An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf
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Marlow, Miller, Surdyke
Ed Krieger
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By Ben Miles
It's reasonable, even expected, that a playwright should find a certain savory sustenance in the material world of words and the sensory aspects of language. But it is an inventive stroke to parallel a theatrical word-feast with an exercise in gourmet dining. But that's what Michael Hollinger has accomplished in his West Coast premiere play at the Laguna Playhouse, through June 28.
It's 1961, Paris, France: Victor--a wealthy, aging American expatiate--is the proprietor and sole patron of the highly regarded Café du Grand Boeuf. After returning from a respite in Madrid, Victor, a journalist by trade, arrives one summer eve at his café. He's quite depressed. Not only has his hero, Ernest Hemingway, recently died of a self-inflicted shot-gun wound; his longtime, but untenable love affair with the ethereal Miss Berger...
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Unusual Acts of Devotion
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Shelton, Thomas
Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
Leo and Nadine are a young couple celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary with some of their neighbors, on the roof of their Greenwich Village apartment building, in the steamy summertime. That is the context, but that is not what this play is about.
Unusual Acts of Devotion, Terrance McNally’s newest play enjoying its West Coast debut at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandel Weiss theatre, is about how people care for and about each other. Clever, lively, and absorbing, thanks to Trip Cullman’s light-handed direction, great tech, and a stellar cast, this is a hopeful slice of New York life about people who know each other, as only...
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Eve's Rapture
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Marshall
Courtesy/Property of Transversal Theater Company
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By Ben Miles
After seeing Bryan Reynolds's latest play, Eve's Rapture--now in its world premiere at The Hayworth Theatre, in Los Angeles--one might be drawn to the nearest dictionary in search of the meaning of "rapture." This Webster's frequenter did just that: Your critic looked it up in several lexical sources, both online and in hardcopy form. Surprisingly, the expression has at least two seemingly disparate denotations. One usage suggests the term's theological etymology, "The souls collected at once by God." Another entry, however, implies an act of criminal force--specifically, rape.
Under Robert Cohen's steady direction, Eve's Rapture is as polarizing and inflected as the second word...
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The Little Foxes
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Duffy, Singer, McGillis, Vinovich
Craig Schwartz
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By Ben Miles
The title of the play, The Little Foxes, comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15 of the Song of Solomon in the King James Version of the Bible: "Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines…" But the 1939 script comes from the hand and creative mind of Lillian Hellman, arguably America's most underrated dramatist. Now through June 28, the Pasadena Playhouse is exhibiting a revival of Foxes made relevant by the detailed directorial touches of Damaso Rodriguez.
Regina Hubbard Giddens (the formidable Kelly McGillis) is the pre-feminist protagonist of Foxes. Hers is a struggle for riches, independence, and power in the post -antebellum South of the early 20th century. Though Regina is one of three adult siblings, only her rapacious brothers, Oscar and Benjamin (the emphatic Marc Singer and the imposing Steve Vinovich, respectively), are entitled as decision-makers and heirs to their family's estate. This leaves Regina...
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Voice Lessons
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Stewart, Metcalf, Flanagan
Ed Krieger
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By Ben Miles
It's a rarified theatrical treat when artifice melts away and all that's apparent onstage is human interaction and believable character behavior. From the pen of playwright Justin Tanner ordinary situations are regularly tweaked, toned, under-toned, and scripted so that audiences can be made to feel as if they are observing real people in authentic, and strangely familiar, circumstances.
It's no wonder that Tanner has been called a modern-day Moliere. As the great French dramatist did in his day, Tanner constructs (ill)-mannered comedies inspired by the contradictions and absurdities of the present day. With plays such as Barbie and Ken at Home and Pot Mom, as well as teleplays for the small-screen...
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The Emperor of Atlantis and The Clever One
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Gomez
Photo by Jesse Merlin
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By Michael Van Duzer
Recently Southern California opera lovers have been privileged to encounter a number of seldom-seen works by various composers linked by period and location, if not by style. LA Opera's Rediscovered Voices has introduced early works by composers who were later silenced by the Third Reich. Now, for the final production in their 30th Anniversary Season, Long Beach Opera has gone a step further by producing two works written during the Nazi Regime.
Viktor Ullmann's THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS, was composed within the walls of the Terezin Concentration Camp-- the famous “model” camp where the Nazis exploited the artistic pursuits of its inmates in order to camouflage the the true horror of life...
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Cornelia
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Hamilton, Grant
Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” wrote Shakespeare. Although spoken by an unrequited lover in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Bard could have given that proclamation to a majority of love affairs throughout the ages. He could also have mentioned that fame alters love’s course considerably, placing deep pits, and hefty obstacles in the way.
