becomes uber-romantic as our two heroes rap their vows in hip-hopping rhymes. And then… Well, suffice it to say that Happily Ever After may not be in the two lovers’ cards.

I hope that BASH’d’s creators can make it down to L.A. to see the magic made here by the sensational Celebration team headed by a brilliant choreographer-turned-director, a pair of couldn’t-be-better leads, an expert DJ/musical director, and a gaggle of designers working at the peak of their creativity.

Ameenah Kaplan is, as L.A. theater aficionados will tell you, the StageSceneLA Award-winning choreographer of Altar Boyz, The Women Of Brewster Place, and one Troubies show after another. Taking directorial reins here in addition to designing dance steps, Kaplan’s imaginative, high-energy work insures that there’s never a dull moment, particularly with a duo as charismatic and talented as Bradford and Ferro, each of whom gives voice and movement to a dozen or so roles and does so at a level few others could come close to. Word has it that it was tougher than usual for the Celebration to cast this particular show, but luck was on their side when they found BASH’d’s dynamic duo. (Swing Jason De Puy gets the exciting challenge of covering both roles in addition to serving as dance captain.)

Having DJ Jedi spinning discs live on stage (and playing a character or two to boot) provides added excitement, as does an inspired mix of pre-recorded projections of Bradford and Ferro which accompany their live performances in a number of ingenious ways.

As for the show’s highly distinctive look, credit the crackerjack design team Kaplan has brought along for the journey, beginning with scenic designer Evan Bartolettti and associate scenic designer Lisa D. Lechuga, who have reconfigured the Celebration’s thrust stage on a diagonal, marking this possibly the first time in Celebration history that no one has had to sit behind “the infamous pole,” reason enough to celebrate. Mix Bartoletti’s and Lechuga’s edgy urban set with Christian Epps’ dazzling lighting, Robert Arturo Ramirez’s rocking sound design, Naila Aladdin Sanders’ standout array of costumes, and Michael O’Hara’s carefully picked properties, and you’ve got a design package that bigger budgeted productions would find hard to top.

Marking the final production of Michael A. Shepperd’s three-year Artistic Directorship of the Celebration, BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera is produced by Ryan Bergmann with associate producers Cameron Faber, Michael C. Kricfalusi, III, and Nathaniel Matthis. Shepperd, Michael C. Kricfalusi, and JohnMichael Beck are executive producers. Sean Lambert is production stage manager and Brandon Newhouse assistant stage manager. John Wilson is music consultant and Jami Rudofsky casting director. Associate artistic director Beck takes over as AD with the Celebration’s next production.

Be advised that BASH’d runs only about sixty-five minutes, so plan your evening or afternoon of theater accordingly. Despite a shorter running time than most first acts, BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera makes for an exciting, entertaining, gut-wrenching, and ultimately uplifting hour or so of theater at its most innovative and cutting edge.

Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.
www.celebrationtheatre.com

--Steven Stanley
June 18, 2011
Photos: Daniel G. Lam

BAKERSFIELD MIST

2011-07-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

WOW!
BAKERSFIELD MIST

If there’s anyone with whom most Los Angeles theatergoers would surely not want to change places, it would probably be Maude Gutman of Bakersfield, the heroine of Stephen Sachs’ impressive World Premiere comedy Bakersfield Mist, now playing at the Fountain Theatre. Not only would the mere idea of living without a hundred or more plays to choose from each week be eminently resistible, a mere glance at the rundown knickknack-filled trailer Maude calls (mobile) home would provoke a spontaneous urge to hightail it back to L.A. asap.

Maude’s life seems as grim as her surroundings. She’s a bartender who’s just been fired, a wife whose husband has long ago flown the coop, and a mother whose only child was killed in an accident while still in his early twenties. About the only things that give Maude any kind of pleasure are the cigarettes she chain smokes, the Jack Daniels she guzzles by the case, and the cheesy figurines and paintings of clowns and the like that fill her trailer’s shelves and walls.

One painting in particular stands out in Maude’s eclectic “collection,” an abstract she bought for a mere three dollars on one of her many scrounging expeditions, a painting that the local high school art teacher is convinced is an undiscovered Jackson Pollock. That’s why Maude (Jenny O’Hara) has shelled out hard-earned cash to summon art expert Lionel Percy (Nick Ullett) to the Sagebrush Trailer Park to authenticate the painting, though as we soon learn, it’s far more than the tens of millions of dollars a real Pollock could net her that make its authentication a matter of life-and-death importance to Maude.

Maude and Lionel’s first encounter is as meet-cute as they come, a neighbor’s pack of dogs greeting the supercilious fuddy-duddy with a cacophony of howls matched only by a stream of four-letter words from Maude that would do a sailor proud. Talk about your fish out of water.

Since it takes only a blink for Lionel to determine that (in his expert opinion) the so-called Pollock is a fake, a real-life connoisseur would probably be leaving Bakersfield sooner than you can say “I’m out of here,” and there’d be no play. Fortunately, Sachs’ imagination finds ways to keep Lionel and Maude in the same trailer for another hour and fifteen minutes as Maude insists over and over that Lionel change his mind, provides the audience with ample laughter and a few tears, and gives the real-life Mr. and Mrs. Ullett the rare treat of playing two great leading roles written for characters well past sixty.

Sachs makes sure the deck isn’t stacked in favor either of redneck or of blueblood. Though Lionel may seem to lead a more successful or fulfilled life than Maude (he’s the retired former head of the New York Met, the author of countless books, and a member of one artistic Board Of Directors after another), he is a partnerless, childless, cold fish of a man whose main satisfaction in life seems to be in being right, as he insists he is about Maude’s painting.

On the other hand, though Lionel may have considerably more formal education than Maude, the Bakersfield denizen is hardly lacking in smarts. Give her a word like “provenance,” and once it’s been explained to her, she’ll come right back at you with an “I don’t even know the ‘provenance’ of this outfit I bought at a thrift shop”—with the identical la-di-da French pronunciation you’ve used so pretentiously.

As for the roles Sachs has written for his two stars, though O’Hara gets the saltier and more colorful one, the playwright has written Ullett a tour-de-force monolog in which Lionel compares Pollock’s creative process to an orgasm, and nearly achieves one on stage to rounds of audience applause. O’Hara later comes back with her own monolog, about Maude’s son’s death, one which may have you tearing up from its very first words. There’s even a hilarious knock-down drag-out that would tax the energy of artists half O’Hara’s and Ullett’s ages and which the duo execute to audience delight. No one plays blousy better than O’Hara and no one plays haughty better than Ullett, and here both actors are performing at the peak of their gifts.

In Bakersfield Mist, Sachs has written (and directed to perfection I might add) a play that a number of regional theaters are set to co-World Premiere one after another, a budget-friendly two-hander in the very successful tradition of Trying, Educating Rita, and Grace And Glorie. (I’ll bet the Colony is wishing they’d had first dibs on Bakersfield Mist.)

StageSceneLA Award-winning scenic designer Jeff McLaughlin (A Skull In Connemara, The Butcher Of Baraboo, A House Not Meant To Stand, The Train Driver, Grace And Glorie, La Ronde De Lunch, The Psychic) does his signature brilliant work once again, creating a Bakersfield trailer you’d swear had been transported lock, stock, and barrel onto the Fountain stage. Props designer Misty Carlisle shares credit with McLaughlin for filling Maude’s trailer with hundreds upon hundreds of the yard sale and dumpster memorabilia collected by its owner over the years. Ken Booth’s lighting design makes you believe the sun is actually shining through Maude’s dirty windows, in addition to heightening dramatic impact. Shon LeBlanc has designed only two costumes (Maude’s green and orange polyester pantsuit and Lionel’s grey woolen double-breasted model) but both are character-perfect fits. Peter Bayne’s sound design will have you believing (among other things) that a limo has indeed pulled up at Maude’s trailer only to be greeted by a half dozen barking dogs poised to attack its hapless passenger. Doug Lowry deserves high marks for the fight choreography which his 70ish stars execute as if they were seventeen. Terri Roberts is production stage manager and Scott Tuomey technical director. Bakersfield Mist is produced by Simon Levy and Deborah Lawlor.

Like Yasmina Reza’s Art, Bakersfield Mist poses questions about just what constitutes art, and you may well find yourself debating the topic with your fellow playgoers after O’Hara and Ullett have taken their bows. What you’re unlikely to be debating is what an absolutely captivating play Sachs has written. The definition of art may divide audience members, but on Bakersfield Mist, I’d venture to guess that sentiments are likely to be close to unanimous wows.

The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles. Through September 3. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00. Reservations: 323 663-1525
www.FountainTheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
June 24, 2011
Photos: Ed Krieger

1776

2011-07-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

WOW!
1776

If you’ve ever wondered what it would have felt like to be a fly on the wall of the Continental Congress of 1776 as our country’s Founding Fathers wrangled over the question of Independence from Great Britain and the writing of our Declaration Of Independence, then wonder no more. Instead, head on over to Glendale Centre Theatre, where a splendid cast of twenty-six under the skilled direction of Todd Nielsen revive the 1969 Broadway musical 1776 in an “all-a-round” terrific in-the-round staging.

Thanks to the inspired vision of composer/lyricist Sherman Edwards and book writer Peter Stone, this musical about a bunch of American Colonials holed up in a hot sweltering room debating independence from Great Britain brings American history to vivid, tuneful life, yet stands apart from most other Broadway musicals in that it could just as easily be considered a straight play with musical interludes. The original cast recording runs less than 42 minutes, including the overture, meaning that 1776 has more “book” than the average musical, and what a book that is! Stone makes history come alive, and even though we know the outcome, there is edge-of-your-seat suspense getting there. There's also comedy, and romance, and a truly fascinating cast of characters.

From the production’s opening sequence, one which treats the audience to a tableau of our Nation's founders looking like something out of a classic American painting in which we are now a part, we know we’re in for something special, even more so when a score of male voices join together to the strains of “For God's Sake, John, Sit Down,” the first of Edwards’ dozen or so memorable songs.

