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Regional Theater Review: JULIUS CAESAR (New Theatre at Oregon Shakespeare Festival)
GREAT CAESAR’S GHOST As directors continue to re-invent theatre, especially the classics, there is a bent to color-blind and gender-bending casting. The mixed-color cast on hand exemplifies just how powerful this mechanism can be: the story of a small group of people who take government into their own hands via assassination becomes a universal examination…
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Regional Theater Review: WILLFUL (Oregon Shakespeare Festival)
AMBIGUITY WITH PURPOSE If you read the spiritual/psychotherapeutic tome A Course In Miracles, it states that miracles occur as a result of a shift in perception; that meaning lies not in the actual events in our lives, but rather in our interpretation of these events. Willful, the site-specific theatrical event at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, takes…
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Regional Theater Review: THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III (Oregon Shakespeare Festival)
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY We learn very little about the history of the African Company (the world’s first known African-American theater company) and even less about Richard III in The African Company Presents Richard III. The very title sounds thrilling as we expect that an actual company of modern African actors will be guest artists at…
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Regional Theater Review: STEEL MAGNOLIAS (Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura)
DROOPING MAGNOLIAS One of six female denizens at a rural beauty salon in Louisiana states that, from the Southern male’s point of view, “You either shoot it, stuff it or marry it.” Well, that’s exactly what can be said about Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, the much-too-often-produced comedy/tearjerker lately receiving a diverting but uneven outing at…
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Regional Theater Review: MY FAIRYTALE (PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria and Solvang, CA)
AN UGLY DUCKLING OF A MUSICAL In Stephen Schwartz’ musical My Fairytale, now receiving its American premiere at PCPA in Solvang, well-known storyteller Hans Christian Anderson has an idea for an opera which will star singing sensation Jenny Lind. His pitch about a Chinese Emperor is quickly ditched by the Royal Theatre Management, but Lind…
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Regional Theater Review: CAROLINE, OR CHANGE (PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, CA)
THE ONLY THING THAT MAY NEED A CHANGE IS THE TITLE We hear that that the only thing constant is change, yet we struggle against change, we fight against change, and some are even willing to succumb to the unyielding stress of determined apathy rather than change. We live in a world that must change…
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Orange County Theater Review: PAGEANT OF THE MASTERS: ONLY MAKE BELIEVE (Irvine Bowl in Laguna Beach)
THE FANTASY FIZZLES Since 1933, Pageant of the Masters has been a Southern California must-see for tourists and locals alike. The professionalism with which they stage tableaux vivants (living pictures) is unsurpassed – a remarkable achievement given that 500 volunteers are necessary to create their incredible productions. Supported by a 35-piece orchestra, terrific writing, superlative artisans,…
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Orange County Theater Review: JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA (Chance Theater)
SING TO THE HAND A literally damning critique of American popular culture, Jerry Springer: The Opera soars in the Chance Theater’s Southern California premiere. An opera this critical could have only originated across the Atlantic. British duo Stewart Lee (book and lyrics) and Richard Thomas (book, lyrics, and music) incisively lambast our culture’s quest for…
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San Diego Theater Review: LIFE OF RILEY (Old Globe)
BY GEORGE, I THINK THEY’VE GOT IT; THE SCRIPT, HOWEVER’¦ A friend of mine is an Alan Ayckbourn fanatic, owning dozens of the prolific playwright’s scripts, yet he can count on one hand the productions he has seen to date. For him, American productions are never as good as the scripts. Therfore, he says, he’d…
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San Diego Theater Review: AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (Old Globe)
HOT AUGUST PLAY NEEDS EVEN MORE HEAT It was impossible not to have any expectations prior to The Old Globe’s production of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize and Tony © Award-winning three-act black comedy, August: Osage County. When a surreal amount of hype is bestowed on a new work, especially one where critics praise the playwright as…
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Theater Review: “MASTER HAROLD” …AND THE BOYS (Rubicon Theatre in Ventura)
MASTER PRODUCTION During the last half-hour of the exquisitely produced “Master Harold”…and the boys, the Rubicon becomes theatre as a temple: a transcendental, spiritual, empowering and uplifting theatrical experience that only a playwriting craftsman like Athol Fugard could create. For what was up to then a lyrical examination of a white seventeen year-old school boy, and his…
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Los Angeles / Orange County Theater Review: CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY Sometimes a play comes along that is so different from any play that has preceded it that, while it may have people scratching their heads, wondering what it is they have just seen – or even dismissing it out of hand because of its unfamiliarity – it is exactly the kind of…
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Theater Review: CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION (South Coast Rep)
REVIEWER ATTENDS AN ACTING CLASS (A TEACHER leads an acting class for reviewers.) TEACHER: OK, Tony, imagine you’re writing a review. It has been three days since you have seen Circle Mirror Transformation at South Coast Rep. What do you feel? TONY: Nothing. TEACHER: Oh, come on. You can dig deeper than that. TONY: OK….
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Theater Review: LA NOUBA (Cirque du Soleil in Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando)
A KINDER, SIMPLER CIRQUE Commedia dell’arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked ’˜types,’ which began in Italy in the mid-1500s. About one hundred years later, Italian troupes (known as Comédie-Italienne) had achieved success in France where Moliére, inspired by the use of stock characters, introduced a lovelorn peasant named Pierrot in the play…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE SECRET GARDEN, THE MUSICAL (Chance Theater in Anaheim)
BAFFLING MUSICAL GETS THE TREATMENT IT DOESN’T DESERVE What do Miss Saigon, Grand Hotel, City of Angels, Aspects of Love, Will Rogers Follies, and Meet Me in St Louis have in common? They opened during the 1990-91  Broadway season, and all of them (City of Angels  to a lesser degree) are problematic with either awkward scores and/or…
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Theater Review: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (National Tour)
SMALLER PRODUCTION, BIGGER HEART Fans of the stage musical Beauty and the Beast will not be disappointed by the newly re-imagined (read: scaled down) version currently on tour. Original Broadway director Rob Roth has assembled the same team, including Tony-winning costume designer Ann Hould-Ward; what we get, instead of a two-ton castle set, is a…
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Regional Theater Review: BECKY SHAW (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
SHARP AS A DULL RAZOR Gina Gionfriddo is smart. She has gone to no less brilliant a writer than William Makepeace Thackeray for inspiration. Becky. Gionfriddo’s contemporary gold digger, in her desperation to worm her way out of her class and into a marriage that seems recklessly impossible, even owes her name to Becky Sharp,…
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Theater Review: J.M. BARRIE’S PETER PAN (National Tour at the OC Performing Arts Center)
NEVERLAND NEVER LANDS – NOR DOES THIS PETER PAN TAKE OFF. In 2003, Universal Studios released a version of Peter Pan, J M Barrie’s beloved tale of childhood imagination that is threatened by burgeoning adulthood. The film used mind-boggling CGI effects to enhance the story of Peter, the boy who refuses to grow up, and…
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Theater Review: THE WHO’S TOMMY (Chance Theater in Anaheim)
WITH A STUNNING ROCK CONCERT LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS A COHESIVE STORY? It was shocking to walk outside at intermission of The Who’s Tommy at the Chance Theater: the professionalism and high artistic achievement is so transporting that you will surely forget that you are in an industrial strip mall in Anaheim Hills. Don’t ever let the…
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