Countless impediments litter the road traveled by Alabama’s most famous gubernatorial couple in “Cornelia,” Mark V. Olsen’s edgy, unsettling play about love, power, politics and their collisions and collusions.
Named for the wife of notorious governor George C. Wallace, this Old Globe Theatre production, keenly directed...
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The Price
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Sutorius, Prosky, Mather, Chianese
Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
Everything has its price. Sometimes the cost is in dollars. Sometimes it’s in relationships, memories, or souls.
San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre currently explores those expenses and sacrifices in its heavy production of Arthur Miller’s play, “The Price.” Weighted down by a dated, ponderously talky script, this drama trods the well-worn paths of sibling rivalries and misbegotten memories.
The fault for that laborious mood does not lie at the feet of the four veteran actors...
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The Taming of the Shrew
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Fulton, Weingartner
Craig Schwartz
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By Melinda Schupmann
Dean Martin's rendition of That's Amore is the first hint that this version of Shakespeare's comedy is not going to be business as usual. Then the actors appear in garb that is more Guys and Dolls than Elizabethan, and it's time to hunker down and watch A Noise Within's updated version of the story.
The scene is set as Gremio (Tom Fitzpatrick) and Hortensio (Stephen Rockwell) arrive to offer gifts to the fair Bianca (Jane Noseworthy), hoping that she will look favorably upon their courtship. Their hopes are dashed when Bianca's father, Baptista (Apollo Dukakis), tells them, in no uncertain terms, that they may not pursue Bianca until her sister, the shrewish Kate (Allegra Fulton) of the title, is married. Since that seems impossible, they are despondent. However, looking on from a distance is Lucentio (Antonie Knoppers) and his servant, Tranio (Jeremy Rabb), and it's love at first sight...
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Lions
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McKenzie, Dillman
William Still
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By Ben Miles
What's it like to be on the precipice of economic calamity--not as a nation, per se (though that's part of it), but as an individual? This is the focus of Vince Mellocchi's latest play, Lions, now in its world premiere at Venice's Pacific Resident Theatre.
Under Guillermo Cienfuegos's down-to-earth direction, we are given a warts-and-all character study in a vein similar to that of an Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill conceit. The protagonist here is John (Spook) Waite (an affectingly intense Matt McKenzie). As the staging begins, Spook is an unemployed, but sturdy and ever hopeful, metalworker. He now spends his days at a neighborhood watering-hole...
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Motezuma
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Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff
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By Michael Van Duzer
Although celebrating its 30th birthday, Long Beach Opera retains its youthful and feisty spirit; whether producing little-known repertoire or providing adventurous interpretations for traditional pieces. Their American premiere of Vivaldi’s Motezuma provides an opportunity for both.
Antonio Vivaldi, though omnipresent in the concert hall and on film soundtracks, is heard far less frequently in the Opera House. His operas were popular during his lifetime, and he claimed to have written 94 of them, though many were revisions or featured arias from earlier works. It is therefore fitting that the current version of Motezuma is such a patchwork. Not by design of the composer, but because much of the music is missing. The opera itself remained “lost” until 2002 and received its first revival in 2005, 272 years following its 1773 Venice premiere. The version performed by Long Beach Opera includes all the extant arias along with arias from other Vivaldi operas...
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Die Walkure
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Photo by Monika Rittershaus
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By Michael Van Duzer
Wagner’s Die Walkure, is arguably the most popular of the Ring Operas. It contains the big hits: “Ride of the Valkyries,””Magic Fire Music,””Wintersturme”, and its themes of forbidden love and the power struggle between parent and child resonate with audiences who have never had an incestuous thought in their heads.
It is LA Opera's second premiere in a series that will culminate in three complete Ring Cycles next year. February’s Rheingold introduced Director/Designer Achim Freyer’s individual and idiosyncratic vision of Wagner’s mammoth tetralogy. Individual elements have changed since Rheingold. There is less dependence on puppets and masks as humans enter the story; which is not to say that the humans on the stage are any less stylized than the gods...
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Die Vogel
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Photo by Robert Millard
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By Michael Van Duzer
After the unqualified success of last season’s Rediscovered Voices double bill, LA Opera’s Music Director James Conlon continued his quest to revive works from composers banned by the Third Reich with a production of the first full-length opera in the series.
Walter Braunfel’s Die Vogel (The Birds) premiered in 1920 to great acclaim and was performed often in the intervening years. He penned his own libretto, suggested by Aristophanes’ famous comedy. Interestingly, a literal adaptation of the play would have featured a character’s journey from sympathetic man to heartless dictator—something that would, no doubt, have caught the eye and ire of Hitler. Braufel’s version dilutes the satire and sidesteps the politics. His humans learn from overweening ambition...