The “John” being asked to sit down is, of course, John Adams (Peter Husmann), who despite a reputation for being “obnoxious and disliked,” is also a devoted husband, a clever politician, and a tireless fighter for American independence. 1776 surrounds him with household names, the foremost of which is Ben Franklin (John Butz), the inventor of the stove and countless clever sayings still quoted today. (“Calling me an Englishman is like calling an ox a bull: he's grateful for the honor, but he'd rather have restored what's rightfully his.” “Revolutions come into this world like bastard children. Half improvised and half compromised.”) Others in 1776’s huge cast of characters include Thomas Jefferson (Jeff Drushal), who wrote the Declaration only to find himself pressured to go against his deepest convictions in order to get it passed unanimously; John Dickenson (Jason W. Webb), the proud delegate from Pennsylvania and Adams’ chief adversary; the very full-of-himself Richard Henry Lee (Bryan Vickery), whose “The Lees Of Old Virginia” comes with its own built-in encore; proud Southern gentleman Edward Rutledge (Joey Zangardi), who rebukes his Northern colleagues for the “aroma of hypocrisy floating down from the North” in “Molasses To Rum”; Abigail Adams (Victoria Strong), who sings long distance duets with her longed-for husband John; Martha Jefferson (Michaelia Leigh), who reveals to Adams and Franklin a little-known tidbit about her laconic spouse (“He Plays The Violin”), and an unnamed Courier (Andrew Wade) who encapsulates the horrors of war in the three heartbreaking minutes that end Act One.

As 1776 unfolds, we hear George Washington’s increasingly depressing reports of British troupes en route and Colonial soldiers on the verge of mutiny. We see the resistance of the Southern delegates to turn against the British crown. We wonder if Caesar Rodney will succumb to cancer before he can cast his vote for Independence. We observe a demoralized Thomas Jefferson delete clause after clause from his beloved Declaration, waiting to see if he will delete the one which means most to him, the one which abolishes slavery. And we wonder if the delegate from New York will ever do something other than abstain, however “courteously.”

Husmann is everything John Adams should be—proud, determined, uncompromising, at times insufferable, and one heck of a decent man. Butz is so uncannily Franklinian that you would swear he stepped off a hundred-dollar bill and onto the GCT stage. Drushal captures all of loner Jefferson’s intensity, intelligence, and idealism. Vickery couldn’t be a more irresistible Lee, Strong a more radiant Abigail, or Leigh a more exquisite Martha. All are superb singers to boot.

“Cool, Cool Considerate Men” provides a great vocal showcase for a standout Webb, as does the heartbreakingly beautiful “Momma Look Sharp” for gorgeous-voiced newcomer Wade. Finally, there is Zangardi’s positively thrilling rendition of “Molasses To Rum,” a wow of a performance which earns the evening’s loudest cheers.

One of the best things about Stone's book is that it allows even the smallest of roles to reveal at least some characteristic that makes the part distinctive, in addition to offering the actor playing it his own stellar moments on stage—all the easier to savor thanks to GCT’s intimate staging. It is only space and time constraints that prevent me from giving each of the following couldn’t-be-better actors the detailed praise he deserves: Nathan Armstrong (Robert Livingston), Aldo Benalcazar (Leather Apron), George Champion (John Hancock), Mario De Gregorio (Col. Thomas McKean), Clay Dzygun (James Wilson), Christopher Gomez (Dr. Lyman Hall), Kyle Kelley (George Read), Jason J. Lewis (Josiah Bartlett), Hisato Masuyama-Ball (Samuel Chase), Patrick McMahon (Roger Sherman), Danny Michaels (Charles Thompson), Peter Miller (Andrew McNair), Jim Molinaro (Joseph Hewes), Michael Shaughnessy (Rev. Jonathan Witherspoon), Scott Strauss (Caesar Rodney), Adam Trent (Lewis Morris), and Don Woodruff (Stephen Hopkins). Though none of these performers get showcase solos, when they blend their voices in harmony, the result is quite glorious.

Glendale Centre Theatre couldn’t have made a more inspired choice to direct and choreograph 1776 than Nielsen, who played John Hancock in Musical Theatre West’s big-stage revival almost exactly a year ago. Though certain characters can’t help but have their backs turned to the audience in their “assigned seating,” Nielsen insures that when they’re up and moving, no one gets shortchanged. Clearly the director has had his actors do their character work, and it shows in each one’s nuanced performance. 1776 offers few chances for a choreographer to strut his stuff, but the delightful “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” minuet does deserve mention.

Musical director Steven Applegate merits kudos for the cast’s fine harmonies. Nathan J. Milisavlejevich’s sound design provides an excellent mix of voices and prerecorded instrumental tracks, though with so many amped speaking voices, it’s hard at times to tell just who’s doing the talking. Angela Wood and Glendale Costumes once again clothe the entire cast to 18th Century perfection. Uncredited set and lighting designs complete an all-around first-rate design package. Paul Reid is stage manager.

Anyone who finds American History the slightest bit dull will likely rethink his or her opinion once under 1776’s spell. It’s the perfect early summer offering, offering enough music and drama and history to keep audiences entertained and educated from powerful start to emotion-packed finish.

Glendale Centre Theatre, 324 N. Orange St., Glendale. Through August 13. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Saturdays at 3:00. Reservations: 818 244-8481
www.glendalecentretheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
June 29, 2011

THE WEDDING SINGER

2011-07-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

WOW!
THE WEDDING SINGER

The Wedding Singer may well be the most underrated Broadway musical of the last five years, and anyone wishing proof of the above has only to check out its regional professional premiere at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West. An adroitly concocted blend of music, comedy, and 1980s nostalgia, The Wedding Singer is also one of the most unabashedly romantic musicals ever, and an utter delight from start to finish.

I fell in love with Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin’s songs from my very listen to the Original Cast CD back in 2006 when The Wedding Singer opened and closed on Broadway. Though the show lasted only a shamelessly short nine months on the Great White Way, it nonetheless engendered two National Tours, neither of which played locally, thereby giving the Musical Theatre West production event status, particularly as performed by as all-around perfect a cast as you’re likely to see on any musical theater stage under the exhilarating direction of Larry Raben.

Fans of the hit 1998 movie will recognize the story of sweet-hearted wedding singer Robbie Hart (Ciarán McCarthy), who after being dumped at the altar by trashy rocker chick fiancée Linda (Kelli Provart), begins to have feelings for girl-next-door waitress Julia (Renée Brna). There’s only one hitch. Julia is engaged to hotshot young business exec Glen (Derek Keeling), news which doesn’t sit well with Robbie, especially once he’s learned that Glen is a chronic philanderer with no plans to give up his cheating ways any time soon. No wonder, when Julia asks Robbie to sing at her wedding, his answer is … perhaps not quite what you might expect.

Supporting characters include Julia’s party-loving cousin Holly (Jenna Coker-Jones), Robby’s still vigorous grandma Rosie (Mary Jo Catlett), and his bandmates, mullet-wearing biker type Sammy (Nick Bernardi) and flamboyantly gay George (Matthew J. Vargo).

All these mostly lower middle class types come together in one of the most thoroughly enjoyable musicals since the similarly blue-collar The Full Monty, and one which sticks considerably closer to its source material than the latter’s U.K.-to-U.S. transformation. Like the smash hit Adam Sandler original, The Wedding Singer (The Musical) takes its 1980s time frame very seriously, from the costumes and hairstyles sported by its characters to the many ‘80s pop references in its book (by Beguelin and Tim Herlihy) to the musical sounds of the ‘80s replicated in Sklar and Beguelin’s melodious songs, and production number after production number spotlighting choreographer (and Wedding Singer Original Cast member) Spencer Liff's thrilling dance moves.

The Wedding Singer was Sklar and Beguelin’s Broadway debut as composer and lyricist, and a noteworthy one it was. Beguelin’s lyrics range from straightforward (“So when it’s your wedding day and my music starts to play, I can guarantee that love will find you”) to unexpected (as when a sweet and heart-felt “Note From Grandma” ends with the advice that “when you’re sad, remember, that Linda is a skanky whore”) to downright deep (“I know not every marriage lasts when things go bad. I’ve seen the warning signs. I call them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’”). Even better are Sklar’s melodies, many of them as instantly hummable as any you’ve heard in a Broadway show in the past decade or more. The New Jersey native is not only a master of the catchy hook; he also writes out-and-out gorgeous bridges and knows exactly when a key change will turn gorgeous to gorgeous-er. Those who like their songs a bit more on the rough side need not feel left out as Sklar has written some hard-edged rock numbers like “Casualty Of Love” with you in mind.

Songs as splendid as these deserve performances to match, and here Musical Theatre West has scored bullseye after bullseye.

Made-in-romcom-heaven couple McCarthy and Brna are two recent East-to-West-Coast transplants, and our Southern California musical theater scene is all the richer for their arrival. McCarthy plays Robbie with consummate charm, sings terrifically, strums a mean guitar, and manages all this without ever once imitating Adam Sandler. (Only McCarthy’s zero-percent body fat pecs and abs seem unlikely on ‘80s slacker Robbie, but who’s complaining?) Brna, whom I loved as Meg in the First National Tour of Little Women The Musical, is equally marvelous as Julia, as adorable as can be—and with vocal pipes to match. McCarthy and Brna have such palpable chemistry that I defy anyone with a heart not to become personally invested in the happily-ever-after Robbie and Julia so richly deserve.

Supporting the stellar duo are some of the best leading and character actors on this or any coast.

It’s easy to see Julia falling for Glen’s movie star good looks as embodied by the always excellent Keeling, having great fun this time as a caddish hunk. Lanky charmer Bernardi does winning work as loveable lug George, and Matthew J. Vargo plays gay blade George with a genuine sweetness that transcends stereotyping. The divine Catlett makes it two winners in a row (following her warm, wacky, and utterly irresistible work in Bell Book And Candle) as the feistiest, funkiest, rappingest Granny on record. Broadway vet Provart takes her two brief scenes as Linda and sings the sexy, sizzling heck out of them. Finally, there’s Coker-Jones’ star-makingly ball-of-fire performance as Holly, as exciting an L.A. debut as you’ll ever see.

