Photo by Jenny Graham
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
Through some unlucky combination of script, direction, cast, set design, and video design, this felt more like sitting through a scene study class than a professional play. Somehow, I hadn’t seen a play by Caryl Churchill before, but I’m in no rush to see another. Read more…
Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites
Love and Information @ Antaeus Theatre Company – Review. More…
Photo by Ashley Erikson
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
Edmond Rostand wrote his classic romantic comedy Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897. According to Wikipedia, the original French play has been translated at least 16 times since then…
The latest version to play locally is the 2006 musical Calvin Berger with book, music & lyrics all by Barry Wyner, currently playing at Burbank’s Colony Theatre. Wyner has set his misconceived adaptation in a contemporary high school. He has cherry picked his plot points from the original play like he was choosing items off a Chinese restaurant menu—one from column A, one from column B plus an appetizer and a dessert. His plot sets off on the wrong note from the start by giving his Cyrano, here named Calvin (Frankie A. Rodriguez), a best gal pal Bret (Corinne Miller) who pines for him as much as he pines for the seemingly unattainable Rosanna (Jasmine Sharma). The opening number, “Security Meltdown,” has Calvin obsessing over his extra-large nose (which is notably missing from the actor’s face) and Bret about her large behind. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
Nothing about this show was specifically bad, but I was underwhelmed. With book, music, and lyrics by [Barry] Wyner, it’s a musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, set in high school, and it manages to make me not hate the Cyrano character (Calvin here, played by Frankie A. Rodriguez), which is a rare feat. But the songs feel so self-contained, explaining their own context within the lyrics but lacking subtext, that they felt more designed for performance in a cabaret than part of an entire musical. Read more…
Photo by Craig Schwartz
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw
I must start this review by confessing that this production of Much Ado About Nothing is a victim of my own expectations. Much Ado is my favorite Shakespearean text, and I’ve always respected the craft A Noise Within puts into their productions of the classics. I expected to love this show — but sadly, I was disappointed.
To me, a successful performance of this play hinges on the chemistry between Beatrice and Benedick; their bickering is a form of self-defense. Beatrice indicates that they had once been in a relationship, but it ended poorly. They duel, sparks flying, lashing out to cover their wounded hearts, and there’s delicious dramatic irony because the audience knows that their barbs are just a façade, and they’ll end up happily together by the end of the play. But the aforementioned sparks are absent here. Read more…
Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites
Much Ado About Nothing @ A Noise Within – 9 out of 10 – Exceptional Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More…
Photo by Jeff Lorch.
Terry Morgan – ArtsBeat LA
As part of its “Sondheim Celebration” this year, the Pasadena Playhouse has a new production of Sunday, but although it is professionally done and largely enjoyable, a couple of issues in direction and performance keep this show from being everything it could be…
Alabado is terrific as Dot, an appealing combination of petulance and passion, and charming as the contented Marie. She sets the standard for singing high with the titular first number, and impresses throughout, especially in her duet with Phillips, “We Do Not Belong Together.” Phillips, unfortunately, while a good vocalist, seems mainly to be trying to copy Mandy Patinkin’s original performance in the role, and as a result doesn’t bring as much to the character as he might. Standouts in the great ensemble include Emily Tyra as Yvonne, the artist’s wife secretly jealous of Dot, and Liz Larsen as the Old Lady, whose tart delivery of her peevish character’s lines are delightful. Read more…
Peter Debruge – Variety
In the first act, Sondheim and Lapine’s musical focuses on the young painter, whose name they’ve anglicized to “George” (which rather unfortunately sounds like a goose honking, especially when repeated at the end of every line: “I know you’re near, George / I caught your eyes, George / I want your ear, George / I’ve a surprise, George”). Seurat died at age 31, never having sold a painting, and the show does several interesting things with a life that went largely unrecorded. Read more…
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
Although the musical aspects of the production are top notch, there are problems with the staging by Lapine. The show basically still just feels like an upscale concert version of the musical. Ken Billington’s lighting design paints wonderful colors and Clint Ramos’s costumes are appropriate. The main problem is Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design. There is not much to it—mostly a scrim that acts as a screen for Tal Yarden’s projections. The orchestra is on stage and probably takes up at least half of the playing space. Boritt’s platform has a few steps up from stage level and it is disconcerting to watch people who are supposed to be in “a small suburban park on an island in the river” keep stepping up and down to enter or exit. The platform can barely hold the entire company and so it just looks overcrowded at times, especially for the Act One finale. Without a hint of scenery, instead of a breath-taking realization of the painting coming together, we just get a crowd of people on a platform. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
I had never seen this Sondheim classic before, but I’m glad I got to see it now. Some Sondheim shows are, I think, like Brussels sprouts; you might not like or appreciate them when you’re younger, and they have to be impeccably prepared to be palatable when you’re older. I don’t know that I’ll ever love this show, but I think this production, which I liked plenty, is as close as I’ll get (I’m more of a Company and Merrily We Roll Along gal). Read more…
Photo by John Perrin Flynn
Socks Whitmore – Stage Raw
John Perrin Flynn, the producing artistic director of Rogue Machine Theatre, states clearly in the program for their latest production: “We don’t do musicals.” And yet, the show itself — the world-premiere run of Come Get Maggie, a feature-length retro science-fiction/forbidden romance created by Diane Frolov and Susan Justin — is exactly that.
