Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. The holiday-season narrative in Miklos Laszlo’s 1937 Hungarian dramedy Parfumerie will be familiar to fans of three well-known films and a memorable Broadway musical. Unveiling the gorgeous new Wallis-Annenberg Center for the Arts in Beverly Hills is E.P. Dowdall’s 2009 English-language adaptation of the Laszlo play, working from a 1956 … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Much like the dastardly pirates terrorizing the high seas in his fun Peter and the Starcatcher, playwright Rick Elice has ransacked the best of British kids lit, giving us plucky, pint-sized sleuths fresh from the Boy’s Own adventures and larger-than-life characters straight out of rowdy pantomimes. Based on the 2006 … Read more
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Bette Midler and Hollywood super-agent Sue Mengers have many things in common: both were self-invented, and both are marked by a large dollop of sass and brass, a mean wit and a knack for uninhibited, earthy language. So Midler was the obvious choice to play Mengers in John Logan’s solo … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA Having well and truly conquered James Tyrone (Long Day’s Journey Into Night), Hickey (The Iceman Cometh), Krapp (Krapp’s Last Tape), and Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman), Brian Dennehy sets up base camp at the Mark Taper Forum to take on his most daunting personal Everest yet. With its dozen or … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Weimar cabaret meets Pacifica in “Kurt Weill at the Cuttlefish Hotel,” carving a weirdly effective niche for itself on the Santa Monica Pier. This dark-tinged program of deathless songs from the beloved composer takes environmental theater to a highly specialized place.Read more… Now running through December 21.
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly This farce by Paul Storiale kicks off with the Logans, Joanne (Elyse Ashton) and Dean (Rob Schaumann), planning to sell their house, ship Grandpa Logan off to a nursing home and move to Florida. They’ve invited their three misfit children home for one last family Christmas. Just when the kids … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly What made Ebenezer Scrooge such a miserable old coot? Adapter-director Christina Harris elaborates on this aspect of Dickens’ cautionary tale in Sierra Madre Playhouse’s amiable musical production of A Christmas Carol, embellished with songs and upbeat ensemble dancing. Scott Harris portrays the tight-fisted miser as less an icy capitalist than … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly The opening stanza of Lewis Carroll‘s poem “Jabberwocky” goes like this: ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves; And the mome raths outgrabe. Perhaps such nonsense verse and satirically inverted logic, also found in Carroll’s books such as Alice’s Adventures … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times “In the Heights” is currently irradiating Casa 0101, where it fits as felicitously as cinnamon in café con leche. This galvanic chamber edition of the 2008 Tony winner about the denizens of a Washington Heights barrio has enough heartfelt energy to alleviate a citywide power outage.Read more… Now running … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. “Come look at the freaks!” sings a grotesque carnival barker, introducing a bizarre contingent of sideshow performers—hardly a typical opening scene for a Broadway musical. The adventurous Side Show, which bowed in New York in 1997 to critical acclaim and four Tony nominations, closed following a three-month run. It was … Read more