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Gray Area

2100 Square Feet Theatre

The leading character in John Ahlin’s Pen Is a Mighty Sword Award-winning play Gray Area is a curmudgeonly drama critic named Sherman Farragut (Charles Carroll), who’s kidnapped by a bumbling trio of southern Civil War reenacters after making a scathing comment on his weekly radio show about the probable collective intelligence quotient of people interested in doing such a thing. Some fatcat Yankee referring to these good ‘ol boys from below the Mason-Dixon line as "out-of-bivouac weekend warriors dressed like extras from community theatre, recreating to the n^th detail the famous flanking maneuver of some drunken Ozymandius general," doesn’t sit well with Keith (Michael Monks) and his loyal misfit cohorts Randall and Horse (Shawn Emery Ross and Lauren McCormick).

Gagged, blindfolded and secured with duct tape, Farragut is subjected to a long bumpy truck ride back to the guys’ secret campground in a densely wooded area of some undisclosed southern state. Released into their natural habitat with nowhere to go, at first the critic’s suspicions seem to be confirmed: "This is Mayberry RFD written by Beckett," he moans—and is surprised to find that Keith knows who he’s talking about. Although all of this might be a bit scary for the more paranoid of us toiling amongst the rank-and-file of Los Angeles theatre reviewing foot soldiers… WHO SAID THAT?… Ahlin’s fresh new play is more than only a comedy—though it’s a quick-witted one, for sure.

It’s also a cunningly masked exploration of society’s penchant for stereotyping southerners as people who scrape coons off the highway for dinner. More specifically, Gray Area forces its audience to contemplate what it is that actually makes a person’s neck red. By the end of Act Two, these four diverse people have come a long way, Farragut particularly. Once he gives up the idea that Allen Funt is about to step out from behind a bush at any moment, he begins to find respect for Keith and his buddies, realizing along the way that not every aficionado who recreates Civil War battles as a hobby is guaranteed to be a Gomer Pyle—nor is every southerner automatically a racist.

In return, Keith and the boys recognize that Farragut isn’t all bad either. Of course, I might be taking it a bit too personally, but I do wonder why is it that, since the days of Alexander Walcott, no fictional character who works as a critic is ever given a simple name—or is depicted as anything but an overstuffed vapid dilettante who wears loud Hawaiian shirts (or ascots at parties) and holds his martini glass with his pinky finger extended. Just asking.

Too long and occasionally preachy, the auspicious debut of Gray Area still offers clever dialogue, a great ensemble cast, and sharply kinetic staging by director Ian Vogt. Carroll is sufficiently stuffy and deadpanned as the overly educated, overly opinionated critic, expertly softening his dryly all-knowing stance as the ordeal goes on—and finding a way to make the rather implausible ending palatable. Monks and Ross are wonderfully sincere and believable as Keith and Randall, but it is McCormick as Horse (who blushes at the possible origins of his nickname) who manages to construct an outlandishly dumb but sweetly lovable character who’s still surprisingly believable.

Ahlin has channeled his smart, savvy, occasionally hilarious Gray Area with an important message about tolerance filtered through its continuous humor, not an easy task. But then, as Farragut says he was once told by Milton Berle himself, supposedly number one in the whispered about ranks of the infamous Hollywood Ten, "Just show enough to win." Ahlin wins, thanks to the dedicated artists of Virtual Theatre Project who awarded a gifted unknown playwright with an excellent first production.

2100 Square Feet is located at 5615 San Vicente Bl., Los Angeles. For tickets, call (323) 663-0112.

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Questa

Court Theatre

LA wünderkind publicist David Elzer’s typically eloquent press release mentions two very important things about Victor Bumbalo’s Questa, now playing at the Court Theatre. First, Emmy-winning producer David Milch and notable director Joe Cacaci have assembled an imposingly high-profile cast for their world premiere presentation and secondly, they hired an impressive award-winning design team. This is certainly the truth in every regard, making me instantly wonder: What were all these people thinking signing onto such an unworthy and ill-fated project?

Wendie Malick as Lori - Dan Lauria as Father James
Sadly, Questa is the last production to be booked at the Court before the lovely old place, one of LA’s most charming small theatre venues, meets the wrecking ball, a terrible shame to anyone who’s enjoyed the many, many fine presentations that have played there over the years.
After all the triumphs that have graced the Court, this is a most unfitting end to a prolific era in Los Angeles theatre.

The annoying and lengthy blackouts between each of the 21 brief scenes of Act One alone seem to indicate that Questa is designed more for a quick TV sell than meant for the stage. This is compounded by some incredibly one-note acting, from the start so emotionally fraught there’s nowhere to go, by an impressive array of veterans who should have known better.
The performance of "newcomer" Michael Hagerty as a tormented young urban homosexual who accidentally murders an abusive gay basher easily surpasses any of the resident star power, and among the established name actors only Dorian Harewood—as a homeless person with the cleanest shoes and socks ever worn on the streets—survives this script with some dignity. The rest of the actors—and the production itself—unfortunately opts for true TV melodrama and shortcut emoting at its most glaringly obvious.

Dorian Harewood stars as Daniel

The Court Theatre is located at 722 N. La Cienega Bl. in West Hollywood. For tickets, call (800) 595-4849.

40 Days

Lillian Theatre

As Steven Connell plays himself sitting at a desk in the cabin he’s retreated to for 40 Days to write this very piece, he evokes suffering a case of writer’s block angst sure to chill the most prolific among our ranks. Then he gets a jarringly early wake-up call from his girlfriend in the city that leads him to wander to the TV set to watch the World Trade Center towers come crashing down. "And the world has changed forever," the newscaster offers in his best use of Broadcasting 101, but then, as pointed out by William Hutson’s excellent sound bites throughout the play, that phrase has been almost as overused through the decades of our ever-unsettling media age as "Have a nice day."

Poet, rapper, manic-depressive madman Connell’s riveting one-person show is intensely inventive, bare bones honest, in-your-face stuff, spartanly directed by Kristin Hanggi, who has obviously let her actor/playwright find his own energy and pace, then offered him challenge after challenge until the result is breakneck, mind-boggling theatre.

Although the newscasters on the soundtrack keep finding those moments in recent history to repeat their "And the world has changed forever" mantra, Connell writes about his encroaching realization that, even here in this remote location ("There’s no safe distance," he says, watching the disaster unfold live in the glow of the television screen), it’s doubtful if the world really can ever change. But "this isn’t a show about 9/11," as he tells his quickly raptured audience. "It’s about 9/10. It’s about 9/12." It’s not true that the world changes forever with each now horror, each new disaster, each new war, he points out with tears in his eyes, because "there’s nothing we haven’t already done."

