A MESS IN BIG POCKETS Imagine yourself not exactly as JFK cheerleader Arthur Schlesinger Jr., but at least a 40ish New Deal Democrat, attending a John F. Kennedy rally in New York City in the summer of 1963.   You’re sympathetic to the president and his ideas, but you’re not one of the fresh-from-college, budding-hippie, personality-cult…

PIECE OF EIGHT Conceived by Ashlin Halfnight and Melanie Sylvan at New York’s Electric Pear Productions, Synesthesia can easily be classified in the “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” Department. The performance piece (actually, eight performance pieces in one) is a multi-medium event with such a clever concept that one would suspect the outcome would…

TOO MUCH TRAGEDY SPOILS CLEVER CONCEIT Prior to curtain at Sacred Fools’ production of Stoneface, the packed house watched samplings of Buster Keaton’s films, projected on a screen center stage. Hushed and rapt, almost reverent, many were even leaning forward towards the screen. When a funny bit occurred, the audience roared in unison, then just…

IT IS (BUT SHOULDN’T BE) DONE There was something that felt particularly showcase-y about It Is Done, which can best be described as a 22-minute episode of The Twilight Zone laboriously stretched into a full-length one-act. There are three characters in Alex Goldberg’s talky script. Hank (Michael McCartney) is the skanky proprietor of a bar…

COMMUNION If the Ahmanson Theater is akin to a cathedral (elevated rules of decorum apply, and a certain dress code, and it’s expensive and showy in such a way as to invite your tithe and your awestruck adoration), the Glendale Centre Theatre is more like a Universalist meeting house that grew out of a commune,…

THE PERFECT PINOT PAIRING Pinot Noir is presently one of the most popular wine varietals in California thanks to Sideways. First published as a novel by Rex Pickett in 2004 before being made into a feature film starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, Sideways is now a play making its…

BONA FIDE ACTING FUELS DIDACTIC SCRIPT At about the same time that the United States entered WWI, units of the 24th Infantry Regiment, one of the Army’s four black regiments, set up camp on the outer edge of Houston. The Regiment had already seen action in the Philippines and New Mexico (against Pancho Villa), so…

OF GOOD TURNS AND SCREWINGS All emotional reaction comes filtered through prerequisite knowledge: the sound of a crying baby is annoying, unless it’s your baby, in which case that sound may make you feel anything from relief (“It’s your turn, babe”) to terror (“I thought he was napping – that sounded like it came from…

FOLLIES IN HOLLYWOOD Follies has always been a fabulous musical. It may not be Stephen Sondheim‘s greatest musical, but it is the Stephen Sondheim musical that his admirers most desperately want to love. Follies contains what is arguably his most ravishing score.   Musically, it evokes ghosts of theater songs past, while lyrically, it creates an…

THE IMPERFECT STORM Over lunch today, I tried to tell someone about Michael Elyanow’s new take on the Medea myth and found myself crying into my tikka masala.   The material is horrifying enough in the Euripides version: a witch, having lost the affections of the lover for whom she has sacrificed everything, kills his new…