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Cry Havoc
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Geo Silva
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By Ben Miles
The title of Allan R. Kenward's 1942 play, Cry Havoc, is borrowed from a line in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cry, 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war." But the story upon which Kenward's script is based was torn from the newspapers of the day.
In the opening months of America's military involvement in World War II, 99 U.S. nurses volunteered to travel to the Philippines and lend a brief tour-of-duty to the Army and Navy. What was meant to be nothing more than a light-Flo-Nightingale assignment, ladened with patriotic doses of symbolism--intended to boost the nation's morale--turned into a harrowing war story in itself. The nurses became trapped on the Philippine peninsula known as Bataan. They were captured by Japanese soldiers...
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Working
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Greaves, Monely, Duvall, Champlin
Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
From opening scene to closing number, The Old Globe theatre’s delightful musical production, Working, based on the 1974 best-selling book by Studs Terkel, is true to character, its author’s and its own.
The stage manager’s booming voice and his presence visible at the controls, the musicians ensconced on the top floor of Beowulf Boritt’s Chicago walk-up set instead of in the pit, the stage hands and dressers prompting and buttoning the actors on stage, the six actors shuffling desks and chairs to create an office set—Working begins by showcasing its own workers.
Then, thanks to Gordon Greenberg’s adept direction and an enormously talented and skilled cast...
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Ella
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Fabrique, Wilson
Photo by Ed Krieger
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By Ben Miles
Ella Fitzgerald is thought of by most modern music aficionados to be among the most influential of jazz singers in the 20th century. The long-lived "First Lady of Song"--a title she came to be known by during her lifetime--had an enduring recording career over the span of nearly six decades.
Lady Ella, a moniker she accepted with typical modesty, won 14 Grammy Awards. In addition, she received a National Medal of Art from Ronald Reagan, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the first President Bush.
Now in its Orange County premiere at the Laguna Playhouse, through March 22, is a musical tribute to this melodic phenomenon...
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Das Rheingold
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Photo by Monika Rittershaus
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By Michael Van Duzer
No matter what one thinks about Richard Wagner, the man, there is no denying that his towering operatic tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen has earned its place in the artistic pantheon. It is doubtful that any work of Western art, other than Hamlet, has engendered so much scholarly debate. Wagner’s epic, with its complex mix of gods, curses, heroes, revenge, and the end of the world, has proven a touchstone for music drama as well as for the wider theatrical world.
Productions of the Ring Cycle serve as a compact theatrical history, moving from clunky realism to abstract minimalism...
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Kingdom
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Gehringer, Miller, Carpenter (back)
Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
Kudos to The Old Globe Theatre for its outreach to communities and audiences that may not otherwise be treated to plays. Thanks to playwright and teacher, Aaron Jafferis, and the Globe’s Southeastern San Diego Residency Project, Lincoln High School is the beneficiary of some special theatrical exposure and education.
Opening night of Jefferis hip-hop musical Kingdom saw an enthusiastic, nearly full -house audience at the high school’s impressive 800-seat Center for the Arts, a testament to the successful “mountain to Mohammed” philosophy of bringing live theatre to the people.
Capably directed by Ron Daniels, the play is about young men and women whose societal estrangement...
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Pippin
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Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By Ben Miles
Vaguely inspired by the true life of Pippin the Hunchback, the son of French monarch Charlemagne, Pippin the musical, under the direction and with the choreography of the late but legendary Bob Fosse, made an award-winning impression on Broadway in 1972. With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) and a book by Roger O. Hirson, the show has, over the decades, been diminished in reputation and is now typically thought of as a mildly bawdy, largely innocuous stage romp. This is despite the fact that Fosse's aim was to create a troubling and truthful production of Pippin with a surrealistic...
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The Cunning Vixen
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Maldjian, Southwell
Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff
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By Michael Van Duzer
Long Beach Opera opened its 30th Season with this lively production by Leos Janacek.. Although performances of the opera have become more frequent in recent years, we were reminded by Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek that the Los Angeles area hadn’t seen it since the late 70s.
The opera’s cast, in which animals and insects outnumber the humans, may lead one to expect a cozy fairy tale with cute critters. But Janacek’s aim is deeper and altogether more probingly philosophical. In addition, the omnipresent themes of death, desire and the unyielding power of nature...
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Since Africa
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Gehringer, Miller, Carpenter (back)
Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
There is a saying in some African regions that once you have experienced any part of this huge, diverse continent, “Africa is in your skin.” It’s not a reference to skin color, but about how Africa calls to those who have spent real time there, how it makes you remember its details as if they have been embossed on your epidermis.
Such permanent personal detail manifests as a significant, sometimes primal theme of identity in Since Africa, Mia McCullough’s tough, soul-searching drama playing at The Old Globe’s arena stage. Sensitively directed by Seema Sueko and courageously acted by a skilled and forceful cast, this production gets at what it means to be African, American, African-American, native, immigrant, benefactor and refugee.