As Connell wrestles with the creation of this very unique work of art, answers he conjures "only lead to more questions." He relives for his audience his innermost feelings as he created the play, including admitting that, for about six seconds at a time, we as human beings forget that we are horribly, ultimately alone. As stark revelations about the nature of being spew from his rapidly-intoning mouth, he jumps on canvas-covered set pieces to proclaim scholarly hip-hop epitaphs such as: "I see with invisible distance / I’m not saying God doesn’t exist / I say he don’t write bestsellers."

This guy is brilliant—and of course, so is Kristin Hanggi. Their collaboration on 40 Days could not provide a more indelible, thought-provoking experience. "From Clinton, I learned to be careful of blowjobs," Connell confesses, "and from Bush, I learned you can kill the girl and her family in a preemptive strike." This work is like watching a significant new American storyteller and poet spin straw into gold, straw into gold, as he himself sees the process of creating art. And thankfully, we all get to bathe in its incredible dazzle.

The Lillian Theatre is located at 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood. For tickets, call (800) 595-4TIX.

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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

The Evidence Room

Taking place in pulp-hyphen-science fiction author Philip K. Dick’s future world of 1998, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said offers a fantasy Los Angeles that didn’t turn out to be to far from the truth, except for a few minor details. Of course, in 1970 when he wrote the original novel, it wasn’t hard to envision that 28 years later Monroe-like media madonna Heather Hart’s Beverly Hills home could float on a column of air ("It hadn’t caught on back east yet"), popular TV personality Jason Taverner could board his own Rolls Royce Fly Strip with Heather for dinner in Zurich (doesn’t Elton John do that on a regular basis?), and thorzine might still be around to counteract the effects of mescaline, a drug some of us Of The Era types (1970 that is, not 1988) still miss. Only Dick’s prophecy of a future Las Vegas is off, where it’s even more bizarre these days than he anticipated it would be in the deepest recesses of his perpetually alcohol and speed enhanced imagination.

Joe Fria & Dorie Barton (Back: Tara Chocol & Liz Davies)

Flow My Tears was the only one of Dick’s works that he allowed to be transferred to the stage, mainly because it was adapted by his "special" friend Linda Hartinian. First staged at the original Culver City version of the Evidence Room in 1999, Tears has now flowed over to the artistically unquenchable home of LA’s best counter-culture theatre company in celebration of their 10^th anniversary, directed for the second time around by ER’s equally unquenchable artistic director Bart DeLorenzo.

Somewhere during that brief jaunt to Zurich, poor Jason (Joe Fria, who works as though Humphrey Bogart has studied physical comedy with Jerry Lewis) is somehow stripped of his identity—a capital offense on 1998, it seems. No one recognizes the guy whose latest hit recording, "Nowhere Nothing Fuck-up," is number one on the charts, replaced in this alternate nightmare world by Louis Panda’s "Memory of Your Nose." Not even his longtime paramour Heather (ER regular Dorie Barton) has a clue who he is, sending him deeper and deeper into the underworld to try to survive his stalking by Javert-obsessive police inspector Felix Buckman (Tony Maggio).
Joe Fria

Dorie Barton & Joe Fria

Along the way, he encounters a series of voluptuous Dick-ian women, including ID forger Kathy Nelson (the always-delightful Liz Davies, foggy-voiced star of Michael Sargent’s American Nympho at ER); scorned paramour Marilyn Mason (a sadly underused Wendy Johnson); and Alys Buckman (Tara Chocol), sexually insatiable sister and lover of the pursuing cop. There are a pair of knockout cameos by Lauren Campedelli as a crusty barfly with whom we can all identify when she suddenly screams out, "I hate LA!" (to which Jason responds, "So do I. So do all of us. Live with it") and Colleen Kane as a sweetly dysfunctional potter who has more interest in getting her recently finished wares to the post office to mail off to a boutique in Northern California (some things never change) than come on to the guy like every other woman does.
Photos by: Sibyl Wickersheimer

The cast, which also includes an easy chair-ensconced Tom Fitzgerald as a narrator stuck to one side looking like William S. Burroughs on one of his more lucid days, is theatrical ambrosia. DeLorenzo directs with charming innovation on Sibyl Wickerheimer’s gloriously abstract set, made up of a versatile series of metal and smoky translucent screens, and all design aspects are absolute perfection. It’s amazing what DeLorenzo and the Evidence Room repeatedly accomplish with little budget and seemingly limitless inspiration, letting the story’s characters dial futuristic telephones with the same quirky repetitive motions in the air or create an all-new playing space by simply by swinging aside one of the set’s movable panels in to another position. It’s hard to take something as campy and fanciful and cult-crazed as a novel by Philip Dick and play it for real, but under DeLorenzo’s care, the Flow My Tears cast does just that. Perhaps the author did know how funny his work was, but his characters do not. Only the inspired artists of the Evidence Room could have pulled this off with such precision results.

The Evidence Room is located at 2220 Beverly Bl., Los Angeles. For tickets, call (213) 381-7118.

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The Shagaround

Theatre/Theater

Matt has been dipping the ol’ wick into places it doesn’t belong and his scorned and bitter girlfriend decides to give The Shagaround an evening he won’t soon forget. With the help of her five equally PMS-ed girlfriends, she manages at the top of this play to blindfold the guy, lead him into a stall in the women’s room of the Green Man Pub in some English metropolis not too unlike our own Yankee version, and lock him in, securing the handle with pantyhose.

In Maggie Nevill’s hilarious new play The Shagaround, now at Theatre/Theatre, director Jeff Murray has managed to deftly tell the story from the ladies’ point of view, but poor Matt’s situation, stuck in the darkness as the girls get loaded and tell him what schmucks they think men are, must surely be a wee bit claustrophobic to other men besides me. By the time Matt gets away from the shrill harpy quartet circling around the Green Man’s skanky toilet bowl like vultures after a bus full of retirees breaks down on the highway to Vegas, he’s bound to flush his little black book and flush the viagra tablets down the loo—if not rush off to join a monastic order.

Murray’s cast is topnotch, nicely able to maintain both the tension and the humor with ease, though boy, are these women collectively annoying—the characters, now, not the actors. They scream, they shout, they whine incessantly, they pound the stall’s flimsy door. After two acts, this manic kidnapping fiasco has the side effect of leaving audience members suffering from the same lingering headache the girls have surely given old Matt.

