Tony Frankel

A SHOW OF GREAT IMPORTANCE An anomaly of the Hollywood Fringe Festival has arrived. A gem which alone justifies the Fringe’s existence. A nascent troupe named Good People Theater Company is using the Festival’s built-in promotional tie-in and relative inexpensiveness to its advantage. They spent a bit more requesting a specific schedule to accommodate 15…

DON’T COME TO THE CABARET It’s the first time I have ever seen someone on stage in flop sweat. Poor Anastasia Barnes had a rough go in her opening of The Ruby Besler Cabaret. One would suppose a lack of air conditioning was the culprit, but the other five women on stage were dry as…

GIRL, PLEASE! Prior to curtain at Musical Theatre Guild’s concert staging of Girl Crazy, we were warned that the Gershwin brothers’ 1930 musical was written before “the code” (read: censorship), so “expect to be offended.” Well, thank God. I am rather tired of inoffensive theater. Besides, the one memorable thing about Guy Bolton and Jack…

BOBBING FOR APPLES Perusing a Peanuts anthology recently, I found my mind beginning to wander after about 15 panels. Regardless of Schultz’ insightful social commentary and universal truths – as seen through the eyes of elementary school children – his comic strips were meant to be seen one at a time. No matter how clever…

THE FRUSTRATING LABORS OF A FASCINATING COMPANY It is said that Roman Philosopher and Playwright Seneca’s Hercules Furens (c. 54 CE) was never produced but only read in Seneca’s lifetime. Scholars hold that it most likely may have been written to be read and studied rather than performed on a stage. The physical theatre ensemble…

CHICK ‘N’ SCHTICK THEATER It’s no small feat when a play inspires me to do something with my life. While watching Stephen Sachs’ Heart Song at the Fountain, I felt compelled to join a Flamenco class inmediatamente. The problem was I wanted to bolt from the theater during this play to do so. But here’s…

AMERICAN TRAGEDY BECOMES MUSICAL COMEDY 1931 was a crossroads in American history. With no economic recovery in sight, the Depression had people edgy, and when Americans are edgy, they are discordant. An acrimonious populace is a perfect breeding ground for intolerance. As such, issues that were quelled during the over-consuming, over-spending 1920’s were coming to…

WHAT A DRAG There are so many ways to glitter and be gay in modern American Musical Theater. The recent revival of La Cage Aux Folles depicts the unexpected bourgeois normality in a near-marriage of boa-wrapped impersonators at a gender-breaking Riviera nightclub. Kinky Boots, currently on Broadway, celebrates vogue-crazed drag queens with foot fetishes who…

COME FOR THE SONGS; STAY FOR THE SPIRIT. It’s fitting that Samuel Barber’s “Sure on this Shining Night” opens American Songs & Spirituals, Los Angeles Master Chorale’s final program of its 49th season: Residing within the text from an untitled poem by James Agee are the lines which augur the spectator’s experience after witnessing this…

NOT SO DULCE It’s a shame that so much love, talent and money was bestowed upon the new opera, Dulce Rosa, which is the inaugural project of LA Opera’s Off Grand series, a program which offers new operatic works in venues other than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Opening at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica…

A FRATERNITY OF MASTER THESPIANS At its core, Jeff Stetson’s Fraternity is about the two options that face black men in today’s society (or, at least, the society of Birmingham in 1987, when the play was written): Either become part of the white establishment or cling passionately and tenaciously to the tenets of the early…

BEDEVILED An off-stage character is tortured by a Salem court in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play which dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692. As heavy stones are placed upon his chest, the innocent man’s reported final words are “More weight.” This is exactly what Antaeus Company’s production needs in order to be more…

NOW THIS YOU GOTTA SEE Of the 32 shows I attended in Chicago recently, the most charming experiences were with four musical revivals, three from Broadway’s heyday — the 1930s through the 1960s — and one from somewhere near the onset of its slow and painful decline — the 1970s to the present (Sondheim doesn’t…

AS IF CELLIST ALISA WEILERSTEIN PERFORMING SHOSTAKOVICH WASN’T ENOUGH: Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) will conclude its 44th season this weekend with the appropriately titled program, Concerto Finale. This season has showcased both LACO’s eclectic repertoire and the orchestra’s proficiency which more than substantiated PRI’s proclamation that LACO is “America’s finest chamber orchestra.” From a…

YOU MIGHT ENJOY THE  ACTING, BUT WILL YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC? It’s not easy to believe in magic watching Phylicia Rashad’s direction of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. While Rashad has a knack for the naturalistic style of theatre, evidenced in her astounding production of A Raisin in the Sun, she seems to have missed the…