Regional

PARADISE  LILY My fanaticism with Lily Tomlin started with her 1972 comedy album This is a Recording. I immediately felt a kinship with Ernestine Tomlin, Ma Bell’s switchboard operator and favorite enforcer. She was meddlesome, forceful and sarcastic, and I always looked to her as a beacon of sanity in an incompetent world. Strangely enough, my…

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…

FANTASTIC, INDEED Fantasticks may be the longest running musical in America, but Amanda Dehnert’s magical production at South Coast Rep should run forever. The backdrop for this timeless wonder is now a defunct seaside amusement park, instead of the normally simple and open stages of countless productions past. A captivating cast recounts a tale of…

HOME IS WHERE THE HEARTACHE IS Moments before the arrival of Hope (a domineering mother-in-law, not the aspiration), newly-married Melody jests with her handsome corporate attorney husband, Craig: “Don’t talk about your mother and then try to kiss me.” Although funny dialogue such as this may seem more sitcom than theatrical in Bekah Brunstetter’s Be…

THE PETITE POLITIQUE Few playwrights have it as good as Beau Willimon at the moment; he’s a critical and commercial success on all three major platforms’”stage, screen, and stream. His play Farragut North was so successful and praiseworthy that George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio both bought the rights to adapt it to film; George Clooney…

EYEING AMNERIS  IN AIDA In this well-loved 150-year-old Guiseppe Verdi classic of Grand Opera, it may be heretical to question the relationship of the principle characters and their so-called “love triangle.” But in the San Diego Opera production it is Amneris, the Pharoah’s love-sick daughter, who seems more the protagonist. After all, it is Amneris’ world…

OH BROTHERS! Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Talk about a musical with a strange history! It begins with the Ancient Roman legend “The Rape of the Sabine Women” — attributed to Plutarch — followed by Stephen Vincent Benét, who transferred the tale to Tennessee in his short story, “The Sobbin’ Women.” Then comes the 1954…

THE MUSICAL WITH LEGS Musical Theatre West’s (MTW) exuberant production of A Chorus Line proves that the musical is as fresh as the day it appeared almost forty years ago, when the standard Broadway musical was already fading away, making room for the jukebox musicals and mostly hollow spectacles we are still forced to endure….

SMOKEFALL GETS IN YOUR EYES The most amazing thing about Noah Haidle’s world premiere of Smokefall at South Coast Rep is Marsha Ginsberg’s scenic design of a simple yet beautifully crafted two-story family home in Grand Rapids, Michigan; a light wood finish and the dainty pastels of mid-century furniture offer a comfort and void at…

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED Henrik Ibsen stated that he had no conscious thought of making propaganda with A Doll’s House (1879). Yet many productions have a feminist bent: Nora is the misunderstood wife of a husband who sees her as a doll, a thing he uses to round out his modular family. As such,…

FITTING FOR A SAINT Although he wrote at least 15 complete operas, Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) is not a familiar name, even to many in the opera world. The first-generation modernist Italian composer yielded other forms of classical music (concertos, chamber works, sonatas) but also composed hundreds of film scores – many uncredited; the Sinfonia del…

CHARM GALORE WITH A SIDE OF CHARM THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASURE A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder is a captivatingly charming affair. Set in Edwardian England, the west coast premiere is loosely based on Roy Horniman’s Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, which was adapted for the screen as the 1949 black…

ALL YOUR WISHES ARE GRANTED The production values of MainStreet Theatre Company’s 70-minute performance of Aladdin’s Luck at the Lewis Family Playhouse in Rancho Cucamonga were among the best I’ve seen in mid-size regional theaters in both Europe and America. The very reasonably priced tickets ($16 full-prized adult, with various opportunities for discounts) couldn’t have…

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…

GALATEA COMES TO LIFE Transformation. Evolution. Metamorphosis. These words are often confined to biological definition, abused in a critic’s articulation, and criminally under-applied by artists of this generation. Most popular art today can be likened to fast food: Sub-par products synthesized under the pretense that it’s what the consumer is demanding. In actuality, it is…

A SIZE THAT DOES NOT FIT ALL Of the three plays which constitute Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brother/Sister Plays,” The Brothers Size, now playing at The Old Globe, is the most intimate and confined, much like a chamber piece. The first play of the triptych, In the Red and Brown Water, is an epic tale…

ALL HANS ON DECK Don’t expect the Disneyfication of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid when you attend Hamburg Ballet’s rendition of the tragic 1836 fairy tale, which opened last night at Segerstrom Hall. This imaginative and handsome adaptation is more faithful to its dark and bittersweet source material. In John Neumeier’s version, created for…