Ingo Neuhaus is suitably helpless as the poor trapped schnook and Jennifer Skelly as his wronged lady friend "G" is a perfect compliment to his angst. Jennifer Claire and Tricia Handzlik are believably interlocked as sisters who would rather not be, and both Heather De Sisto as a punker so pierced she must set off airport security and Natalie Rose as the friend who has a few things to explain by the play’s end, each have some wonderful moments. In two quick cameos as different women wandering in for a pee and ending up supporting their "sisters," Theatre/Theater’s co-artistic director Nicolette Chaffey shows ‘em all how it’s done—now if only she might have helped the others to find some balance in their awkwardly varying English accents.

As funny, well crafted, acted and directed as this piece is, it brings an odd message, reassuring at least anyone over the age of worrying about reflexive dating that being out of the hunt these days isn’t so bad. The Shagaround makes a case for the theory that the battle of the sexes has, at the dawn of our new millennium, turned into an all-out siege

Theatre/Theater is located at 6425 Hollywood Blvd., on the fourth floor of the Pacific Theatre building in Hollywood. For tickets, call (323) 460-7070.

Plays through April 16

THEATRE THEATER

6425 Hollywood Boulevard

4th Floor Reservations 323 460 7070

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ROSENSTRASSE

The Company Rep

Book and Lyrics by Terry Lawrence – Music by Max Kinberg

In 1943, the Third Reich decided to continue efforts to further their Final Solution by rounding up all the Jewish men who had previously been spared the concentration camps because they were married to Aryan women. A tiny, courageous group of wives gathered on Rosentrasse before the detention center, hoping for a glimpse of their loved ones in the windows of the building and demanding of the Gestapo oppressors to release their husbands. From February 27 through the next 11 days, they stood outside around the clock, hoping their presence would increase the odds that their cause might become successful. Their numbers grew steadily, so that finally, on March 6, with hundreds of women shouting "Murderers!" to the machine gun toting soldiers waiting for a dastardly order, their husbands were quietly sent home

The story of Rosentrasse might seem an odd choice for a musical, but with a haunting operetta-like score by the Company Rep’s resident musical genius Max Kinberg, whose music is something akin to Fellini master Nino Rota interpreting the work of Kurt Weill, and directed by TCR’s fiercely passionate and personally driven artistic director Hope Alexander, the result is pure magic. The heartbreaking ensemble cast is also intensely committed to the difficult material, with TCR regulars Karen Reed, Nora Linden, Bobbi Stamm, Gwen Van Dam, Chera Holland and Barbara Haber contributing some of their finest work to date. Haber is particularly effective as the uppercrust Baroness Schumann, pulling heartstrings in a gloriously lovely ballad called "Another Century, Another World," and Mary Van Arsdel as the gentle Sofie Kaufmann brings another standout moment with "You Couldn’t Have Known," as her character tries to make her boss feel better about letting her go after he learns she’s married to a Jew.

This premiere mounting of Rosentrasse harvests a beautifully sincere and technically slick production, perhaps still needing a little definition from Terry Lawrence’s sometimes disappointing book. Although her lyrics to Kinberg’s music spark with direction and flashes of dazzling poetry, Lawrence’s study of this group of ferociously brave women never quite gels into being about individuals whose company we cherish for an overly long two-act play. With some individual honing of these richly promising character studies and a judicious cut of about 20 minutes, this potentially brilliant, intensely personal musical would be ready to take the world by storm—a world so desperately in need of compassion today. Now if only these women were around in 2005 to stand in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and demand some justice and honesty from our own self-engorged political oppressors, the guys whom 49 million Americans wish would release us from their aggressive and narrow-minded grasp.

The Company Rep is located in the Deaf West Theatre Company’s S. Mark Taper Foundation Playhouse, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., NoHo. For tickets, call (866) 811-4111.

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This production of ROSENSTRASSE has been endorsed by: The American Congress of Jewish Survivors, Temple Shalom for The Arts, Steven S. Wise Temple, The German Consulate, The Goethe Society, The Lodzer Of California.

When: Previews – March 10,11,12,13,17 – Gala Opening March 18 – Closing April 16 Thursday thru Saturday – 8:00pm – Sunday – 2:00pm - Thursday/Sunday - $20.00 – Friday/Saturday $22.50

Students $10.00 – Seniors $15.00 – Families with children under 16 $10.00 per ticket

Where: The Company Rep at The S. Mark Taper Foundation Playhouse – 5112 Lankershim Blvd. – North Hollywood, Ca. 91602 – Info: 818.506.7550 – www.thecompanyrep.org

CATALPA

Alliance Repertory Company

Remember those Busby Berkeley movies where impossibly large and expansive scenes emerged from the stage of a theatre, complete with cuts to tuxedoed audience members applauding a show they couldn’t possibly really be witnessing?

At one point in Donal O’Kelly’s Catalpa, now returning triumphant to Alliance Rep where it began after touring the country and playing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, lone actor Michael Cassady creates a colossal sea battle for his astounded audience—on the top of a thrift store desk and under the glow of a gooseneck lamp.

A folding umbrella is the battleship, a roll of paper toweling becomes the billowing sails of the grand whaling vessel Catalpa, and a cell phone is the rowboat caught between.

The amazing thing is, unlike Berkeley and the illusions Hollywood can conjure, Cassady makes us believe it’s actually unfolding before our unblinking eyes. And all this in an 80-minute performance featuring one extraordinary actor playing all the characters himself and single-handedly creating every clever special effect.

Cassady had previously won Best Actor honors in my annual Ticketholder Awards for his smashing performance in the controversial Shyness Is Nice in 2003 and was nominated for an Ovation Award the same year as part of the extraordinary ensemble cast of The Hostage, both at Alliance Rep. But as much as I already admired his work in those productions, he knocked me out all over again with Catalpa. I gave the show "Critic’s Pick" status in both Back Stage West and Entertainment Today when it played last year on this same stage and, subsequently, the piece went on win five stars at the Edinburgh Fest.

In Catalpa, Cassady plays Matthew Kidd, a frustrated young screenwriter who has written a script nobody wants to produce. As he solitarily stews, he kicks himself for not being able to "show them the pictures in my head." Within seconds, however, he does just that, acting out his screenplay in the solitude of his cramped single room. What Cassady as Kidd so magically conjures is the sweeping tale of a real-life captain of a whaling ship which sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1875, off on a secret mission to rescue several members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood imprisoned in an Australian penal colony.

O’Kelly’s play is engaging enough, but what makes this piece sail, if you’ll excuse the expression, is the masterful work of Cassady, who not only looks uncannily like the young Orson Welles but seems to be divining his talents as well. Fabricating each of the 20 or more characters in the screenplay-within-the-play—often playing two characters at once involved in a heated dialogue—Cassady transforms in an instant from the heroic captain to his forlorn wife left behind to the ghost of her shrewish mother who cursed him on her deathbed for going out to sea again. That small desk, two steamer trunks and a bedspread are about the only tools Cassady utilizes to recreate this epic story, morphing them imaginatively into everything from creaking doors to sea-tossed dinghies to rolling black waves. This is punctuated by Cassady frantically shouting the script’s "Fade in, exterior" directions and, when he calls for background noise, it is instantaneously provided by director Kristin Horton’s suitably Homeric sound design.