As for the show’s ensemble, I defy any Broadway show to surpass these fourteen triple-threats, each of whom executes his or her own multi-role track to indefatigable perfection, from veteran performers Tracy Lore (Angie) and Mark C. Reis to brand new CSUF grad Neil Starkenberg, soon to be Link Larkin in Moonlight Amphitheatre’s Hairspray. Tomasina Abate, Emily Goglia, and Ben Sidell’s work in leading roles has been raved about on StageSceneLA, and they are every bit as outstanding here in smaller but no less strenuous parts. Equally tremendous are Ashley Allen, Jasmine Ejan, Todrick D. Hall, Kasey Lysdahl, Daniel Smith, Katherine Washington, Timothy Wilson, and Kevin Wood. At the risk of repeating myself, the dozen-plus-two make for one of the most thrilling MTW ensembles ever.

David Lamoureux gets top marks for his sensational work as musical director. Prather Entertainment Group, producers of The Wedding Singer’s 2009-10 non-Equity tour, have provided the production’s vivid (and frequently hilarious) recreations of ‘80s fashions in all their big-shouldered awfulness, as well as the production’s colorful sets, which suffer from a bus-and-truck look but nonetheless do the trick. Local design talents Jean-Yves Tessier and Julie Ferrin merit nothing but raves for (respectively) their lighting and sound designs. Steven Glaudini is artistic director, Kevin Clowes technical director, Yolanda Rowell costume coordinator, Cliff & Kat Senior wig designers, Chris Warren Murry stage manager, and Mary Ritenhour assistant stage manager.

If it isn’t already obvious, I am madly in love with Musical Theatre West’s production of The Wedding Singer, and were it not for an overly crowded schedule, I’d gladly be back to see it again and again. Anyone with The Wedding Singer on their upcoming calendar is the object of this reviewer’s envy. Trust me. You’re in for an exciting, nostalgic, utterly romantic musical comedy treat!

Musical Theatre West, Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach.
www.musical.org
--Steven Stanley
July 14, 2011
Photos: Alysa Brennan

HAIRSPRAY

2011-07-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

WOW!
HAIRSPRAY

FULL-LENGTH REVIEW:
When most people think about just who creates a Broadway musical, probably the first names that pop into their heads are those of its composer and lyricist. Next would probably come the book writer, whose words link the songs in what is hopefully an interesting and cohesive plotline. Still, regardless of how great what’s “written down” is, no musical could possibly hit the jackpot without a fabulous director and choreographer helming the enterprise.

Hairspray is no exception. Though Marc Shaiman’s catchy tunes, Scott Wittman and Shaiman’s clever lyrics, and Marc O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan’s hilarious book could hardly make for a better adaptation of John Waters’ 1988 cult hit movie of the same name, Hairspray might never have been a 2642-performance smash without its Tony-winning director Jack O’Brien and Tony-nominated choreographer Jerry Mitchell.

In fact, for the first ten or so years of its life, anybody who attended a performance of Hairspray (i.e. on Broadway or on tour) saw O’Brien’s and Mitchell’s original conception, along with the creations of the show’s original Broadway set, costume, and lighting designers.

Not so audiences now cheering PCPA’s exciting regional production up in picturesque Solvang. The songs and words may be the same, but pretty much everything else is new from the ground up, first and foremost the creative work of its brilliant director-choreographer Michael Jenkins, a man who (at the risk of spouting a cliché) makes the show very much his own.

Hairspray, as you may recall, tells the tale of petite but plus-sized teenager Tracy Turnblad's dream to dance on The Corny Collins Show, a 1962 Baltimore version of American Bandstand. Despite those extra pounds and a then shockingly progressive attitude towards integration, Tracy does indeed make that dream come true, leaving her only two more tasks to accomplish: a) making “Negro Day” more than a once-a-month Corny Colins Show event and b) winning the heart of local teen heartthrob Link Larkin. Since Hairspray is the quintessential happy ending musical, there’s little doubt about our pleasingly plump heroine’s success in both endeavors.

Jenkinson’s directorial and choreographic touches are everywhere, from the five-minute show-stopping full-cast opening number “Good Morning Baltimore,” to the addition of a three-member girl group (a la The Supremes or Dreamgirls’ The Dreams) to back up song after song in true 1960s style, to making “Without Love” a fantasy dance sequence in which Tracy’s dream of an integrated world where interracial couples can feel free to love becomes reality, if only in a song. The director-choreogrpher’s smaller touches are too numerous to mention, but serve to make this Hairspray a special one indeed.

This being said, no Hairspray can do John Waters justice without an Edna to fill the movie’s cross-dressing original’s “Divine” shoes, and in the sensational Sam Zeller, this Hairspray hits the bull’s-eye. Looking like the lovechild of Lucille Ball and Jane Russell on steroids, Zeller’s stellar turn recalls Lucy’s comedic genius and Russell’s glamazon looks. Larger than life (as any Edna worth her salt must be) yet never sacrificing the big, blond(ish), and beautiful lady’s tender side, the vocally blessed Zeller makes the part his own—and then some.

Josh Machamer’s charmingly nerdy Wilbur Turnblad is the spouse any Edna would rejoice in calling her own. John Keating gives teen heartthrob Link Larkin a sweet goofiness that proves irresistible. A divalicious Allison F. Rich sinks her claws into Velma Von Tussle with a glare that would freeze a bonfire. Cicily Daniels makes for a powerhouse Motormouth Maybellle, never more so than when she brings down the house with “I Know Where I’ve Been.”

There’s also Jiilian Van Niel’s delicious mean girl of an Amber Von Tussle, Natasha Harris’s delightful dork of a Penny Pingleton, and Ozioma Akagaha’s dynamic fireball of a Little Inez. George Walker melds Dick Clark and Elvis in a winning turn as TV dance show host Corny Collins, and charismatic Sterling Sulieman makes it no wonder Penny falls under his bad boy spell.

Elizabeth Stuart and Billy Breed steal scenes right and left in a bevy of cameo roles including Penny’s Mom Prudy, a butch gym teacher, and a Teutonic prison matron (hers) and Ultra Clutch Hairspray executive Harriman F. Spritzer, Tracy’s high school principal, and Mr. Pinky’s Hefty Hideaway owner Mr. Pinky (his).

As the teenager around whom all the above revolves, a terrific Bree Murphy gives Tracy oodles of energy, spunk, and verve, but comes across too old for the role when surrounded by cast members in their early 20s, and especially in romantic scenes opposite an awkwardly younger looking Keating.

Executing one exhilaratingly choreographed Jenkinson dance number after another are the supremely talented and indefatigable ensemble: Ahnastasia Albert (Brenda), Nohealani Alisa Cambra (Lorraine), Anthony Chatmon (Stooie), Urè Egbuho (Cindy), Tracey Leigh Freeman (Shelley), Layli Kayhani (Tammy), Nikko Kimzin (Brad), Calvin Seabrooks (Gilbery), George P. Scott (Thad), Daniel J. Self (Fender), Glenn M. Snellgrose II (IQ), Steven Michael Stone (Sketch), and Katie Worley (Lou Ann). Performing all those girl group three-part harmonies are the stellar Joanna Jones, Kathryn McCreary, and Katrina McGraw as The Dynamites.

Musical director Callum Morris gets the entire troupe singing splendidly to prerecorded tracks, the show’s fifteen-piece orchestra sounding pretty darn close to live thanks to sound designer Elisabeth Rebel. Scenic designer DeAnne Kennedy has created a colorful multi-location set with a nicely cartoonlike flair, a design which provides plenty of flexibility for Jenkinson’s vision. Frederick P. Deeben’s costumes are vivid, fun recreations of early ‘60s fashions, with special snaps for Edna’s extra-tall plus-size gowns. Jennifer ‘Z’ Zornow lights this all to perfection. Aleah Van Woert is stage manager.

With the marriage equality movement making headlines these days, Hairspray serves as a reminder that not too long ago, interracial couples like Penny and Seaweed faced similar prejudice and injustice. That a musical does so in the most entertaining way possible, and particularly in the fresh new staging being given by PCPA, makes Hairspray much more than just your average, everyday Broadway hit. Anyone who makes the trek up to Solvang is in for a real treat.

Festival Theater, 420 2nd Stree, Solvang.
www.pcpa.org
--Steven Stanley
July 12, 2011
Photos: Clinton Bersuch

RE-ANIMATOR™-THE MUSICAL

2011-07-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

WOW!
RE-ANIMATOR™-THE MUSICAL

Every so often a show comes along that attracts audiences who’d never ordinarily set foot inside a legitimate theater, let alone for a musical, heaven forbid. Rare examples of these surprise cult hits include Spamalot, which drew in Monty Python fans in droves; Joe’s Garage, which had Frank Zappa fans lined up around the corner at Open Fist; and now Re-Animator™-The Musical, which opened in February for a six-week run at the Steve Allen Theatre and has been packing them in since then.

Maybe it’s the show’s sci-fi theme, or perhaps it’s Re-Animator’s camp factor, both of which have made The Rocky Horror Show, The Toxic Avenger: The Musical, and Evil Dead: The Musical cult favorites. Then again, it may have something to do with the “splash zone,” the first four or so rows of seats where audience members are guaranteed to get anywhere from dampened to soaked with artificial blood (more about that later).

Whatever the reason for its smash success, Re-Animator™-The Musical has become L.A.’s biggest cult hit of the year, and a funner, campier, more outrageous ride you’re unlikely to have anytime soon, that is unless you become one of the show’s many repeat visitors.

Based on the 1985 science fiction horror movie Re-Animator, which itself came from the H. P. Lovecraft story Herbert West—Reanimator, Re-Animator™-The Musical tells the scarylicious tale of experiments in The Resuscitation Of The Dead.

Our handsome, intrepid hero is Dr. Dan Cain (Chris L. McKenna), whom we first see attempting in vain to revive a patient long past the eight to ten minutes he has before brain death sets in. Despite the musical pleas of the attending medical staff (“She's dead, Dan/Get it through your head, Dan”), the good doctor refuses to give up until he is literally pulled from the cadaver who won’t come back to life.

Not surprisingly, considering Dan’s matinee idol good looks and sculpted physique, our hero has a gorgeous blonde fiancée Meg (Rachel Avery), who just happens to be the daughter of Dean Halsey (Harry S. Murphy), Dean of the Miskatonic Medical School, i.e. Dan’s boss. While Meg dreams of the day she and her beau can be wed to storybook perfection, Dan just wants to Meg to move in with him, something which she won’t do without a ring on her finger.

