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Ella Martin
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SUNSET BOULEVARD (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
MISGUIDED MELODRAMA Billy Wilder’s 1950 film masterpiece Sunset Boulevard starred Gloria Swanson as the washed-up-actress-turned-cougar Norma Desmond, and William Holden as her prematurely-jaded-Hollywood-writer-turned-boy-toy Joe Gillis. Using the camera as an instrument to capture performances of discomforting intensity, it wove a psychologically intricate tale of seduction, jealousy and betrayal set, of course, in Hollywood. It skirted…
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Film/VOD Review: CARTOON COLLEGE (directed by Josh Melrod and Tara Wray)
VAGUE ETCH Cartoon College, a film by Josh Melrod and Tara Wray, chronicles the experiences of a group of aspiring cartoonists enrolled in the selective two-year MFA program offered by the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Featuring interviews with students and a prestigious faculty, it covers ’” loosely ’” one class’s…
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Film/VOD Review: HEY BARTENDER (directed by Douglas Tirola)
NEEDS A MIXER Douglas Tirola’s Hey Bartender is an ode to mixology in three parts: one part historical survey, one part character study, and one part massive, unquestioning endorsement. Although it is generally well-put-together, and packed with information about a thriving socioeconomic subculture, this film does not venture far enough outside the realm of trivia…
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Film/VOD Review: MARRIED AND COUNTING (directed by Allan Piper)
LOVE IS ALL AROUND US Stephen Mosher and Pat Dwyer met in undergrad at North Texas State University and have been inseparable ever since. As their twenty-five-year anniversary approaches, they decide it’s finally time to tie the knot. The trouble is, in most states, that decision isn’t theirs to make. Stephen and Pat are gay….
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Los Angeles Theater Review: NEVA (Kirk Douglas Theatre, South Coast Rep, and La Jolla Playhouse)
FOGGY BUT FASCINATING Neva by Guillermo Calderón opens like a Beckett play, with a woman sitting alone in the darkness. Once she is illuminated, she begins to speak with the pace and urgency of a train, hardly stopping for breath, her movements fervent but economical. This woman is Olga Knipper (Sue Cremin), seething with grief…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: A MIDSUMMER SATURDAY NIGHT’S FEVER DREAM (Troubadour Theater Company at the Falcon Theatre)
MADCAP MIDSUMMER To say that Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is oft-produced would be an understatement. The 1595 text is very much in the public domain, free and available to anyone with an interest in putting it up. Here in Los Angeles, there are already three productions running this summer, with at least two more…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HOT CAT (Theatre of NOTE with Theatre Movement Bazaar)
A CAT IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a tricky play even before it leaves the page. Nearly sixty years after its first performance, Williams’ brilliant poetic language and the story’s pervasive darkness can easily steer it into the realm of melodrama. “Oft-revived,” it is both commercially and artistically primed…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MAD FOREST (Open Fist Theatre in Hollywood)
A DARK, RIVETING AND WORTHY TRIP TO THE FOREST An undeservedly small house took in Friday’s performance of Caryl Churchill’s brilliant, unsettling Mad Forest. Commissioned in 1990 in response to the events of the 1989 Romanian Revolution, this is a challenging piece of theatre that Open Fist deserves recognition for producing. Under Marya Mazor’s smart,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE WOMEN OF WOODY (Oh My Ribs!)
WOODY LIGHT One iconic comic writer; eight monologues cut from the screen time of seven of his most memorable female characters; a six-person, all male cast: Those are the ingredients of Roy Cruz’s latest monologue-homage-comedy show, The Women of Woody, presented by Oh My Ribs! last weekend. Cruz’s last project in this vein was the…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: TRIASSIC PARQ: THE MUSICAL (Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills)
FRINGE-O-SAUR Winner of the Best Musical title at the 2010 FringeNYC, with music by Marshall Pailet and book by Pailet, Bryce Norbitz and Steve Wargo, Triassic Parq: The Musical is a parody which explores the relationship of personal identity to gender, sexuality, and spirituality in the context of a group of female dinosaurs in the…
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Film Review: KUMARÉ: THE TRUE STORY OF A FALSE PROPHET (directed by Vikram Gandhi)
IMPERFECTLY INSPIRING Kumaré, Vikram Gandhi’s spiritual alter ego and the subject of his navel-gazing documentary, questions the growing Western trend of seeking personal fulfillment through self-sublimation to Eastern gurus. Gandhi, who was raised devoutly in the Hindu tradition and even studied religion in college, initially begins work on a documentary about seeking a true guru….
