Bob Verini – Arts In LA Jason Chimonides’s three-hander The Optimistdeveloped something of a reputation back east in 2008 and has gotten quite a few stagings around the country since, probably not least because it is an affordable piece that offers meaty roles for three attractive 20-somethings. The West Coast premiere at Elephant Stages has corralled … Read more
BobVerini – Arts In LA The premise of Benjamin Brand’s Taste, as the management of Sacred Fools Theater Company has been unabashedly eager to trumpet in preopening publicity, is a compact made between two men to meet for dinner, at which the guest is to be killed, butchered, cooked, and eaten by the host in what … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter At an expiring retirement home on the outskirts of a small town in northern Idaho, the staff prepares to relocate its few remaining residents, when a dementia-impaired nonagenarian music professor, Ken (Richard Doyle), goes missing off the premises as a fierce blizzard completely isolates them from any outside assistance. … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Johnna Adams’s Gidion’s Knot, as presented by the Furious Theater Company in Pasadena, was one of the more scintillating local attractions of 2013. It brought together two women under great strain—a mother whose little boy had committed suicide, and the teacher charged with looking out for him—and in the course … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts in LA One of the most ambitious art musicals of recent years, Floyd Collins by Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Tina Landau (book and additional lyrics) is receiving an outstanding mounting from helmer Richard Israel and the management of the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. The producers, who regularly bring … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight first saw the light of day as the centerpiece of 1966’s Suite in Three Keys, a two-night triptych of works set in a single luxurious Swiss hotel suite. Eight years later, with one play jettisoned, Song reached Broadway as part of Noël Coward in Two Keys. Now it stands … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA For Tartuffe to achieve maximum comic, emotional, and thematic impact, the privileged Orgon must serve as the central figure. He must be a misanthrope (a type not unknown to Molière) well and truly disgusted with the world’s vanities as typified by his frivolous, feckless family. Orgon’s profound despair explains his retreat into … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Gregory S Moss’s Reunion at South Coast Rep is a capable production of a mostly derivative, predictable text, one most likely to be enjoyed by those with a real appetite for late ’80s nostalgia and a high tolerance for characters’ wild mood swings into and out of melodrama. A lot of … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Poor Dog Group’s ambitious Five Small Fires explores the phenomenon of cults, particularly the behavior of those who find a haven within them. The Cal Arts–rooted collective professes to have been exploring cults and ritual for a long time, though if it has been thinking much about the types and motivations … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter The new intimate room at the old Beverly Hills post office has been nostalgically configured as a vintage supper club with alcohol and food service for this sentimental yet substantial cabaret performance of Noel Coward‘s words and music by a pair of genuine theatrical stars, John Glover and Judy Kuhn. In a satisfyingly … Read more