As long as Dan has the apartment all to himself, he rents out his basement to bespectacled medical researcher Herbert West (Graham Skipper), who happens coincidentally to have developed an iridescent green reagent which, when injected into the recently deceased, shocks the brain into a state of “re-animation,” not quite normal life, but the next best thing as far as Herbert is concerned.

When Dan discovers that Herbert has killed and then re-animated his pet cat Rufus, the studly doctor realizes that his nerdy housemate may just have discovered the very secret of life extension he himself has been wishing and hoping to find. Before long, the pair are down in the morgue in search of just the right cadaver to bring back to life.

Every ointment (or reagent in this case) has its fly, and Herbert’s is his nemesis Dr. Hill (Jesse Merlin), an unscrupulous, plagiaristic maniac who will do anything in his power to claim credit for Herbert’s discovery—and that means anything, if you get my drift.

Re-Animator™-The Musical has been brought to musical comedy life by Stuart Gordon, who directed both movie and musical; by book writers Dennis Paoli, Gordon, and William J. Norris, authors of the 1985 screenplay; and by composer/lyricist Mark Nutter, some of whose songs have been inspired by Richard Band’s movie score, while others owe a greater debt to Gilbert & Sullivan with their similarly clever rhymes. (“What’s the point of staying? It smells like she’s decaying” and “His psychosis gives me chills/He cannot love, he only kills” are two wittily creepy examples.)

While I’m told the film is played for maximum shock and horror value, performances in Re-Animator™-The Musical are for the most part tongue-in-cheek. McKenna’s stalwart good guy and Avery’s sweet-and-sexy girl next door are played the most realistically of the bunch (and quite terrifically at that), making for a sympathetic pair of lovers amidst the mayhem that surrounds them. Less true-to-life and all the more entertaining for being so are Skipper’s bug-eyed Herbert, Merlin’s deranged Dr. Hill, and (once he’s been re-animated) Murphy’s crazed zombie of a dead Dean. Marlon Grace gets laughs too as a hefty hospital security guard who has better things to do than guarding security (“I’ll take care of it … right after my break”). Completing the cast as doctors, directors, policemen, and corpses are Mark Beltzman, Cynthia Carle, Brian Gillespie, and Liesel Hanson, all first-rate. Merlin’s trained baritone makes him by far the vocal standout.

As for the gore, there is plenty of it, though it’s the sort more likely to provoke laughs than shrieks. Someone’s eyes fall out, another character gets ripped apart limb from limb, skulls are opened with bone saws and brains removed, and best of the bunch, a decapitation and double re-animation allow the deceased character to remain a major player, operatic pipes intact. As for folks in the first few rows, don’t let Act One fool you or let the production’s complimentary trash bags give you a sense of security. When fake blood gets shot out of an intestinal hose near the end of Act Two, the splashing and splattering goes on and on and on (and people keep coming back for more).

Musical director/arranger Peter Adams plays live synthesizer to prerecorded tracks, making for just the right musical accompaniment. Cynthia Carle’s inventive choreography is never more so than when re-animated zombies form A Chorus Line.

Laura Fine Hawkes’ scenic design is simple in the extreme, but does the trick. Jeff Rack gets big thumbs up for an impressive bunch of ingenious props. Costumes by Joe Kucharski are imaginative treats, especially those designed for characters minus heads or with other severed body parts. Jeff Ravitz’s lighting design adds to the show’s creepy/funny moods as does Adams’ sound design. Biggest design kudos go to special effects masters Tony Doublin, John Naulin, John Buechler, Tom Devlin, and Greg McDougall. Re-Animator™-The Musical is produced by Dean Schramm and Gordon. Joe Begos is stage manager, Mike Lemek assistant stage manager, and Steve Pope technical director.

Not being a particular fan of the splatter flick genre, I took rather longer than most L.A. reviewers to catch Re-Animator™-The Musical. I ought not to have hesitated so many months. I had a rollicking good time from start to finish (and stayed dry by avoiding those floor-level seats). Even if the idea of gushing blood and severed limbs makes you want to hurl, you’ll be laughing so hard at Re-Animator™-The Musical, a barf bag will be the furthest thing from your mind.

Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Through August 14. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8:00. Additional performances Fridays at Midnight and Sundays at 3:30 p.m. Reservations: 800 595-4849
www.steveallentheater.com
--Steven Stanley
July 10, 2011
Photos: Thomas Hargis

FLEETWOOD MACBETH

2011-07-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

WOW!
FLEETWOOD MACBETH

They’ve done As You Like It as “As U2 Like It,” A Winter’s Tale as “A Wither’s Tale,” Much Ado About Nothing as “Much Adoobie Brothers About Nothing,” A Midsummer Night’s Dream as “A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream,” and Hamlet as “Hamlet The Artist Formerly Known As Prince Of Denmark.” Now, the Troubadour Theater Company (affectionately nicknamed The Troubies) are back with a revival of their 2004 musical spoof of Macbeth, which they’ve titled “Fleetwood Macbeth.”

As U2, Bill Withers, Doobie Brothers, Saturday Night Fever, and Prince slash Troubies fans can tell you, Fleetwood Macbeth (like its predecessors) finds ways to fit hit songs into Shakespeare plots, with an emphasis on the outrageous and the adlibbed. Though The Scottish Play and The British-American Rock Band might not at first glance seem made for each other, once Lisa Valenzuela as Lady Macbeth has started belting out Stevie Nicks tunes in Nicks' patented flowing robes and batwing sleeves, it’s clear that the Troubies are on to something, and that the audience will be all the more entertained for it.

The show opens with several Troubies trademarks—a one-by-one introduction of each character, audience participation (this time four lucky gents get to be bad guy soldiers and even dance a bit before being slain in battle), and a rousing chorus of “You’re So Late” sung to the unfortunate tardy to the tune of “You’re So Vain.”

It would be hard to count the newsmakers referenced in the show’s scripted and unscripted lines, but Schwarzenegger’s love child, drug-addled Charlie Sheen, the Palin otherwise known as Sarah, the impending 405 closure (aka Carmageddon), and Weiner’s online wiener all make cameo appearances, and there are numerous SoCalcentric jokes, e.g. “Silverlake, the New Echo Park.” There’s also a more-than-hilarious “Is this a dagger I see before me” dream sequence which features quite possibly the longest series of puns in Troubies history: “Is this a gagger (Mick Jagger, lollygagger, swagger, on-the-ragger) I see before me?”

Still, Fleetwood Macbeth (you can say the word in a theater if it’s part of the play) doesn’t forget its Shakespearean roots, with King Duncan, Banquo, Macduff, Malcolm, Ross, Seyton, and Hecate all central figures alongside the titular Thane of Glamis and Cawdor and his evil, plotting spouse.

On the other hand, these abovementioned characters may not be quite what you remember from your favorite high school, community theater, or Free Shakespeare In The Park production, and not simply because of their humungous prosthetic Hobbits feet. Duncan (Rob Nagle) is a gargantuanly bare-and-barrel-chested Sean Connery wannabe; Banquo none other than Troubie’s head honcho Matt Walker in Scottish brogue (‘nuff said); Macduff an Afroed noble who doubles as his two-foot-tall baby self; Malcolm (Joseph Keane) a fey surfer with shoulder-length blond hair and a thing for big beefy soldiers; Lennox (Andy Lopez) a loveable lug of a nobleman; Ross (Evan Arnold); an occasionally wig-challenged messenger; Seyton (Brandon Breault) a 1980s heavy metal skater with an evil glint in the eye to match his name’s devilish homonym; and Hecate (Beth Kennedy) the sole non-babelicious witch amongst eight sultry bustiered and fishnetted glamazons. Each deserves a paragraph of praise for his (or her) terrific work here.

Director Walker and his band of uniquely gifted triple-threats fit in a fair number of Fleetwood Mac hits, including “Go Your Own Way,” “Landslide,” “Chain,” “Tusk,” and “Gold Dust Woman” with lyrics tweaked to fit the onstage action, but there seem to be fewer than usual. (I counted only one song in the first half hour or so of the show.) The best are those performed by the dazzling vocal powerhouse that is Valenzuela, and the ones that turn into great big production numbers choreographed by Nadine Ellis, Christine Lakin, and Monica Scheider and performed by the hottest eight-witch coven you’ve likely ever seen: Annalea Rawicz Arnold, Heidi Brucker, Marissa Ingrasci, Erin Matthews, Tammy Minoff, Darrin Revitz, Schneider, and Jan Seifert, with Margaret Hamilton-lookalike Hecate (the always game Kennedy) making it nine.

If I’ve left the title character for last, it’s simply that Morgan Rusler ends up being the best in just about any show he’s in, whether in dramatic mode in Driving Miss Daisy and All My Sons, in comedic mode in The Foreigner, or in Troubies mode in The First Jo-el and It’s A Stevie Wonderful Life. Not surprisingly, Rusler’s sad sack of a Macbeth gets his fair share of laughs, but equally unsurprising, his soliloquizing to “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time” would not be out of place in any summer Shakespeare festival.

Troubies musical director/drummer extraordinaire Eric Heinly is once again masterfully in charge of the four-piece onstage band. Vocal director Rachael Lawrence gets the entire cast harmonizing to perfection. Mike Jespersen’s set design is the usual simple-but-functional one you expect at a Troubadour show, where it’s the lighting (sensational as always from Jeremy Pivnick) and costumes (big thumbs up to Sharon McGunigle) that dazzle. Julie Ferrin’s sound design is another terrific one. Corey Womack does double duty as producer and stage manager.

Troubies shows are always big-ticket draws at the Falcon, and with mid-week shows nixed this time around, ticket-buyers this late in the game may well hear their own version of “You’re So Late” at the ticket window. I had a blast on Opening Night. It goes without saying that those lucky enough to have their tickets in hand or at Will Call will be having an equally Troubadourtastic time!

Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank. Through August 14. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00, Saturdays and Sundays at 4:00. Reservations: 818 955-8101
www.falcontheatre.com
--Steven Stanley
July 8, 2011
Photos: Chelsea Sutton

JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA

2011-07-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

WOW!
JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA

Jerry Springer has arrived in Anaheim Hills, and some of the natives are up in arms. Open-minded theatergoers, on the other hand, will be lining up in droves to catch the Southern California Premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera, a sensational Chance Theater production which once again proves that for controversial, intimate-stage excellence in the OC, nobody does it better than the Chance.

