In the Red and Brown Water by Tarell Alvin McCraney. Bob Verini – ArtsInLA.com It’s about time Tarell Alvin McCraney’s work was able to be seen in Los Angeles. The Brother/Sister Plays, his trilogy about indigenous backwoods Louisiana folk operating under strange and magical Yoruba and Caribbean influences, has been garnering raves on both sides of the Atlantic (he has … Read more
The Second City’s “A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens!” by Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort. Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA ‘Tis the season for Christmas-themed shows and every year there are numerous versions of “A Christmas Carol.” Now playing at the Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre is a barely above-average sketch comedy show based on the ghostly old Holiday chestnut by Charles Dickens, entitled “A Christmas … Read more
Gatz by Elevator Repair Service after F. Scott Fitzgerald. Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA It’s engrossing, subtle and riveting. A theatrical performance that consists of the “reading” and acting out of an entire novel over the course of a single day, Gatz, by New York City’s experimental theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service(ERS) is a unique and rewarding experience – both literary and theatrical. … Read more
Considering the ongoing, essentially bogus view of Los Angeles theater as a tertiary entity to films and television — in fact, L.A. enjoys as vibrant, actively engaged a theatrical community as any city in the nation – it’s ominous for the entire landscape that the Colony Theatre in Burbank faces possible closure due to their current financial … Read more
Anything Goes by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse; revised by Howard Lindsay andRussel Crouse; reworked by librettist John Weidman andTimothy Crouse. Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Wall-to-wall hit tunes, ear-to-ear grin all night long F U N ! – Cole Porter’s timeless classic musical theatre masterpiece, Anything Goes, has set sail at the Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre in a new Broadway revival and continues through January 6, 2013. The fluffy, madcap and … Read more
The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris. Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly The season brings with it enough Christmas- and holiday-themed fare to set your teeth on edge from sugar overload. Fortunately for the cynics among us, the Blank Theatrehas brought back its not-safe-for-children, one-man hit show for the fourth year running. Based on comedian David Sedaris’ sardonic radio segments on NPR’sMorning … Read more
Slipped Disc by Ingrid Lausund. Mayank Keshaviah – LA Weekly Bertolt Brecht, in defining his vision of “epic theater,” coined the term Verfremdungseffekt, or “alienation effect,” which implied that in order to be effective, theater should keep an audience from fully losing itself in the story being told. Playwright Ingrid Lausund, also German, seems to have embraced … Read more
The Morini Strad by Willy Holtzman. Sharon Perlmutter – TalkinBroadway.com I have to admit out front that I’m not a huge fan of “unlikely friendship” plays, in which two complete opposites start out hating each other, but ultimately end up with a mutual respect. Willy Holtzman’s The Morini Strad is a better than average example of the genre, largely because … Read more
One November Yankee by Joshua Ravetch. Sharon Perlmutter – TalkinBroadway.com Joshua Ravetch’s One November Yankee is a play for two performers and an airplane. In the NoHo Arts Center world premiere production, that’s Harry Hamlin, Loretta Swit, and a two-seater yellow Piper Cub. The actors play three different brother/sister pairs as we follow the story of the plane through three critical scenes: … Read more
The Coarse Acting Show by Michael Green, adapted byPaul Plunkett. David C. Nichols – Backstage In his priceless 1964 volume “The Art of Coarse Acting,” English journalist and humorist Michael Green typifies a coarse actor as “one who can remember his lines, but not the order in which they come.” After more pointed examples, Green notes: “His problems? Everyone else connected … Read more