The music of Come Get Maggie exists in a particularly interesting place; the vocal textures and counterpoint are notably inventive, likely to appeal to fans of Hadestown and Come from Away, and the lyrics (especially those regarding physics) feature a formidable number of well-researched, complex rhymes. In its current form, it’s unclear whether the show wants to be a musical or a rock opera because a fair bit of the score draws from operatic recitative, drawn-out dramatic moments, and sometimes even chanted verse. From a traditional musical theater standpoint, some moments are musicalized unnecessarily, and could be cut or streamlined to remove a good 15 minutes from the show’s runtime. The first 15 minutes are the weakest; they suffer from a lack of “show don’t tell” and rhythmic drive — but after two or three scenes the narrative pacing finally clicks. Read more…
Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites
The World Premiere of COME GET MAGGIE @ Rogue Machine Theatre – 8.8 out of 10! Great Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More…
Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld
Love may be real and not science fiction. But Rogue Machine’s attempt at a first musical is so bubble gum, pop-retro, Flash Gordon-y, it’s almost guaranteed to be a runaway hit.
Never mind the low-barometer canned music, the predictably misogynistic thin-minty storyline, the dated, go-to tropes, or the underwhelmingly, slow-paced melodies. COME GET MAGGIE is a powerhouse of intellectually, politically, and emotionally, unchallenging, non-threatening, audience-pleasing instant-feel-good with a gleeful, if not logically sound ending for all. What could be better? Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
This is an original musical, staged in a scrappy production, and it didn’t work for me…Some of the songs, by Diane Frolov and Susan Justin, were charming, but the score spans a large enough range that a few in the cast struggled vocally. It’s possible that the book, lyrics, and design elements were aiming to be fun and campy. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that they landed at that destination. It’s quite possible that with some finessing, this will be a charming show, but this incarnation is not there yet. Read more…
Photo by Doug Catiller, True Image Studio.
Patrick Chavis – Orange Curtain Review
Ironically, this might be the happiest story about death I have ever seen. The Chance Theater has transformed its stage area to look like some haunted carnival that time has forgotten in the middle of the county. To further the illusion, the show tickets look like tickets you would use at a carnival. The seating pattern in The Chance also facilitated the feeling of going to the carnival. Add a strong cast of singers and a goofy but clever script with a unique twist on the genre, and, well, I think you’ve got a hit. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw
“Lip sync for your life!” RuPaul tells contestants every week on Drag Race. Ride the Cyclone, now making its California premiere at Chance Theater in Anaheim, makes a similar proclamation, impelling six dead teenagers to sing for a chance to leave the show’s carnival purgatory and survive the accident that killed them.