Enraged churchgoers have been flooding the theater’s mailbox with email after email promising eternal damnation for what they call blasphemous Jerry-Show appearances by Jesus, Mary, Adam, Eve, the Devil, and God himself—though someone should have clued them in on the difference between the previous week’s highly protested previews and last night’s Gala Opening Night, which attracted only a lonely-looking pair standing forlornly on the sidewalk overlooking the theater parking lot.

My best guess is that the OC protesters don’t have Jerry’s still-running shock-talk show on their Must See TV lists, or else they would realize that Biblical figures with an ax to grind might indeed find themselves slugging it out amidst shouts of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” on a real life Springer Show.

The brilliance of Jerry Springer: The Opera is its juxtaposition of foul language and even fouler human specimens with gorgeously composed and sung operatic songs. (The show features music by Richard Thomas, book and lyrics by Stewart Lee and Thomas.) It’s not every day that a trashily-dressed soprano hits glorious high notes with “Mama gimmee smack on the a**hole!” or a diaper-clad tenor soars with “I just wanna sh*t my pants.” (If you feel that either of these lyrics, or constant use of the F-word aren’t your thing, then feel free to pass on Jerry. There’ll be plenty willing to fill your seat.)

Did I mention that there’s a production number featuring the Ku Klux Klan alternately tapping and goose-stepping to “This Is My Jerry Springer Moment”?

Since the original London production is said to have featured a cast of thirty-plus accompanied by a fifty-piece orchestra, let me reassure you that even with a considerably smaller cast of nineteen and orchestra of six, the Chance has filled the 50ish-seat theater with thrilling vocals and splendid instrumental accompaniment. Even without a single Equity member in the cast (unfortunately AE’s 99-seat plan does not extend to Orange County), there’s not a weak voice onstage, and each performer has acting and dance chops to match. As for Trevor Biship’s expert direction, it simply couldn’t be better.

Act One features several segments a la the real Jerry Springer show. In the first, a big burly guy named Dwight reveals to his wife Peaches that he’s been cheating on her with her best friend Zandra, then shocks them both with the news that he’s also been having sex with Tremont, a Rubenesque male-to-female pre-op transsexual. After (tongue-in-cheek) commercials, a bearded blond Montel confesses to his girlfriend Andrea that he just wants to poop in his Calvin Kleins with the help of a grown-up Baby Jane. Finally, redneck Chucky learns that his wife Shawntel dreams of becoming an exotic pole dancer who just wants to “f***ing dance,” Shawntel then demonstrating said talent to her mother Irene’s and Chucky’s horror.

As to how Jerry ends up in Hell, well for that you’ll just have to see the show.

Jerry (a spot-on Warren Draper) is virtually the only character who doesn’t sing, though he does come up with some delicious understatements: Dwight (singing): I've been seeing, seeing someone! Someone, seeing someone else! Peaches (singing): What the f**k? What the f**k? What the f**king f**king f**k? Jerry (spoken): Peaches, you seem surprised.

Otherwise, the cast is jam-packed with some of the best vocalists I’ve heard in a Chance production, as rich and powerful as any I’ve enjoyed in larger, more “prestigious” venues.

It’s hard to find enough superlatives to describe the work of David Laffey (Jerry’s warm-up guy and Satan), Jovani McCleary (Dwight and God), Erika C. Miller (Peaches and Baby Jane), Laura M. Hathaway (Zandra, Irene, and the Virgin Mary), Matthew Ballestero (Tremont and the Angel Gabriel), Jared Pugh (Montel and Jesus), Katie Kitani (Andrea and Angel Michael), Kyle Cooper (Chucky/Adam), and Jessie Withers (Shawntel and Eve). Only time and space limitations prevent me from going on and on about each and every one of these triple threats, but I’d be remiss not to salute Withers’ showstopping rendition of “I Just Wanna Dance.” (All that’s missing is one of the song’s irresistible dance remixes.) David McCormick as real-life Jerry Springer head of security Steve Wilkos has a mostly non-singing role, but he gets special mention for the physicality of his performance, including some fight choreography that looks like it must hurt as much as it dazzles.

The ensemble (Travis Ammann, Stephanie Bull, Israel Cortez, Rebecca Fondiler, Kelly Spill, Ryan Spindel, Andrea Paquin, and Nathan Willingham) appear as (singing) audience members and various other characters, and they are all phenomenal.

Vocally, the cast performs to perfection under Mike Wilkins’ impeccable music direction. As for their dance prowess, not all may have been trained dancers when they met choreographer extraordinaire Kelly Todd, but by opening night, all were executing dance number after dance number—including a one-two punch grand finale—as if they’d been tap dancing and high kicking all their lives.

Visually, Jerry Springer: The Opera is a knockout, from Caitlin Lainoff’s thrust stage scenic design, which has us imagining we’re at a real Jerry Springer taping, to Brian S. Shevelenko’s vibrant lighting design, to Lianne Arnold’s imaginative projection design, to Casey Long’s expert sound design, to Julie Wilkins’ wild-and-crazy hair and make-up design, to Chance Dean’s authentic looking fight choreography. Anthony Tran’s costumes deserve special mention for their imagination and trashy flair. Courtny Greenough is stage manager.

You don’t have to be a Jerry Springer lover to love Jerry Springer The Opera, though does help if you’ve enjoyed an episode or two, even though you may not have approved of the panelists’ bad language and behavior. At the risk of raising the ire of the show’s self-righteous protesters, I’d venture to say that their Lord and Savior might well have preferred the show’s open-armed acceptance of all kinds of people to the self-appointed finger-pointing outside the theater.

I daresay most avid theatergoers will be giving this oh-so unusual summer treat a big thumbs up, and its naysayers a different digit of the hand.

The Chance Theater, 5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills. Through August 14. Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00. Saturdays at 3:00 and 8:00. Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00. Reservations: 714 777-3033
www.chancetheater.com
--Steven Stanley
July 9, 2011

Photos: Chance Theater

Interview with Caught's David L. Ray

2011-07-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

When David L. Ray’s Caught opened late last November at the Zephyr Theatre, few could have predicted the runaway smash hit it would become. Written by a relative unknown and making its guest production debut in the pre-Christmas theatrical doldrums, Caught could just as easily have vanished as quickly and quietly as it arrived. In the hands of a less gifted playwright, it might have been just another “gay play” about “gay marriage” with little appeal outside its niche audience. That’s not what happened, however. Theatergoers laughed and cried—and stood up and cheered. They told friends and family about Caught, paid return visits, often with those friends and family members in tow. The show got extended, then extended again … and again … and again, becoming Los Angeles’ longest running play.

Now, as Caught heads into its final weeks of a nearly nine-month run, we caught up with playwright Ray for a fascinating look at how Caught came about, how folks have reacted to its characters and storyline, and what’s coming next, both for Caught The Play and for David L. Ray The Playwright.

So, David, when did the idea for Caught first occur to you?

Caught has been percolating in my head for years. I think the story started developing in 2000 when Prop 22, the Knight Initiative, was being voted on in California. I wasn’t involved in the campaign, but had a friend who was working for No On 22. Coming from South Georgia, I saw California as the most liberal, welcoming, open place for me to be. In my sheltered WeHo life, I’d only seen the No On 22 signs. However, on a trip home from Palm Springs, I saw my first Yes On 22 sign. I thought it would be funny to put the sign on my friend’s lawn, as a joke. He was always so passionate about it, and I enjoyed seeing him get riled up by his opponents. The sign was in an empty field next to the freeway. It had dozens of signs from all factions—candidates and initiatives—for the election. I pulled over, jumped out, grabbed the sign and put it in my car. A few minutes later, I was surrounded by police cars. They were yelling through the loud speakers. I pulled over, they hand-cuffed me and forced me to sit on the hot pavement. A man, who looked to be in his early 50s, ran over and pointed at me and yelled, “I saw him take the sign.” Then, with such hate in his voice, he screamed, “I put you under citizens arrest! Citizens arrest!” Then he got in his car.

That’s unbelievable! It must have been terribly upsetting for you.

Like all traumatic moments in life, everything was in slow-motion. I remember looking at his wife in the car ... or a woman who I believed was his wife. She looked so sad. So distraught, disappointed at what her husband had just done. It was as if she were looking at me as a mother wanting to help me, but unable to assist because her husband called the shots. I watched as he huffed and puffed and drove away. She just looked at me as he was yelling words I couldn’t hear, but from the look on her face, they were clearly full of hate.

So what happened with the police?

After about thirty minutes of talk, they let me go. I had a court date assigned to me. Needless to say, my life shifted in that moment. I went from unconcerned citizen making light over all this Prop 22 stuff to reluctant activist in the blink of an eye.

What happened next?

I spoke with a lawyer at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. I spent weeks researching, building my case. I found out that the lot from where I took the sign belonged to the city. So, the person who put the sign there had as much right to put it there as I did to take it. The story of my “citizens arrest,” which I thought only took place on The Andy Griffith Show, was featured in Frontiers Magazine.

Did the case go to trial?

Within a week, I received a note from the court saying that charges had been dropped. My fear, anger, frustration, and desire wasn’t given its day in court. This was like putting my imagination on steroids. I felt I had to do something to make the best of this bad situation. I’d come from South Georgia where I lived, for the most part, in the closet. Then, here in Los Angeles, I’d created a false sense of acceptance. It was a dark time for me. So in my imagination, the story for Caught began to form.

Which came first, the message you wanted to convey or the story of Darlene, Kenny, and Troy?

I believe the brief, unspoken exchange I had with the woman in the car planted the seed for Darlene, in the mysterious way stories come to be. I began to create her history. Her strength and inner struggle. That is when Darlene, the protagonist, began to form. And then the other characters began to give voice to the story. As these played out, the theme began to develop.

Have events in your own life paralleled those of your characters?

There are a few moments in the play that have personal relevance to me. Kenneth’s airport monolog is inspired by a time that I was meeting a guy I was dating at the airport. I’d bought a flower for him and was excited to see him after his trip. I remember hugging him and holding the flower out for him. He smiled and said, “I’ll take that when we’re in the car.” It wasn’t as life-changing as it was for Kenneth, and not nearly as dramatic, but it did plant a seed for all the things that straight people take for granted. And if we want to be equal, then we’re going to have to do a lot of self-reflection to overcome some of the shame civilization has taught us to accept.