What is being accomplished for a second time on the tiny Alliance Rep stage is, without exaggeration, one of the most innovative and hypnotic one-person shows in years. Cassady’s collaboration with O’Kelly and Horton distills a heavenly brew, but it would be nothing without one remarkable ingredient: the commitment and unstoppable talent of this courageous young actor, who takes his audience right there as he creates every scurvy deckhand, every graceful seabird, every weather condition. Michael Cassady’s work is pure sorcery.

Alliance Repertory Theatre is located at 3204 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. For tickets, call (800) 595-4849.

Comments? Write to us at: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

Floyd Collins

West Coast Ensemble

It’s amazing what director Richard Israel, his actors and designers have accomplished with the Los Angeles premiere of Tina Landau and Adam Guettel’s quirky little musical Floyd Collins, based on the true story of a man who crawled into a Kentucky cave in 1925 and never came out.

Guettel’s score is the first thing of note here, with brilliant flashes of Stephen Sondheim and a good helping of Frank Wildhorn, which I don’t necessarily mean as a good thing. If at first the music didn’t quite call to me, however, I’m assured by someone closely involved with this production that the score grows on you until "you can’t stop hearing it in your head," the true sign of a future classic. Musical director Johanna Kent has pulled the gifted ensemble cast together into precision harmonies and outstanding individual vocal performances, none more than Bryce Ryness in the title role, who conquers a difficult task even if his character ultimately loses: yodeling a duet with himself on tape—as he lies with his back on the stage, trapped up to his thighs under an invisible boulder. There’s also great promise in a rousing number called "The Carnival" near the top of Act Two, as three cub reporters stationed with the media circus which has overtaken the proceedings (Denny Downs, Alex Kaufman and Brian Weir, one of the most infectiously talented young LA stage actors on the scene) perform a spirited big band era routine that would make the Andrew Sisters pale in comparison.

Evan A. Bartoletti’s ingenious set is the next thing of magic, transforming almost the entire house into a network of simple roughhewn wooden planks, allowing Floyd to enter crawling around the periphery of the theatre along a narrow passage high above the audience’s heads that leads to the stage. As Floyd explores his Sand Cave on Bee Doyle’s farm in the aptly named Barren County, Kentucky, Ryness disappears into a stage-left hole at one point, emerging moments later from a crawl space under the stage which opens just in front of WCE’s front row seats. The effect is truly amazing, although I can’t help wondering how many splinters Ryness has had to extract from his posterior regions since this show opened.

Roger Befeler is the newest cast member, now appearing as Homer, Floyd’s determined brother, and it’s hard to imagine the chemistry between two actors playing siblings getting any better. As their sometimes vacant sister Nellie, Dana Reynolds gives the best, most unadorned and solidly committed performance of her many turns on LA stages in recent years, particularly in the second act ballad "Through the Mountain." David Kaufman is endearing as Skeets Miller, a fledgling small-town reporter caught into the hub of the struggle to rescue Floyd, and Larry Lederman and Andrea Covell are sweetly memorable as Floyd’s confused father and his weary companion. From the talented ranks note a knockout young singer/actor named David Nadeau, who in his heartfelt WCE debut marks an auspicious beginning. With a voice like Keith Carradine and an impressive mastery of his guitar, Nadeau’s poignant solo makes the recurrent "Ballad of Floyd Collins" the song you’re guaranteed to still be humming while leaving the theatre.

Like the poor doomed Floyd’s real life situation, this 2-hour, 10-minute musical doesn’t have very far to go, unfortunately, before things begin to get claustrophobic. But as good as it feels to get up and walk back into the (relatively) fresh air of La Brea Avenue, the sad story of Floyd Collins will haunt you later on, I assure you. There are many kinds of American heroes—how good Landau, Guettel and the good folks at WCE are to introduce us to a forgotten guy who deserves our attention.

West Coast Ensemble is located at 522 N. La Brea, Hollywood. For tickets, call (323) 525-0022. Extended to May 1, 2005!

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Click here for a previous review of Floyd Collins

Happy End

Pacific Resident Theatre

Pacific Resident Theatre inaugurated their much-revered tenancy as one of our town’s most impressive theatre companies in 1985 with the offbeat and impossibly non-commercial 1929 Bertholt Brecht-Kurt Weill 1929 musical Happy End. As part of their 20^th anniversary season, PRT has revived the production with a strikingly bold mounting directed by Dan Bonnell that all but smells like the entire auditorium has suddenly been transported back into becoming a tiny, dank back alley cabaret in the free-spirited—and still uncensored—Berlin of the 1920s.

An oddly noticeable precursor to Frank Loesser’s later classic musical Guys and Dolls, if this work was inspired by the same source, Damon Runyon’s story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, the authors never admitted to it. Instead, Happy End was instead attributed to a mythical muse named Dorothy Lane and, in the original German, to a possibly also fictitious Elizabeth Hauptman. Set in the ragtag gang-run Chicago of 1919, Brecht’s topic was hardly an unfamiliar tale in its time, with a scandalous romance between a roughneck misfit and a comely communal reformer explored by everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Edward Sheldon.
Chris Shaw, Bill Lithgow, Rebecca Crandall and Andy Parks (in Bill's Beerhall)	Brecht and Weill’s version, however, was the most overtly and unapologetically political, with the hardnosed Clark & Division Street bar owner and minor gangster Bill Cracker (suitably ominous looking softie Timothy V. Murphy) a perfect foil for dissent when locked in a socially-challenged love-hate relationship with Canal Street Mission Salvation Army worker Sister Lillian Holiday (Leslie Fera). It’s "hard times for Hallelujah Lil" when she and her band of do-gooders (Amy Huntington, Tracie Lockwood, Norman Scott, Sarah Brooke, and hilarious show-stealer Matthew Atkins) march in to preach The Word at Cracker’s rowdy northside beer hall, home to The Fly (Martha Hackett) and her scurvy gang of thieves and assassins.
Happy End is a wonderfully broad and silly send-up of what Europeans of the era thought of us murderous and incredibly uncivilized Americans. Come to think of it, not much has changed in that regard, has it? The outspokenly critical and quirky writing of Brecht, linked with the stridently non-melodic music of Weill, achieved unexpected public notice in those vaguely ominous yet still relatively carefree pre-WWII days for their controversial and succès de scandale-tinged collaborations:	Timothy Murphy as Bill Cracker, and Lesley Fera as Sister Lillian Holiday
Chris Shaw (as Dr. Nakamura) and Tassos Pappas (as Baby Face)	The Threepenny Opera in 1928; then this one, its quasi-sequel, the following year; and in 1930 with the debut of their expansive full-length opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which they had written simultaneously with Happy End in 1929. One historian called their partnership something that grabbed onto the "corrupted, enfeebled diatonicism of commercial music" and used it as a weapon of social criticism, though paradoxically the pair soon became the epitome of a culture they originally professed to so adamantly despise.

