Los Angeles

MAKE NOISE: ARTISTS AT WORK There is nothing more liberating than going to the theater in complete ignorance of what one is going to see. If context is everything, then it is no accident that this is exactly what this reviewer experienced just last weekend on two consecutive nights. The results couldn’t be more joyous….

VARIATION ON 33 VARIATIONS Since I feel pretty much the same as I did when I first saw 33 Variations, and since it is virtually the same production with virtually the same cast, I have decided to reprint my original review, along with an addendum that follows afterward. — THE CURIOUS CASE OF LUDWIG VAN…

MATH PROBLEM Consummate actress Annie Potts has an auspicious moment at the start of AfterMath: she plays Julie, whose husband has jumped into the Hudson River, leaving behind two grown children and a confoundingly simplistic suicide note. She relates to us, in a monologue that is funny, melancholic and touching, that her math-teaching spouse of…

HAVING YOUR CAKE AND CHOKING ON IT There is, at the heart of Neil LaBute’s The Break of Noon, an implicit cry to build slowly in a rising arc and, hopefully, toward a rousing crescendo. But, while his director, Jo Bonney, has found a way to jolt us from scene to scene, she has not…

THIS SONG IS WRONG, LONG, AND GETS THE GONG Prior to curtain up at Emily’s Song, Chet Holmes’ stultifying new musical at the Hudson Theatre, his daughter, co-composer and associate producer, Amanda, entertained us with original songs that brought to mind Norah Jones. When gorgeous, sweet-voiced Amanda finished her acoustic set and introduced the show…

YOU’LL WANT TO TIP THIS ROOM SERVICE Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Depression-era Broadway producer Gordon Miller (Derek Manson) discovers swell script by greenhorn scribe from Oswego (Dustin Eastman). Miller runs up huge hotel bill while rehearsing show on 19th floor. Hotel proprietor and brother-in-law (Phillip William Brock) in a panic – boss and…

SHORT TAKES 2011 has arrived and, with it, a flurry of activity in the theater. Here’s a sample of some of the plays that have opened in recent weeks. ME, AS A PENGUIN by Tom Wells This odd and delightfully quirky play offers the little pleasures that come with discovering a new playwright. His name…

YOU CAN GO BACK AGAIN The award-winning Musical Theatre Guild, a company of professional performers who present concert-staged readings of seldom seen musicals, will continue its 15th season with Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s rarely-produced classic One Touch of Venus (1943). I have been attending MTG for years and their one-night stands are more professional…

TO SAVE A MELODRAMATIC SCRIPT Harper Lee’s 1960 story about lawyer Atticus Finch, who defends Tom Robinson, a black man wrongfully accused of rape in 1935 Alabama, has lost none of its appeal. Although some have argued that many of the poor white Southerners and victimized black characters are one-dimensional (and that Atticus’ daughter, six-year-old…

MORE PHALLUS, PLEASE I don’t know about you, but if I were a 5th century Greek who had just witnessed three back-to-back tragedies at the Festival Dionysus, only one thing could lift my spirits: Party! The Greeks loved to party as much as they loved theatre, so why not combine the two? The “party†became…

STORIES BY AND FOR THE HEART At the start of the second half of Stories By Heart, John Lithgow tells us that, originally, the first half was all there was; but his audience, like children, having heard one story, wanted “more.†In this instance, more proves to be less. If I had left at intermission,…

OH, DADDY, POOR DADDY, SOMEONE’S TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF YOUR GOOD NATURE (AND GUESS WHO IT IS?) When you watch Dan Via, the actor, play the part of a wise-cracking, heart-lonely “best friend,†you will get an idea of what the style of Dan Via, the playwright, consists. He acts earnestly and straight-forwardly and totally without…

EGGOLD SUNNY-SIDE UP Here’s a switch: in the ever-increasing saga of showcase-as-play in Los Angeles theatre, 90210 star Ryan Eggold has not only written Amy & Elliot, a genuinely funny play, but delivers a beguiling performance and manages to direct it with comical nuances that showcase the talent of his 3 co-stars. True, the sit-com…

SUTTON FOSTER IS READY FOR A CABARET CLOSE UP Sutton Foster, one of Broadway’s most loved and talented leading ladies, will make her Orange County Performing Arts Center debut January 6 – 9 in the star-studded Cabaret Series. I first encountered Miss Foster in the titular role of Thoroughly Modern Millie on Broadway; she was…