Another inspirational moment from my real life happened after I came out to my mother in Fall of 1994. My late grandmother Mary always gave us grandkids the same gifts, or at least the same-priced gifts, for Christmas. That Christmas, all the grandkids received the same gift—socks. So, I assumed I was getting socks too. However, I got a small plaque of the Serenity Prayer. I will never forget that. Much like the woman in the car, my grandmother was trying, without words, to let me know I was going to be okay. I used that moment to inspire the letter that is read at the end of Act One. The strength of women is a constant theme in my writing.

How did you go about making sure that Caught didn’t turn out to “messagey?”

I wish I had a brilliant answer for this. At the end of the day, I’m a pretty simple guy. Lofty ideas and political rhetoric don’t inspire me. I think what works for me is to create characters as “real life” as possible. I must love my characters. All of them. I want to know what makes them human. The good and the bad. And for my audience, I strive to tap into the universal truth that we’re all human, so we can, if challenged, understand all humanity. Maybe not accept all their beliefs, but there’s a part of us that must understand. Even if we don’t agree with what someone is doing or saying, we can understand what’s led them up to this moment.

Are there any writers who’ve particularly influenced your writing style?

I am a huge fan of Tennessee Williams.

I’m really curious about how this particular production came about. How did you find Nick DeGruccio, your director, and your phenomenal cast of actors?

It’s an interesting story. (Caught producer) Jason (Loh) and I were producing another one of my plays last summer in New York. We got a call from the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. They were producing a week of staged readings for playwrights that had new works to share. I believe they called the week “a play a day,” or something like that. The reading went very well, and what we learned was that the script was further along than we thought. Jason set up a crazy market research/focus group thing-y, which allowed us to collect some great feedback after the reading.

And then?

We retooled the script, and did another reading six weeks later. Before I knew it, the production team greenlit a full production, and got us the Zephyr.

And Nick DeGruccio?

As for Nick’s association to the play, he’s obviously a highly regarded director in L.A., and should be on everyone’s short-list for directors ... and he obviously was on our short-list too. We interviewed a number of folks. I met Nick in a coffee shop in Hollywood. We sat down and within a minute, I knew he was the director we wanted. He understood the play from a heart-centered place. His own life, though different, had a lot of similarities to those in the play. He spoke simply and with love for each of the characters. After he was chosen to direct, there were countless moments in his discovery of the story that were mysteriously connected to my writing of the story. One in particular was the music we use. Our sound designer was pressing us for some ideas for the sound of the show. I had my own ideas, but wanted Nick to propose his thoughts. One night, I was watching a play downtown and I got a text from him: “Call me ASAP... I have the song for our show.”

So how “ASAP” did you contact him?

At intermission I called him. He said hold on, and began playing the song. What he played me was the exact song that I had listened to, every morning as I fixed my coffee before writing Caught.

Amazing!

As for the actors, truthfully they all came from an open call. Neither Nick, Jason nor I knew any of the actors before they were cast in the production. We held two days of open calls led by our casting director Raul Clayton Staggs, and we were blown away by all the talent that came in to audition. We had an amazing turnout for the show, and are incredibly blessed to have the actors we have in this production.

How much did you need to “educate” your cast about their characters and backgrounds?

I know these people. They’re my friends, my family, people I grew up with. I spent time with each actor telling them about their characters, working on accents with them, and helping them fill in some of the back-story. I assigned the “Southern characters” dialect coaches, people I know from back home that not only could help with the accents, but also help them better understand where these characters come from. I also recommended some materials—articles, sermons, documentaries, etc.—for the entire cast, just to help give them context to the South and specifically the Southern Baptist Church. But my help could not even scratch the surface as to how much these actors helped me in return to understand these characters. I can’t even begin to tell you how amazed I am with this ensemble. I have moments every time I see Caught, where I’m like, “Did I write that?” It’s a gift to see them working on these characters. Live theater is a gift for all of us, I’m so lucky to have had this experience with such talented, lovely actors.

The success of Caught has very little precedent in L.A. theater. You weren’t part of a season, nor were you known at the time for your previous work. How surprised are you at the phenomenon that Caught has become?

I am very surprised, and hugely humbled. Not unlike other shows in small theater around town, I’ve had my fair share of productions where we’ve had to beg friends and family to help fill the houses just so that we could get through the initial run with a small audience. But Jason had a really smart game plan as to how to produce Caught, and I have to attribute a lot of the success of the play’s long run to his ability to execute against that game plan. So it’s a combination of some really smart planning plus a lot of luck and an amazing cast and crew. And thankfully, with Caught, instead of asking friends to come, I don’t even know the people who are coming multiple times to see it. It is a true blessing.

When did you first realize that this was a show that was going to have “legs”?

We began preview performances over Thanksgiving 2010, ahead of a planned seven-week run. As we all know, producing theater in L.A. is tricky, and uber-competitive. We planned for some really small houses over the holidays, but we were hoping to quietly sneak into the L.A. theater scene and find an audience from those folks that weren’t necessarily interested in seeing the standard holiday-themed shows. However, as I’m sure you remember, we saw unprecedented rains this past winter. The theater flooded, the roof inside the theater above the stage began leaking, and patrons arrived soaking wet... but we had full houses, even over the holiday weekends. I remember thinking, “I wouldn’t go out in this weather for anything,” yet L.A. audiences were packing the house. We felt incredibly lucky. When we had a line out the door in the middle of torrential rain … that’s when we felt the show might have “legs.” On a side note, that’s also when we started serving free coffee and tea in the lobby. We’re still doing that today, nine months later.

What do you think are the reason that Caught has caught on the way it has?

It goes back to the universal truth that we’re all human. We all have the same desires, and like it or not, we all need to have some kind of resolution with our families. For many of us, that may never happen, but to see the hate and love played out in front of us … It’s like scratching that itch that’s always just out of reach.

What’s the audience make-up for Caught?

When we first began performances back in November 2010, I’d estimate that our early audiences came predominantly from the LGBT community, since as you know the show is set against the backdrop of same-sex marriage. However, over the following months, we started to see a distinctive shift in our audience base as word-of-mouth took over and people realized that, although same-sex marriage is the catalyst that drives the initial conflict, the play is really about family and learning how to co-exist with each other during difficult times. As you’re well aware, one of the central arcs of the play centers on Darlene and her dissolving relationship with her husband. The play talks to the parallels between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, and how we all just want to be happy—and audiences have responded to that.

How much repeat business do you have?

I truly have no idea how much repeat business we get, but I will say it’s significant. I’m often helping at the box office when people pick up their tickets before the show, and the box office manager always asks, “How did you hear about us?”, and at least a couple times each night, people respond “This is my third-fourth-fifth time seeing it.” It’s been amazing. Jason recently noted that we get the kind of repeat business that only musicals get.

He’s so right! I rarely see a straight play more than once, though I’ll go back and see a musical again and again. I’ve now seen Caught seven times, and would gladly see it seven more if it weren’t about to close. So, how have you gotten the word out about Caught?

People stumble across us initially via a number of different ways: Facebook, Goldstar, Plays411, friends’ recommendations, press reviews, etc. But when they leave the show, they say things like “I need to bring my mom-brother-daughter-co-worker-etc.”, and they do!

Any idea why people come back with family members, friends, or work colleagues in tow?

Audiences say that it allows them to have conversations after the show with people that they wouldn’t normally be able to have, and they tell me that the story is presented in a way that “no one wears the black hat,” and as the playwright, that’s exactly what I hoped audiences would feel.

Do you have any stories that stand out for you about how Caught has affected audience members, families, guests who may have been dragged along?

I remember a lesbian couple that came to Caught early in our run, over the holidays I believe, and one of the partners brought her religiously conservative parents. The relationship between the parents and the daughter’s girlfriend was strained, at best, because they couldn’t accept their daughter’s “lifestyle,” or this is what the daughter’s partner told me as she enjoyed a drink before the show. Now, while the show is laugh-out-loud funny, there are some significant dramatic moments, and by the end of Act One, the parents were crying with their daughter … which apparently sparked a heart-felt conversation during intermission. By the end of the play, when they were exiting the theater, they came up to me and my producer and thanked us, as this play had given them the opportunity to move their relationship forward.

What a wonderful story! Any others?

Just last weekend, we had a mother come to the show with her son and son’s “friend,” and when they left the show, she came up to me, hugged me, and said this play has helped to heal their relationship. We get these types of reactions from audience members almost every night, and for that I am hugely grateful.

Has Caught changed over the months of its run?

That’s the beauty of live theater. Every performance is slightly different, as the actors make small changes based on the responses they receive from the audience every night. If I looked at the show in its totality since when we started the run back in November, I’d say there’s been significant growth in the play as night after night, these characters have grown more and more on the actors. In the beginning of any run, actors are still semi-strangers to their characters, and over the course of the last ten plus months since we all started rehearsing and working together, the characters have become much more realized, thanks in no small part to the talent and dedication of our amazing company. As for the script itself, we have made a few tweaks along the way. This is a World Premiere, and we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work over the months. In between the first and second extensions, we went dark for a week and made some small script changes. We’ve made a few other changes during third and fourth extensions too. Nothing too dramatic, just a few tweaks here and there to help balance out some areas. I have some ideas for future tweaks when we remount the play in the future, but I really didn’t want to change it too much during a single run.

What changes have new cast members, understudies, and various cast permutations had on the production?

It’s amazing to have principal cast replacements and understudies join the show. Every new actor brings their own gifts when they join the company, but I think they’ve also all realized that it’s a balance of blending their own decisions as actors with the track originally set by the director and their predecessor. I’ve heard joining the cast is like playing double-dutch jump rope. There’s a rhythm already in place when you get there, and it’s your job as a player to seamlessly jump in and jump out without losing the rhythm. And as the playwright, it has been a gift for me to see new people join the show. Seeing the various actors take on these roles and having the audience moved really makes me proud of the script. It’s not perfect, but every playwright wants to know that whoever takes the script and puts on a production has the material to tell the story fully.

You’re also one of the rare productions that has opted to extend past the 99-seat plan, requiring higher salaries for actors, higher ticket prices, and other changes. Can you talk a bit about the decision to “go Equity” and how it’s worked out for you?