The story (book, music and lyrics by Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond) introduces the audience to The Amazing Karnak (Robert Foran), our narrator and an animatronic fortune teller in the vein of Zoltar from Big. Karnak explains that a group of five high schoolers rode the Cyclone rollercoaster at a Canadian amusement park, and the coaster failed, causing their deaths. Karnak offers them the chance to return to life if they provide a compelling enough reason for it. Because this is a musical, the teens interpret this as a chance to plead their case via song, offering self-contained supplications to survive. Read more…
Napoleon Tavale, Paula Rebelo, and Rich Liccardo, Photo by Jeff Lorch.
Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites
Circle X Theatre Company’s West Coast premiere production of Do You Feel Anger? @ Atwater Village Theatre – 10 out of 10 – Masterpiece! LA THEATRE BITES RECOMMENDED. More…
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw
There’s a Cowboy Junkies song from 1993 called “Hunted,” which is about the ever-present threat of male violence in women’s lives, the refrain of which is: “Do you know what it’s like to be hunted?” It’s a terrifying song, and unfortunately is no less resonant today than it was 30 years ago. Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s play, Do You Feel Anger?, explores the dark side of the war between the sexes with great humor and a bit of surrealism but clearly gets across outrage that women still have to deal with this situation. The new production by Circle X at the Atwater Village Theatre is superb, bolstered greatly by vivid performances…Director Halena Kays gets high-energy work from her talented cast and adroitly achieves the tricky balance between humor and disquiet that the play requires. Read more…
Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld
Sexism and misogyny have been rampant for decades – centuries – no matter the context: social, private, or professional…Playwright Mara Nelson-Greenberg smartly and incisively takes on the topic of this disease in DO YOU FEEL ANGER?, now being performed at the Circle X Theatre Company in Atwater Village to explosive and thought-provoking results.
Nelson-Greenberg does a magnificent job of hitting the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement with a fresh approach. Her script is complex and trenchant and edgy without being self-conscious about it. It has touches of absurdity a la Beckett (the male characters all but wear red noses they’re such clowns) but it is only half a step from reality, making the comedy that much more terrifying. She is masterful at skewering the toxic masculinity that infects even the most mediocre of men. It’s so instilled in so many that they can’t see it or understand it, which is exhibited uniquely through John, Jordan, and Howie, who are so emotionally stunted, they can’t identify an emotion let alone process one. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
This is a fairly new play by Mara Nelson-Greenberg that is, ostensibly, about a woman (Paula Rebelo) who comes in and teaches a collections office how to manage their emotions. But it’s really about how people navigate around male emotions, which often come out as anger. The text is too stylized for my taste, and I wondered who was supposed to be the intended audience of the play. Read more…
Kay Sibal and Khamary Rose. Photo by Sean Daniels/DVR Productions.
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
If you’re a long-time subscriber to this newsletter, you know that I love to check out a new musical that mashes up pop songs with a classic story. Sometimes, those shows are good and fun (e.g. Six, & Juliet). Sometimes they are not (Once Upon a One More Time). Sometimes they’re in between (Head Over Heels). This show, which grafts Pat Benatar songs onto something approximating the plot of Romeo and Juliet, is, unfortunately, terrible. Read more…
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
Invincible The Musical is currently receiving its World Premiere production at The Wallis in Beverly Hills. The tagline is “Romeo & Juliet reimagined through the music of Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo”. If it is true that “Love is a Battlefield,” then this reimagining of R&J is a bombed-out wasteland. Sort of like the three-story graffiti and bullet-riddled structure that Scenic Designer Arnel Sancianco has created as the backdrop for the mindless action Director Tiffany Nichole Greene has staged.
Read more…
Through December 18
Photo by Craig Schwartz Photography
Terry Morgan – ArtsBeat LA
According to a survey conducted by American Theater magazine, Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s is currently the most produced play in the U.S. It’s not surprising that Nottage’s work is being done; she’s received the Pulitzer Prize twice during her illustrious career. But it’s a little disappointing that this show seems to be her most popular. I think she’s a talented playwright and have enjoyed several of her other creations, but I found this play to be meretricious and phony – I didn’t believe a minute of it. The new production of Clyde’s at the Taper is professionally done and features a capable cast, but the play itself feels more like a safe CBS TV sitcom than anything resembling reality. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw
A word to the wise: eat, preferably a sandwich, before seeing Clyde’s at the Mark Taper Forum. After the show ends, you’ll be hungry, not just for food like Montrellous (Kevin Kenerly), the executive chef of the titular diner, describes, but for an artistic experience that’s more substantial than what you you’ve just seen onstage. Read more…
Margaret Gray – Los Angeles Times
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” advises a favorite proverb of tough-love advocates. And in a universe with free will and infinite possibilities, it’s probably sound advice. Don’t sit around grousing about your situation; find one you like better.