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Los Angeles Theater Review: RED, BLACK & GREEN: A BLUES (Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project at REDCAT)
THE COLORS OF OUR LIVES red, black & GREEN: a blues is art at its best and most purposeful; a visceral, engaging narrative that combines theatre, dance, music, spoken word and visual art created and expressed by and for “wonderful human beings” to ask what we are doing to protect and nurture our world and…
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Film Review: BETTING THE FARM (directed by Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann)
MERCIFULLY, A DOCUMENTARY WHICH IS NOT MILKED FOR SENTIMENT Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann’s superb documentary focuses on a group of Maine organic dairy farmers who are unceremoniously dropped by their distributor (H.P. Hood, the off-camera villain of the film). The farmers decide that rather than let their lives be ruined by this arbitrary outside…
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Film/VOD Review: TELL YOUR FRIENDS! THE CONCERT FILM! (directed by Victor Varnado)
DOCUSTANDUP Victor Varnado and Liam McEneaney’s comedy documentary is simple and a little grungy, in tune with the unpretentious vibe at Tell Your Friends, a weekly indie show at Lolita Bar where alternative and mainstream comedians “workshop new material and feel free to fuck around” (Liam McEneaney, founder and host). After a bland opening musical…
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Documentary Film Review: TERRA BLIGHT (directed by Isaac Brown)
SHARP ECO-ETHIC SMACKDOWN From start to finish Isaac Brown’s Terra Blight is a fantastic, formidable exposé of the intensifying environmental damage caused by the technological revolution of the late 20th century. Effectively juxtaposing American excess with the poverty of the third world developing countries’”in whose backyards our electronic waste is unceremoniously dumped’”the film makes a…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: FAITH: PART ONE OF A MEXICAN TRILOGY (Los Angeles Theatre Center)
A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY Faith by Evelina Fernandez, directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela, is a sensitive portrayal of a Mexican-American family in the 1940’s. Good performances and a smart use of music ultimately succeed in transforming a spotty episodic tale into a meaningful drama. Two melodramatic vignettes in Mexico seem to serve as a prequel, planting…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SEMINAR (Ahmanson Theatre)
SEMINAR SEARCHES FOR MEANING The premise: four fiction writers have paid five thousand dollars each to participate in an exclusive seminar with a renowned teacher. Filled with witty wordplay, love triangles, and hints of something deeper, Center Theatre Group’s production of Theresa Rebeck’s writerly comedy Seminar is fun, colorful, and entertaining’”but ultimately offers emotionally lean…
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Los Angeles Dance Review: DIAVOLO (The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
“ALL THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US IS NOTHING” Los Angeles dance company Diavolo is back at The Broad Stage, remounting their Trajectoire and offering the Southern California premiere of their new piece Transit Space. Trajectoire opens like a sunrise with loud, low drums, two dancers moving almost as one in front of a glowing semicircle. Their…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN (YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD) (REDCAT)
“YOUNG. SEXY. NEW. AND FULL OF LIFE.” Gob Squad’s Kitchen, playing at REDCAT through Sunday, is an exquisite, provocative piece of experimental, experiential theatre. The performance begins when the doors open and the cast invites the audience on a tour of the set. Aided by a zigzagging floor map of arrows and lines, one journeys…
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Documentary Film Review: GENIUS WITHIN: THE INNER LIFE OF GLENN GOULD (Directed by Brett Michí¨le Hozer and Peter Raymont)
INFAMOUS, SOLITARY, DIFFERENT From White Pine Pictures comes a dense, detailed portrayal of one of the most profoundly singular musicians of all time: the tremendously gifted, relentlessly driven Glenn Gould. Gould, known as much for his eccentricity as his remarkable musical ability, played his first concert at thirteen. Over the two decades that followed, his…
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