I think like almost all shows in 99-seat theaters in L.A., we wished we could have worked under full AEA contracts from day one. However, as you know, competition is incredibly steep in small theater in L.A., and without the name of an established theater company behind us, and without the deep pockets of donors or investors, we were thankful that AEA had a plan that could allow us to produce our show relatively cheaply to see if it resonated with audiences. We only signed up for a seven-week run, and our initial run ran through Thanksgiving weekend, Christmas and New Years—not a time of year that would have set us up for much success. However, despite the odds, Jason had this game plan, and wanted to plan for the possibility that it would be successful, and in the off-chance that the show was a success, he didn’t want to be unprepared for it. He kept saying “go big or go home” when we were gearing up to open. That possibility of Caught finding success is one of the reasons why Jason and Nick decided before we even opened to cast a complete understudy cast, and gave them dedicated understudy-only performances early in our run during times when the regular show was dark. It was an investment in the future of the show, in the off-chance that the show did succeed, and because of limited arts budgets, this was something only possible for us under the 99-seat plan. However, somewhere between the first and second extension, when we felt we actually had an audience that was interested in the show, the production team started working quickly to flip the entire company—union and non-union, principal and understudy actors and stage managers—to the AEA HAT contract. This wasn’t something we had to do, but we saw the commitment and dedication of our L.A. actors, and we wanted to invest in them as much as they had invested themselves in the show. In addition to the higher salaries, we felt they deserved the additional elements of the contract, like pension contribution, union dues, paid rehearsal time, etc. Financially this was a tough decision for Jason, but it was something we wanted to do from day one, and we’re very proud that we were given the opportunity to make the flip. As for “how it’s worked out,” so far so good.

Finally, what’s next for Caught?

The future seems bright. We’ve had interest from a number of theaters, including some extremely well-known houses around the country. Oddly enough, we’ve also had a few theaters internationally write us for rights. But we’re taking things one step at a time. Our ultimate goal would be to bring Caught off-Broadway, but the production team wants to attack that goal intelligently, which means we’ll most likely plan a stopover before going to New York. But the future is still to be written, and I’m enjoying every moment we have left during our run at the Zephyr. While this next chapter for Caught is still being written, I’m also working on my next play which I’m really excited about. I’m hoping to be able to share it with L.A. audiences by this time next year.

How do you and Jason plan to take Caught to the next level?

Similar to his production plan before we opened Caught at the Zephyr, Jason has a strategy to get the play to the next level. We’ve assembled an amazing team of enthusiastic people who are working with us to help find other theaters interested in getting Caught.

Thanks so much David, for taking time to answer all these questions!

Thank you, Steven! You’re amazing!

www.caughttheplay.com
Photo of Original Cast: Michael Lamont

Dennis Moench Interview

2011-07-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

Mary Poppins has arrived at Costa Mesa's Segerstrom Center For The Arts, bringing with her all the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious fun you remember from the classic Walt Disney film. The role of Robertson Ay offers National Tour cast member Dennis Moench the chance to pay a return visit to the Center, having previously appeared on its stage in the National Tour of All Shook Up. Dennis sat down recently to talk with us about his busy life in musical theater.

As a child growing up in the Adirondack region of Upstate New York, what sparked your interest in theater and set you on the path towards becoming a performer?

I began in music. I started singing at a very young age, thanks to the encouragement of my Grandmother. When I got to middle school a few choir friends of mine said they needed some extra townspeople for the school play. It was a western called Pecos Bill And Slue Foot Sue Meet The Dirty Dan Gang. I played the banker, and from then on I was hooked.

You got your BFA from New York University Tisch School Of The Arts, which says a lot for the talent you must have displayed in high school and earlier. Are there any pre-NYU acting gigs that stand out for you particularly?

I didn’t really get paid as an actor until after I started at NYU, but I was very involved in the community theater scene where I grew up. The defining one for me, the one that made me realize that this was something I could do for a living, was when I played Seymour in Little Shop Of Horrors. Until then I didn’t think there were many roles for funny, skinny, nerdy guys who could sing. After that production I realized what my place was in musical theater. To this day, those are the roles that I tend to fit in to.

So how did your NYU experience prepare you for the professional career that has followed your graduation?

It gave me the tools I needed to be a versatile performer and to sustain an eight-show week. It takes more than talent to be successful in theater. You need technique so that you don’t lose your voice after the second show of the week, or injure yourself during a dance. Some days you have lot of things going on in your personal life and you have to learn how leave everything behind when you walk out onto the stage in front of an audience. Those are some of many things I learned at NYU. I wouldn’t have been as successful without that training.

You made your off-Broadway debut as Abraham in Altar Boyz, one of my very favorite musicals of the past decade. What was that particular experience like for you?

It was very exciting and nervy. The show had only been open for about six months when I was cast to replace one of the original actors, so there still was a lot of hype surrounding it and a lot of pressure to succeed. I had two weeks to learn the show and only one rehearsal with all of the other actors who had been doing it for that past six months before I was put on stage in front of an audience.

It’s amazing how little rehearsal time replacements and understudies are given! You must have been especially nervous on Opening Night.

I think what made me even more nervous was the fact that all of the “Altar-holics” were there at my first show. Those were the groupies. They knew every line, every lyric, every dance move... and they loved the guy that I was replacing... But it was still one of the best experiences of my professional career. That show is awesome and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I got to see you a few years back playing funny, skinny, nerdy Dennis in the National Tour of All Shook Up, and doing a fabulous job at it. I understand that after that you had the opportunity to recreate the role in a Chicago production of the same show. What was it like to go back to the role in an all new staging?

I loved doing it again! It’s always great to revisit a role, and I’ve done it twice now. I think it’s more fun the second time. You already know all the lines and have thought in great detail about the character, so you’re already several steps ahead. The fun part is trying to strip away all of your pre-conceived notions and start from scratch with a new set, new director, new choreographer, and new actors. I had a lot of fun.

What was it like being part of the theater scene in The Windy City?

The Chicago theater scene is a great big family of creative people who were very supportive. It’s different from New York where you kind of feel like every man is for themselves. I was a nice change and I would love to do a show in Chicago again.

Mary Poppins isn’t your first time touring the U.S. Traveling across the country for the first time in All Shook Up and performing in so many different cities, does any one tour stop particularly stand out in your memory?

Oh they all do in some way. I really like the West Coast. I spent my whole life East of the Mississippi, so going west was huge for me. That’s what is so great about being on tour. You get to see so many places for the first time—and you’re getting paid to do it!

How familiar were you with Mary Poppins when you auditioned for the role? Was it something you’d grown up loving?

Yes! Mary Poppins was actually one of the first VHS tapes we owned, so I watched it over and over again. I wanted to be Michael Banks as a kid! I used to draw chalk paintings in the driveway and pretend that I was jumping into them like they did in the movie.

What is it like being part of something that strikes so many nostalgic chords in theatergoers of all ages?

Just the other day I was walking to the show and I saw two girls dressed like princesses going to the theater with their Mom. They were so excited that they ran down the sidewalk! This was about forty-five minutes before the show even started. The idea that I was going to be on stage in front of this family made me really enthusiastic about going to work that night. Mary Poppins means so much to people of every age. To be part of a show that strikes a chord with every generation is really a blessing.

Unlike your previous shows, I’d guess that Mary Poppins has a much larger percentage of kids in the audience. How does performing in front of this younger crowd feel?

I love it when kids laugh! It’s so free and uninhibited. Sometimes I can hear one stick out in particular—a kid who is really hollering with laughter. That’s the best.

How do the kids react when they meet you after the show?

After the show they tend to be quieter, like they’re in awe, especially the young ones. They can’t really understand that what they see at the stage door is the same person that they saw on stage a few minutes ago. When they see Steffanie Leigh at the stage door with her blonde hair, that is even more shocking for them. I have even heard some kids say, “What? Mary Poppins is blonde???”

Having now done two major national tours, how does the Mary Poppins experience compare with your previous one?

Well, Mary Poppins is a huge show. It’s maybe one of the biggest tours out there right now. The magnitude of the whole thing is just jaw-dropping. So yeah, it is pretty special to be a part of something as big as this ... literally!

What’s your very favorite moment in the show?

As an audience member, definitely Step in Time. It’s a big tap number in the second act that takes place on the rooftops of London and it is very impressive! As a performer, my biggest moment in the show is the “Spoonful of Sugar” scene. I actually get to drink some of it and it does some spectacular things to my voice! You’ll have to see for yourself!

How do you feel about being back in Southern California? Are there any places you’re planning to visit or hang out in while in the area?

Well, definitely Disneyland. The beach is a must at some point, and I have a lot of friends in Los Angeles so I’ll be hanging out there as well... Oh, and that huge mall by the Performing Arts Center. I’m sure I’ll be spending some time there too.

I’ll bet South Coast Plaza does a lot of extra business whenever National Tours perform across the street! Thanks so much Dennis for taking time to talk with StageSceneLA.

Dennis Moench’s credits include:
Broadway: Mary Poppins (Valentine/Robertson Ay us). National Tour: All Shook Up (Dennis). Off-Broadway: Altar Boyz (Abraham), Fame (Schlomo). Regional Theatre: All Shook Up (Dennis, Jeff Award Nom.), Fiddler... (Motel), Hair (Woof). BFA: NYU/Tisch.

www.DennisMoench.com
http://disney.go.com/theatre/marypoppins/tour/
Mary Poppins photo by Joan Marcus.

ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE

2011-07-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

WOW!
ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE

When Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane opened on London’s West End back in 1964, a certain Mrs. Edna Welthorpe was inspired to write the Editor of Plays And Players as follows:

“I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion. And to be told that such a disgusting piece of filth now passes for humour. Today's young playwrights take it upon themselves to flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people. I hope that ordinary people will shortly strike back.”

Mrs. Welthorpe’s comments, while indeed reflective of some theatergoers’ reactions to Orton’s subversive farce, also happen to reflect the playwright’s particular brand of dark humor. You see, it was Orton himself who wrote the letter!

Though even today, “ordinary decent people” like Mr. and Mrs. Michelle Bachmann would likely echo Mrs. Welthorpe’s condemnation of this piece of Ortonian “filth,” anyone with a funny bone in his or her body is hereby advised to make haste to Los Angeles’ newest 99-seat-plan theater where a fabulous revival of this Joe Orton gem is now delighting—and perhaps still shocking—L.A. audiences.