But what if there’s nowhere else to go? What if that inferno of a kitchen is your whole world? Read more…
Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld
“Sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich.”
Quite possibly, a perfect production. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage’s Tony Award-nominated CLYDE’S at the Mark Taper Forum is heartfelt, funny, and seriously delicious.
From writing to performances, direction to delivery, costuming, scenic, sound, and lighting design, opening night saw 100% on the Richter scale of live theater. Read more…
Through December 18
Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Terry Morgan – ArtsBeatLA
When Harper Lee wrote her novel To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960, she didn’t think it would be a big success. Sixty-two years later, the book has been taught to millions of students in schools, was the source of a classic 1962 film of the same name, and recently inspired a theatrical version written by Aaron Sorkin that was a Broadway hit. There are many reasons this material still speaks to modern audiences, but perhaps the most vital is that its depiction of racism feels topical again with the rise of far-right zealotry. The current production at the Pantages is effective and enjoyable, with a nice lead performance from Richard Thomas, but a few missteps keep the production from being as strong as it might be. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, while the movie — based on Harper’s novel and starring Gregory Peck as a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape — came out in 1962. Both the book and the film depicted the racist South through the eyes of a child, its scenario predating the March on Washington in 1963 and the televised police assaults on the civil rights marchers that electrified the country that same year. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
I haven’t revisited this book since I read it in 7th grade, and I think, just based on watching this show, it’s a text about which I have complicated feelings. It’s an emotionally loaded story about Black trauma, told from the point of view of well-intentioned white people, and I think both Harper Lee’s autobiographical character and Aaron Sorkin, who adapted the novel into a three hour play, have similar instincts about how to tell this story, but it’s worth questioning why framing this story from a white girl’s perspective is the framing that white audiences have deemed a classic. Read more…
Tracey Paleo – Gia On The Move
I’ll be honest…watching the B-roll footage of the new play HARPER LEE’S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD didn’t excite me too much at first. But sitting in the Hollywood Pantages theater in person for the Los Angeles premiere was a whole different experience. More…
Through November 27
Cecily Strong. Photo by Craig Schwartz.
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
Your opinion of this solo performance will likely be determined by your opinion of Cecily Strong. Personally, prior to seeing this show, I found her skilled, but not thrilling, and spending 96 minutes with her here reinforces that assessment. Read more…
Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld
When THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE originally launched on Broadway in 1985, it was an immediate sensation. The one-woman show won star Lily Tomlin Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics’ Circle awards, and brought author Jane Wagner a Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. In 1991, it was turned into a successful film, and now it has been relaunched and updated by Wagner, to mixed effect. Read more…
Through October 23
Sal Viscuso, Wylie Anderson and Julie Dretzin in Babe. Photo by Cooper Bates.
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Babe, Jessica Goldberg’s incisive, skillfully wrought play about sexual harassment (and what should or should not be deemed politically correct), is so titled because, in the course of the narrative, it’s applied, rather casually, to Abigail (Julie Dretzin), one of the playwright’s four exceedingly well-drawn characters. Read more…
Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest
This is a strange play, because I feel like it has a lot of potential, but this world premiere staging feels unfinished. The performances felt more like rehearsal than opening night, the transitions were sluggish, and the script clocked in at a slow 70 minutes, ending in a way that could be interpreted as intermission if the cast hadn’t come out for bows. But there’s a lot of interesting, exciting groundwork laid out in the interplay between an old-school record exec (played by Sal Viscuso), who’s pretty much a walking microaggression (you know the type), his colleague Abigail (Julie Dretzin), who’s done more work than she’ll ever get credit for, and Kaitlyn (Wylie Anderson), a millennial who thinks her workplace should be less toxic. Read more…
Through October 24