And of course, as the power of corruption overtook Germany, both men fled to America—and legendary Hollywood film success.

There are haunting strains of what was to be and what came before it in the delightfully discordant score of Happy End, notably The Sailors’ Tango and The Mandalay Song, both of which are instantly reminiscent of some of Weill’s more famous works. And you just know Brecht and Weill were continuously ready to even spoof themselves, as when Lil delivers her plaintive but atonal lament Surabaya Johnny and afterwards a character onstage comments, "The song you sing… It was just couched in the vernacular a bit." Dean Mora is more than a knockout musical accompanist as he sits throughout at the onstage piano and gives the audience a wink-wink-nudge-nudge heads-up about what is going to happen next in the play, offering such introductions to scenes and songs as: "And now, the despair of a lonely criminal."

Awards are in order everywhere here, especially for the boldly confident vision of director Bonnell and the phenomenal, fiercely committed ensemble cast. As the cartoon-like collection of suitably slimy gang members, William Lithgow, Andrew Parks, Tassos Pappas, Barry Kramer and Christopher Shaw couldn’t be better. How I would have loved being present at rehearsals when costumer designer Audrey Eisner fitted that particularly eclectic bunch of oddball characters with their bizarre collection of wigs and facial hair, false foreheads, cosmetically-altered slanted eyes, and even one decidedly piggish cheek/nose device for Pappas. What wonderful tools they instantly must have been to help these willing actors discover a whole new physical abandon to help tune their performances to such a vibrant pitch. Carolyn Mignini must also be praised for her sharply on-target musical direction and the design team of Charles Erven and Travis Gale Lewis (set and scenic design), Jeremy Pivnik (lighting) and Jeff Henry (sound) must also be wholeheartedly commended.

Played in a consistent and brazenly stylistic manner by a cast obviously given total artistic license and trust by a director with an eye for whimsy, this raucous and delightful version of Happy End couldn’t be better. This must be as close as one can get to personally experiencing this kind of brave experimental theatre which energized Berlin just before the days when some twisted guy on a horrific mission put an end to free thought for awhile. We can all celebrate that freedom and mourn its loss these next few weeks right here at PRT.

The Pacific Resident Theatre is located at 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. For tickets, call (310) 822-8392.

Comments? Write to us at: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

“Happy End” will run January 22 – May 1, 2005 .

Performances are Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm .

Pacific Resident Theatre

703 Venice Blvd.,

Venice, CA.

Tickets are $22-$27

Reservations (310) 822-8392 .

Songs for a New World

Rubicon Theatre

The Rubicon Theatre in Ventura has become a place where the work is guaranteed to be so good that it’s actually worth the drive—and this from a dedicated freeway avoider. Simply, the transfer of Jason Robert Brown’s glorious musical revue Songs for a New World from its modest beginnings at LATC to the Rubicon is testament to the commitment of the company to continually create theatrical magic, this time out removing the seating and the stage from their converted church playhouse and turning the entire venue into the environmental Santa Maria Café, a mythical beach city coffeehouse where four people try to make sense of their lives by singing their little hearts out.

The staging and inspiration for this exciting New World is Playwrights Arena’s resident wünderkind Jon Lawrence Rivera, who has reconceived this hot musical theatre composer’s song cycle into a true event. He introduces a quartet of seemingly incongruent characters who begin the evening alone and lost in not so private thought as part of the audience. As the lights slowly dim, their voices emanate from four different inconspicuous locations as they sit around the hip two-story space with the rest of us, an eclectic conglomeration of cozy tables, chairs and couches huddled around the room in Trefoni Michael Rizzi’s incredibly innovative one-time redesign of the Rubicon.

The performers walk through the crowds, singing from tabletops, squatting on the arms of patrons’ overstuffed easy chairs and even, for the ever-game Cindy Benson, descending from a brass fireman’s pole.Benson, the rubber-faced, enormous-voiced musical Kathryn Joosten of my generation, is at her glorious best here as a troubled wealthy housewife escaping a bad marriage, beautifully complimented by Anthony Manough as the coffeehouse’s bartender (Manough really does just that before and during the show, it seems, or it’s a clever ruse that got me) waiting for a break, and fresh-faced ingénues Joan Almedilla and Kevin Odekirk are delightful as a pair of star-crossed lovers who finally get to share a sweet duet or two.

In the unstoppable directorial hands of Rivera, these lovable characters ruminate about their disappointments and dreams, their lives intersecting around us through Brown’s insightful, almost Sondheim-esque score. There’s nothing whatsoever to dish here—the four actors are superb, both in performance and vocally, and the whimsical choreography of Kitty McNamee has just the right attitude, as always. With a top-drawer design team well in place—particularly Steven Young’s lighting and Drew Dalzell’s sound design, both of which must have been a considerable challenge in this space—it would be hard to find a better way to spend a couple of hours, complete with refreshments, snacks and desserts served.

There’s a lot of talk about Songs for a New World returning triumphant back here to Los Angeles in the near future where Rivera’s masterpiece began. Anyone know a great vacant warehouse? Send along any suggestions and we’ll be sure to pass ‘em along.

The Rubicon Theatre is located at 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. For tickets, call (805) 667-2900.

Comments? Write to us at: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown

Musical Direction by Brent Crayon

Choreography by Kitty McNamee

Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera

As You Like It

Ahmanson Theatre
It’s all about the language for venerated director Sir Peter Hall and there’s nothing more beautiful to hear than the words of ol’ Will himself. Hall’s current mounting of As You Like It, one of the Bard’s cleverest and most accessible comedies, celebrates the words above all else, clearly and unashamedly. And here at the cavernous Ahmanson Theatre, as with everything presented by the Center Theatre Group, the production is brilliantly classy and, awash in designer John Gunter’s huge vistas of glorious shades of reds and oranges and browns, absolutely stunning to survey. Shakespeare’s crafty tale of misinformed identities and the silly nature of moondoggie love looks wonderful and sounds on this stage; it is a fitting tribute to the enduring quality of this one man’s great artistry with words.