The titular Mr. Sloane (Emrhys Cooper) is a bottle-blond studmuffin of a 20-year-old who shows up one day in the lives of a blowsy London widow, her crotchety, near-blind father, and her leering letch of a brother—and makes their rubbish dump-adjacent house dump his home.

Lonely, lustful Kath (Olivia D’Abo) can barely keep her eyes (and hands and lips) off Mr. Sloane’s tanned-and-toned body, though it’s not merely lust that attracts her to the well-built orphan. His parents’ tragic suicide pact fills the sympathetic widow with oceans of compassion for the orphaned youth. (“With a nice lad like you to take care of, you’d think they’d’ve postponed it.”)

Kath’s father Kemp (Robin Gammell) could swear he’s already met young Mr. Sloane sometime, somewhere. Perhaps it’s the youth’s smooth skin, so similar to that of the hitchhiker who murdered his photographer boss, that sparks a memory, though Mr. Sloane insists otherwise. (“You couldn’t identify a herring on a plate!”)

Kath’s brother Ed (Ian Buchanan) seems initially to share his father’s distrust of Mr. Sloane, that is until he comes face to face with the alluring young bloke, and soon enough he’s eagerly quizzing the stripling on his orphanage upbringing. (“Oh well, you had compensations then,” Ed remarks when learning that the all-male orphans slept eight to a room.) Mr. Sloane’s affinity for fresh-air sports piques Ed’s interest as well. (Ed: You’re fond of swimming? Mr. Sloane: I like a plunge now and then.) Mr. Sloane’s fitness regimen proves equally stimulating to the older man. (Ed: Exercise regular? Mr. Sloane: As clockwork. Ed: Good, good. Stripped? Mr. Sloane: Fully. Ed: Complete. How invigorating.)

Not surprisingly, Ed agrees to let Mr. Sloane lodge with Sis and Dad, though he does require assurances that there’ll be no hanky-panky. (Ed: Does she disgust you? Mr. Sloane: Should she? Ed: It would be better if she did. Women are like banks, boy. Breaking and entering is a serious business.) Ed also hires Mr. Sloane to be his chauffeur, the better to have him … clad in black leather from head to toe.

In typical Orton fashion, somebody dies mid-play, and the manner in which the three surviving characters deal with the deceased’s demise makes Entertaining Mr. Sloane one of the farceur’s most deliciously devilish works.

If Mr. Sloane is allowed a good deal more on-and-offstage intimacy with Kath, it’s to be recalled that the same “gross indecency” laws that sent Oscar Wilde to jail for homosexual acts remained on the books until three years after Mr. Sloane first entertained and disgusted Londoners. Though a contemporary playwright would likely divvy up the sexual shenanigans equally between opposite and same-sex couplings, the fact that Orton even suggested the possibility of Mr. Sloane dividing his favors between sister and brother not only made him way ahead of his time but makes Entertaining Mr. Sloane of particular interest as a time-capsule, one which has lost not an iota of its comedic oomph in the intervening decades.

Under Stan Zimmerman’s pitch-perfect direction, Dream It Production’s intimate stage revival features as renowned a cast of stage and screen vets as you’d see on any mid or large-sized L.A. theater.

D’Abo (of The Wonder Years and Law & Order: Criminal Intent fame) abandons vanity as the slatternly Kath, her crackerjack comic timing and way with an innuendo making her performance an appetizing acting gem, as when she declares, “Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body” and “You can’t see though this dress can you? I’ve been worried for fear of embarrassing you” and “(You’ll) have me naked on the floor if I give you a chance.”

Emmy-winning Buchannan has a field day with Ed, clearly relishing the opportunity to be funny after so many years of dramatic soap suds on The Bold And The Beautiful, All My Children, and other daytime dramas. Simply watching Buchannan’s medley of facial reactions (just this side of over-the-top) is almost worth the price of admission. Add to that his silver-fox sexiness and you have precisely the kind of man that might make Mr. Sloane’s walks on the gay side of his primarily heterosexual leanings far from unbelievable.

Gammell brings decades of stage experience to the role of Kemp, attacking the feeble-bodied curmudgeon with sly comedic panache to match his dramatic flair in plays like the Rubicon’s A Delicate Balance and Trying a few years back.

Wreaking havoc on the above three is the sensational and utterly appealing Cooper, whose L.A. stage debut as Mr. Sloane provides the young Brit with a terrific showcase for his tiptop acting chops, crackerjack comic timing, and irresistible sex-appeal. Lighting up the stage from his first entrance, Cooper simply couldn’t be better at bringing Orton’s amoral psychopath to seductive, occasionally violent, always captivating life.

Entertaining Mr. Sloane will likely introduce most theatergoers to the splendid new Actors Company Theater, located only two or three blocks from the world famous Formosa Café and the shops and restaurants of Target Plaza.

Joel Daavid has designed the production’s terrifically tacky, beautifully detailed set, precisely where you’d expect Kath and Kemp to live, Daavid’s assorted 1960s paraphernalia completing the picture. Kevin King’s costumes tell you almost as much about the characters as Orton’s writing does. Top marks go also to Bosco Flanigan’s lighting design, Hector’s sound design, and Eusebio Aynaga’s hair design. Entertaining Mr. Sloane is produced by Richard Lutz, stage managed by Lara E. Nall, with casting by Geralyn Flood.

Even in a considerably more sexually liberated world than the one Joe Orton lived and died in in the 1960s, Entertaining Mr. Sloane may not be for everyone. (The Michelle Bachmanns would, I fear, not be amused.) Still, for those not afraid to laugh on the dark side, I can’t think of a more delectable way to do so. At the risk of repeating what others have likely said before, Entertaining Mr. Sloan is entertaining indeed.

The Actors Company, 916a. N. Formosa Ave, West Hollywood.
www.plays411.net/newsite/show/play_info.asp?show_id=2800
--Steven Stanley
July 8, 2011

DONNA/MADONNA

2011-07-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

WOW!
DONNA/MADONNA

Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1980s, John Paul Karliak always knew he was adopted. What he didn’t figure out until a good deal later was that there wouldn’t be a Mrs. Karliak in his future, if you get my drift. Still, despite young J.P.’s cluelessness to his budding sexual orientation, it must have been hard for his family to mistake the signs: An occasional dress. A running gait like Tinkerbell’s. The ability to quote Auntie Mame as if it were the Bible.

All things considered, John Paul’s life was a good one, a happy one, his adoptive parents the kind of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth folk any American boy would be proud to call Mom and Dad.

Then one day in his early twenties, seated behind the desk at a boring nine-to-five and not at all close to his childhood dream of a life on stage or in front of a camera, J.P. came to a sudden realization: “I need somebody who gets me, the me that I know, and there’s only one other person who could possibly know him: the person that made me.”

John Paul’s quest eventually led, not merely to the woman who gave him life, but to Donna/Madonna, a solo performance whose workshop last summer had this reviewer in stitches, in tears, and waiting for a chance to tell the world about this magical, memorable peek into the life of one marvelously talented young man.

Well, that chance has now come. Following its Best One Man Show Award victory at the 2010 United Solo Theatre Festival in New York, Donna/Madonna now gets its official Los Angeles premiere at the Lounge Theatre. Solo performances may be a dime a dozen these days, but this one is worth a million bucks.

It’s clear from the get-go that, just as young J.P. was no ordinary six-year-old, this is going to be no ordinary one-man show. After all, how many 1st graders stage a living-room extravaganza in Carol Channing drag and trademark raspy voice, asking assembled family members, “Do you like my gown? I just bought it today. Along with my hair, but seriously. I’m sure you must have questions for me, famous as I am, so go on, ask away!”

The Michelle Bachmanns of the world might well cringe at such incipient fabulousness, but if you don’t fall in love with this precocious primary schooler, then that’s your problem and not J.P’s.

As a child growing up with the perfect 1950s-style Italian-American adoptive mother, John Paul couldn’t help fantasizing that his birth mother might be her mirror opposite. Perhaps a peasant girl from Italy. (“The mayor of Sant’Elia a Pianisi… he make a me pregnant. I was a forced to flee my village in an olive cart and come to this country.”) Perhaps the one and only Elizabeth Taylor herself. (“That year, I was used to waking up drunk. Until the morning I woke up pregnant. God knows by who, coulda been a bellhop.”)

If the Donna in Donna/Madonna refers to John Paul’s Donna Reed-like adoptive mother, then the second half of the title will clue you in to the birth mom he ended up meeting for the first time at Starbucks over chai tea lattes. Think pop star, or at least the wife of one.

At the risk of giving too much away, I’ll stop here and simply say that John Paul Karliak’s Donna/Madonna is as thoroughly entertaining a solo show as you’re likely to see this year or any, and that Karliak is the very definition of Star On The Rise. (Memo to any and all network sitcom creators: Write John Paul a lead role in your next big hit.)

Under the snappy co-direction of Tiger Reel and Matt Craig, with musical direction by Billy Thompson and DJ ChocliXxX, a terrific sound design by Reel, and an excellent uncredited lighting design, Donna/Madonna gives the handsome, charismatic Karliak a chance to strut his acting stuff, playing himself, both his moms, and other folks as well. He also shows off one heck of a singing voice in musical takeoffs from Annie (“Betcha she’d cheer and throw me a rose/And wouldn’t mind when I wore sequined clothes”) and Cabaret (“Mama/Doesn't even have an inkling/ I’m auditioning for boyfriends/And there’s a casting call tonight”).

Though Donna/Madonna will doubtless resonate most strongly with audience members who are either gay, adopted, or adoptive, you don’t have to be even one of the above to fall under its spell. D/M offers straight and/or non-adopted/adoptive audience members an eye-opening glimpse into growing up gay or adopted. And when a broken-hearted John Paul reaches out to his real mother for tight hugs and buttered noodles, never has the true meaning of real felt realer or more right.

If you’re anything like this reviewer, you’ll find yourself laughing out loud and wiping away tears virtually non-stop from Donna/Madonna’s fabulous start to its fantabulous finish.

Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Boulevard. Hollywood. Through August 10. Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8:00. Also Monday August 1 at 8:00. Reservations: 323 960-4420
www.plays411.com/donnamadonna
www.donnamadonnashow.com
--Steven Stanley
July 6, 2011