With an honesty that is sometimes brutal...
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Good Bobby
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Franklin, Call
Photo by Ed Krieger
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By Ben Miles
When Robert F. Kennedy was an obedient son, his father--Kennedy patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.--referred to his third male scion as "Good Bobby." More than a few times, however, RFK has been characterized as a dichotomous personality, tilting on an axis: At one end of the polarity is Good Bobby; at the other end is Bobby-the-Bad.
Brian Lee Franklin's world premiere play,Good Bobby, in production at the Greenway Court Theatre through February 1, is a praiseworthy effort to integrate the purportedly distorted dimensions of Robert Kennedy's psyche into a whole and comprehensible human subject. Franklin's psychologically savvy script ...
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The Magic Flute
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Photo by Robert Millard
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By Michael Van Duzer
Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) is seldom absent from any opera company’s repertoire for long. In spite of its numerous problems—a convoluted plot, an often uneasy mix of fairy tale, Masonic symbolism, and long spoken passages (it is a singspiel rather than a Grand Opera)— Mozart’s gloriously warm and imaginative score is irresistible.
To welcome 2009, LA Opera revived their Peter Hall Flute production along with its signature eye-popping sets and costumes by Gerald Scarfe. I was not a big fan of the production when it premiered in 1993, but...
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Carmen
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Photo by Robert Millard
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By Michael Van Duzer
Bizet’s Carmen with its earthy heroine, nonchalant eroticism, and violent murder may seem an unlikely choice for the holidays. But the enduring allure for prima donnas of both the soprano and mezzo persuasion to get down and dirty in the title role and the fact that the score contains more popular tunes than a Broadway jukebox musical trumps any qualms about its Yuletide suitability.
LA Opera brings back its traditional take on the opera (from the Teatro Real in Madrid) with all new principals in the cast. Making an impressive company debut, Nancy Fabiola Herrera proves physically alluring...
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Leaving Iowa
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North, Brennan, Bennett, Symons
Photo by Ed Krieger
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By Ben Miles
Leaving Iowa--in its West Coast Premiere, at the Laguna Playhouse, through December 14--is billed as a sentimental comedy. And while Tim Clue and Spike Manton's 2004 play (colorfully, if not quite cartoonishly, directed here by Clue), may be more comedically than sentimentally oriented, the nostalgia of the piece will surely be recognized by many theatergoers-- in a manner similar to the way in which we recognized the symptoms of car sickness on one of those long-ago family-filled vehicular getaways: It's a potent brew of giddiness mixed with queasiness and a splash of aggravation.
Indeed, familial vacations serve as the set-up in Leaving Iowa; or, at least partially so. One annually peripatetic...
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Happy Days: A New Musical
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Cast
Photo by Michael Lamont
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By Diana Ford
Goodbye gray skies, hello blue! The King of Cool, the Fonz, is back in town with the gang rockin’and rollin’ 50’s nostalgia at La Mirada Theater for the Performing Arts.
This show is based on the hit Paramount Pictures television series Happy Days (1974-1984) created by Garry Marshal, and it is now a full-scale musical production. Marshall has teamed up with Oscar, Grammy, and Golden Globe-winning, Hall-of-Fame songwriter Paul Williams to reunite us with Fonzie, the Cunninghams, Pinky, Potsie, Ralph, and the rest of the Milwaukee gang through song and dance.
It’s 1959 again, and Arnold’s famed drive-in malt shop is going to be demolished ...
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Hugging the Shoulder
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Pawlowski, Murphy, Hall
Photo by Anthony Treme
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By Ben Miles
A road-trip is underway at the Ruby Theatre in Hollywood. It takes place in the form of a play titled Hugging the Shoulder, by Jerrod Bogard. Derrick (an emotionally attuned Daniel Pawlowski) and Jeremy (a believably haggard Kevin Patrick Murphy) are brothers. Both in the latter-days of their twenties, the eldest, Jeremy, is hooked on heroin. Derrick's idea is to "kidnap" his beloved big bro and transport him to nowhere in particular, giving him the opportunity to detoxify in-route. The destination is not geographical...
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Bus Stop
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Gray, Craig, Finn
Photo by Robert Craig Photography
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By Ben Miles
By the time Bus Stop premiered on Broadway in March, 1955, playwright William Inge had already generated much attention on the Great White Way: In 1950, Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba ran 190 performances in Manhattan, triumphing in Shirley Booth's Tony Award-winning lead performance. Inge himself was honored in 1953 with a Pulitzer Prize for Picnic, which ran for over a year on Broadway's boards.
This aforementioned trilogy of bittersweet theatrical treats forever branded Inge...
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