Rebecca Hall

Still, there are problems. As with his production of Romeo and Juliet at this same theatre a few seasons back, Sir Peter’s direction is again surprisingly languid and stiff.

As exceptional as is this hugely talented cast and as sweeping as is the production design, when the third hour extends past the 12 on that watch you so surreptitiously check, it becomes apparent there needs to be a passion about the work that in general just isn’t there.

The major exception is Dan Stevens as the lovestruck Orlando, whose spermy-hazed ardor for his Rosalind is at once touching and delightfully goofy.

The powers-that-be took a major chance offering this "callow beardless boy" his professional stage debut in such a pivotal role, but it was a bet that paid off like gangbusters, as his performance is most impressive. The exceptional supporting cast, particularly the veteran white-bearded contingent, including James Laurenson as Duke Frederick and Duke Senior, Phillip Voss as Jaques, David Barnaby as Corin and the remarkably ballsy Michael Siberry as everyone’s favorite dose of necessary comic relief, Touchstone, all score high points.

Rebecca Callard, Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens,

Freddie Stevenson

Rebecca Callard is a sweetly notable Celia, especially in her scenes with Miss Hall, and both David Birkin as the woebegone Silvius and James Crossley as the muscle-bound Charles (and later as the simpleminded William), each steal the show with their every entrance.

In the leading role, Rebecca Hall is a lovely, most fitting Rosalind, looking all properly rigid and eastern seaboard schoolgirl in her character’s own clothes, then very J Crew as the banished girl transforms into her male counterpart, Gannymede. Still, I would love to see Miss Hall directed by someone other than her father, someone who could break her of repetitively accentuated vowels, knowing smirks and continuously rolling eyes, all of which make her Rosalind initially very interesting, very human, very contemporary for a girl who’s been around since 1598. But those same mannerisms begin to wear thin after a while—not to mention they must add an extra 15 minutes to an already long, long evening at the theatre. Plan to meet your friends for a drink before the show, because afterwards, you’ll be far too weary to party.

The Ahmanson Theatre is located in the LA Music Center, 135 N. Grand Av. in downtown LA. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772. 02/09/05

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Medea

Theatre @ Boston Court

To me, the gloriously-appointed Theatre @ Boston Court is the one to watch in Los Angeles, for not only do they repeatedly turn out stunningly lush productions celebrating the work of our town’s best designers, they take creative chances no one else would imagine when starting a new theatrical enterprise—especially in Pasadena, where the average age of Pasadena Playhouse subscription patrons is about 87. After the stubborn success of their inaugural season, which featured colorblind mountings of Romeo & Juliet set in Antebellum New Orleans and the Southern California debut of Charles L. Mee’s Summertime, as well as the American premiere of Chay Yew’s A Winter People, and the world premieres of Cold/Tender by Cody Henderson and Light by Jean-Claude van Italie, T@BC was honored with three Ovation Awards, an LA Weekly Award, a NAACP Award, and four current nominations from the LA Drama Critics Circle. Beginning T@BC’s second season is another triumph, the world premiere of Paul Roche’s remarkable translation of Euripides’ classic Medea, sharply directed by Stefan Novinski, who garnered LA Weekly Awards for his amazing Skin of Our Teeth at the Evidence Room last year and previously for Fen and Cosmonaut’s Last Message at the Open Fist.

To say this guy is an innovator in our culturally deprived city is a given, especially when he keeps topping himself again and again. On Donna Marquet’s strikingly high-tech steel and concrete block professional kitchen set, the title character (Lisa Tharps, in another instance of bold casting) plots her revenge against her husband Jason (Andrew Borba), who is about to marry the king’s daughter and send Medea off into exile with their two young sons.	Lisa Tharps
	As the wedding banquet rages on in the adjacent unseen ballroom, the kitchen workers replace the traditional Greek Chorus behind Medea’s rage as they dice cucumbers and prepare the appetizers, a concept which is a stroke of theatrical genius. Amid the stores of industrial-sized canned foods and the long bank of stovetops, under the ominous hanging hoods of florescent lighting and augmented by the sounds of the gleaming stainless cutlery that constantly chops and dices and portends of dastardly things to come, Medea conjures her infamous plot.
Novinski’s rare Medea features uniformly genuine performances in both the large and smaller roles. Tharps is mesmeric throughout, segueing from incredible sorrow to exhausted humor to incredibly cold heartlessness in the silvery flash of that ominous butcher knife symbolically stuck in a cutting board, and Borba is especially moving after his spurned wife takes away everything he loves and Marquet’s set has turned particularly Kafka-esque.	Andrew Borba - Lisa Tharps

Alaina Reed Hall uses her large voice to full effect as the Nurse, and a quartet of some of LA’s best character men, Adam Gregor, Nick Salamone, Peter Trencher and Jeff Marlow, each make incredible points in brief appearances as, respectively, King Creon, Aegeus, the sons’ tutor, and the poor messenger who must relate the details of Medea’s murderous rampage to its very architect.

Jonathan Biggs and Garrett Julian (alternating with Damante Ballard, Ryan Weltzien and Ryan Dozier) are sufficiently heartbreaking as the innocent doomed sons, but it’s the women of that pioneering chorus of food preparers—Diana Burbano, Jennifer Chu, Jennifer Pennington, Pamela Shaddock, Veronica Thompson and Eileen T’Kaye—who are the backbone of this production. Their ever-varying and highly individual changes in attitude toward what they are watching unfold, their shifting body language and alternating looks of indignation, empathy and anguish, are what the audience identifies with the clearest. It is their simple, subtle expressions of humanity and horror that makes this incredibly powerful Medea so accessible to contemporary audiences.

The Theatre @ Boston Court is located at 70 N. Mentor, Pasadena. For tickets, call (626) 683-6883.

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The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?

Mark Taper Forum

Simply, Edward Albee’s disturbing tragic comedy The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? is the first of his exceptionally prolific body of work to rival Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in importance. It is also his most shocking effort, the most challenging to our societal sense of morality and acceptable behavior, and the only one of his plays where finding oneself laughing is something of a guilty pleasure.

Cynthia Mace and Brian Kerwin

Martin (Brian Kerwin) is a happily married and highly successful architect who celebrates his midlife crisis at age 50 by having an affair with a bucolic beauty of decidedly non-human attributes. He names his four-legged mistress Sylvia because “it seemed to fit her” and, as the tale begins to unfold, he becomes increasingly more puzzled why the people he loves can’t understand what he feels.

He’s tried support groups, a kind of Animalfuckers Anonymous where fellow attendees have “things” for horses, dogs and one very small pig, but he keeps his passion hidden until he spills the oats to his best friend Ross (James Eckhouse). Ross in turn immediately feels compelled to tell Martin’s wife Stevie (Cynthia Mace) so they can plan a strategy to get the poor guy some help. Or at least buy him some stronger cologne.

