Regional

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…

THE HONESTY OF HYPOCRISY The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis is a crackling, compelling play that finds genuine comic pathos not only in its characters’ struggles with addiction, violence, poverty, sexual compulsion, and sexual identity,  but in their various, mostly unfulfilled, attempts to distinguish between the people they are and the people they…

WASTED TIME In Marisa Wegrzyn’s Hickorydickory, all humans are born with a mortal clock encoded with the date and time of their death.   This mortal clock takes the form of an actual pocket watch.   For most people, it goes unnoticed because it is hidden behind their heart.   But for the “unfortunate few” the watch is…

A FEW PROTESTS… Todd Salovey’s revue of mostly American songs of protest is buoyed by a fiercely energetic, multi-talented quartet of singers and musicians: Dave Crossland, Jim Mooney, Vaughn Armstrong, and the redoubtable Lisa Payton.   When Payton hits the money notes it’s enough to pop your sternum from its rib cage.   But the narrative, the…

HOW TO LAUGH AND CRY AND BE UNMOVED AT THE SAME TIME Playwright Bill Cain, after discovering his mother, Mary, had six months to live, moved into the family home in Syracuse, New York. Like any good writer, Cain kept a diary during that trying time. His notes became the basis for How to Write…