Warner Shook’s direction is surprisingly facile as Kerwin and Mace pounce and parry around Michael Olich’s suitably claustrophobic Manhattan living room setting, Martin trying to explain himself, Stevie making jokes about her own inadequacy in knowing how to handle this, especially since she only has two breasts and walks upright. No matter how happy or strong a marriage may appear, Stevie admits, there are a lot of ingrained suspicions that pass through a wife’s mind, but “I wonder when he’ll start cruising livestock” is not high among them.

This instant classic is made more accessible by the haunting performances of Kerwin and Mace, who are absolutely flawless in the difficult roles of a couple still in love facing a devastation neither one believes they can possibly survive. In these pivotal roles, Kerwin and Mace are monumentally simple, hilariously funny and, above all, sincerely heartbreaking. Patrick J. Adams makes an auspicious professional stage debut as their teenaged son, whose own admission to homosexuality pales in comparison to his father’s newly unearthed penchant for bestiality. Eckhouse’s most memorable moment comes when Martin extracts Sylvia’s photo from his wallet and passes it to his old friend; without showing it to the audience, his facial expressions describe her right down to the hooves.

Running through Albee’s raucous but always sophisticated humor is the creeping onslaught of tragedy worthy of the ancient Greeks. Just when it seems Martin’s continuous avoidance has become too much, too constricting, Albee pumps up his character with an uncanny strength and even indignation at the reaction of those he loves.

Coming slowly to the realization that the people around him are more concerned with how others will react to his barnyard dalliance than how they feel about it themselves, Martin presents the real theme of this masterfully constructed play. I was instantly reminded of Ayn Rand, who once wrote that most people in the world are “second-handers,” that they live not for themselves, but for how those they encounter in their lives perceive them to be. To me, nothing in this world is more immoral than that. And it’s the true significance of The Goat, the one thing that will make it an enduring piece of theatrical literature for generations to come.

The Mark Taper Forum is located in the LA Music Center, 135 N. Grand Av. in downtown LA. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772.

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ACCOMPLICE

The Colony Theatre

Written by Rupert Holmes
Directed by Simon Levy

Rupert Holmes’ clever thriller Accomplice, winner of the Mystery Guild’s prestigious Edgar Allen Poe Award, is still a delightful old warhorse, filled with more twists and turns than Topanga Canyon after your third gin and tonic. When the original debuted here at Pasadena Playhouse before its successful Broadway run in 1989, featuring Jason Alexander, Michael McKean, Pamela Brull and the amazing Natalija Nogulich, who would have thought this might become a classic in the tradition of The Mousetrap, Dial M for Murder, Sleuth and Deathtrap? Accomplice has become a frequently produced favorite all over the world, but nowhere does it get a more reverent revival then at the Colony, where slickness is so much a operative keyword that its lucky we can all stay in our seats without slipping off.

Directed with tongue firmly in cheek by the Fountain Theatre’s Simon Levy, the Colony continues in its recent tradition of hiring some of the Southland’s finest directors away from their regular chores around town.

And with a cast that features the rubber-faced Larry Cedar as a man who has made evasion his life’s work; Sir Laurence Olivier-clone J. Paul Boehmer as a character who, to burst his bubble, "requires only one little prick;" Samantha Raddock as the quintessential blonde airhead who began an acting career from a "If You Can Read This, You Can Act" matchbook and thinks Circle-in-the-Square is a TV game show; and especially Lisa Pelikan, who can somehow conjure the delivery of both Lauren Bacall and Lucille Ball at one time, obviously this theatre complex is doing something right. There’s not much that could be written about Accomplice without giving away the breakneck twists and turns of the plotline, except to say that, unlike the work of dear Ms. Christie, this one revolves as much around sex (and Pelikan’s nicely distracting gams) as murderous intentions.

Lisa Pelikan - Larry Cedar

Just who is the real Accomplice I couldn’t possibly reveal on pain of horrible death—why, even the Colony’s ever-present sweet and bubbly artistic director Barbara Beckley, infamous for her nightly pre-show fundraising For-Those-of-You-Who-Don’t-Know-Me curtain speech, looks a little suspicious by evening’s end. Better buy a subscription. For tickets, call the Colony Theatre Box Office at 818/558-7000.

Comments? Write to us at: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

ACCOMPLICE will perform through Sunday, March 13. Performances for ACCOMPLICE will be Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm, and Sundays at 2:00pm and 7:00pm. Additionally there will be performances on February 26 at 3:00pm; and also Thursday, March 3 and Thursday, March 10 at 8:00pm. Ticket prices range from $26.00 - $36.00 (student, senior and group discounts are available). All tickets $16.00. Talk-Back performance with the cast on Friday, March 3 immediately following the performance.

The Colony Theatre Company is a 29-year old organization dedicated to bringing the finest-quality theatrical productions to Los Angeles.

The theatre is located at: 555 North Third Street
at the corner of Cypress
Burbank, CA

in the heart of the Burbank Media Center. For further information, call (818) 558-7000. Fax: (818) 558-7110. E-mail: colonytheatre@colonytheatre.org . Or visit our website at www.colonytheatre.ORG.

ReviewPlays.com, 2/25/05

A F**kin’ Christmas Carol

Theatre Neo at the Stella Adler

No, this is not your grandma’s warm-and-fuzzy tale of cranky old Ebenezer and his entourage of ghosties, so it’s best to give the babysitter a few extra hours this week if you’re planning on checking it out.

In A Fkin’ Christmas Carol, Tom Bottlesen’s aptly named and extremely impudent adult adaptation of the classic, the denizens of Dickens’ infamous story use the “F”-word 97 times during the show’s slightly more than an hour running time. Jacob Marley (Damon Standifer) does a tap-dancing Cab Calloway guest spot, the Ghost of Christmas Past (Virginia Schneider) is a stripper who lapdances Scrooge (the hilarious David St. James) into the future, and the old miser’s nephew Fred (Michael Merton) is definitely not engaged to be married—at least not to a woman.	(l to r) JAKE MARLEY (Damon Standifer) visits SCROOGE (David St. James) during happy hour.
SCROOGE (David St. James) gets a visit from a lap-dancing GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST (Virginia Schneider)	A Fkin’ Christmas Carol is wickedly inventive fun and, as usual, the gifted people from Theatre Neo are in top form. It’s a wonderful non-warm-and-fuzzy evening out for those of us who are still fighting the urge to jump off the Hollywood Sign after the results of the November elections—you know, those of us who, to celebrate the holidays, would like to boil a few Midwesterners in their own pudding and bury one prominent Texan with a stick of holly through the nylon rear end of his ceremonial flight suit.
But as fkin’ short as it is and as fkin’ clever as is the fkin’ concept by Bottelsen and director Eric Mofford, I also must fkin’ admit that A Fkin’ Christmas Carol does fkin’ border on fkin’ one-joke-wonder status after a f**kin’ while. The script could have been more delightfully twisted if it stayed as irreverent as it begins, but Scrooge still wakes up Christmas Day to have the same tired epiphany that the world is all happy-happy-joy-joy.	- (front row) YOUNG JENNY (Emily Haase) and YOUNG SCROOGE (Tripp Pickell) can't seem to hold their liquor as the NARRATOR (Patrick Thomas Gorman) reacts.

Now, if he stayed as much of a foul-mouthed jerk as ever, if he had the turkey from the butcher shop around the corner delivered to his house instead and insisted that Cratchit send over his wife to cook it for him or he’ll lose his job, if that f**kin’ annoying whiner Tiny Tim died after all, wouldn’t that be more in keeping with the humor here? For tickets, call (323) 769-5858.

Send your f**kin' comments to: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

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* PICK OF THE WEEK * Out of Time nom de guerre at the Paul E. Richards Theatre Place The origins of nom de guerre Theatre Company’s newest venture, Out of Time, could not be more fascinating. Conceived last year and implemented with Stay Happy, Stay Sweet at the same theatre, the company’s projects start with a totally blank slate and director Guillermo Cienfuegos’ respect for the work of filmmaker Mike Leigh. Cienfuegos spent four months free of script or storyline developing Out of Time, rehearsing his actors individually while each created a character from scratch. After they had separately invented a complete personal back story and felt committed to their characters, they were "introduced," brought together in intense improvisational encounters, sometimes in public. As they continued this process in concert, the relationships between the characters developed and widened, resulting in this arresting—though this time out somewhat imperfect—piece of uniquely original theatre. The reason this works so well is that these six actor/co-creators—Melody Doyle, Terrance Elton, Alex Fernandez, Wendy Johnson, Tom Lenoci and Rachel Malkenhorst—are all such intelligent, inventive, interesting performers. However, tackling this process with six characters rather than last year’s three results in an evening that becomes too long—and too indulgent. The encounters between Johnson and Lenoci, so reminiscent of the actors’ charisma together several year’s ago with the now New York-based Relentless Theatre Company’s knockout production of The Crackwalker, are the golden moments here, astoundingly unswerving and grounded despite the eccentric nature of the characters themselves. This relationship alone would be worth a production, without their tale alternating with—and interrupted by—the other four. Doyle and Elton have both created fascinating characters which are sadly not explored enough. The death of the father of Doyle’s character seems to have been thrown in just to have somewhere for her to go, while Elton’s outrageously gay waiter could have traveled to many places which never, if you’ll excuse the expression, come to fruition. The biggest problem here is that Fernandez and Malkenhorst’s depiction of a weary, suspicious couple picking off the scabs of our modern day dating scene dominates the evening, but proves to be the least interesting. Their characters, in an attempt to be glib and witty and urbane, end up being the ones about whom we care the least. What these two extremely gifted actors missed was something the others found—commitment to an all-new persona, rather than trying to present a sexy single version of themselves. Malkenhorst throws off one-liners cavalierly while presenting an endless runway show of trendy outfits and skimpy exercise wear, while Fernandez’ succession of black t-shirts with quirky slogans is more distracting than worthwhile. Tackling this process with six characters rather than last year’s three is the factor which makes the difference this year and, although a bit too ambitious, I stress wholeheartedly that Out of Time is still a remarkable accomplishment worthy of our attention, a testament to the simple origins of storytelling which has kept theatre alive since the beginning of time. I can’t wait to see what Cienfuegos & Company come up with next time. For tickets, call (323) 401-6585.
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Last year at this time, Ken Roht brought his second annual extravaganza of virtuoso holiday lunacy to The Evidence Room. Featuring sets and costuming using items culled strictly from 99-Cent Only Stores, Splendor centered around a surrealistic Buck Rogers-meets-Wizard of Oz battle, fought with oven mitts and plastic dip trays, over the right to worship an androgynous boy soprano named Golden Boy. Thirty of Los Angeles’ bravest artisans eagerly put their trust in Roht, the most persuasively manic counterculture musical auteur since Busby Berkeley.
Roht’s Orphean Circus returns to the ER but their number has grown significantly, as 50 uniquely gifted performers and 20 designers collaborate on another wacky descent into Roht-dom. Governed by a scatting mayor (Raul Clayton Staggs), a happy Seussical-ian village is overrun by Hollow Mirror Man (Mark Bringleson, a WASP-y Cab Calloway back in Betty Boop Hell). An all-singing, all-dancing Peace Squad, performing songs inspired by Korean pop tunes, joins forces with a charming gaggle of children to depose the oppressor and conclude with Splendor’s same rocking finale—including pelting the audience with inflatable beach balls.
	Roht’s spectacular choreography defies every rule, perfectly complimented by John Ballinger’s infectious score and Roht’s wonderfully silly lyrics—including a rap song about 99-Cent Store goods that even rhymes the word “expectorant.” The uniquely talented ensemble couldn’t be better, moving around each other’s saran-wrapped bodies with well-rehearsed precision.
Last year’s Golden Boy Chris Dane returns but, a couple of feet taller and deeper voiced at age 15, it’s explained that Golden Boy was so moved by the Peace Squad he changed his name to Chris and joined their ranks. Although I missed Dane’s knockout solo number which ended last year’s show with jaw-dropping amazement, he is still a charismatic standout in this year’s inimitable cast. Even featuring this Cast of Near-Thousands, the most delightful collection of LA’s best zanily eclectic performers gathered since Pamela Gordon’s memorial (including rubber-faced Actors’ Gang denizen Gary Kelley; Alma’s best Alma, Ryan Templeton; the golden-voiced Hope Levy; and ER stalwarts Beth Mack, O-Lan Jones and the irrepressible Kirk Wilson as last year’s discarded Ming the Merciless-esque villain King Crustie), it must be said that the star of the show is again the outrageously whimsical Garland Award-winning costuming by Ann Closs-Farley and her crew, resplendent with bathmat corsets, overskirts fashioned from laundry baskets, dangling votive candleholder earrings, and tablecloth gowns accessorized by tap-on closet lights. This year’s chapter of 99-Cent goofiness should be another sell-out, a new Los Angeles holiday tradition certainly worth celebrating. Comments? Write to us at: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

CRITIC’S PICK OF THE WEEK Caroline, or Change Ahmanson Theatre Just when all odds are in for the award sweepstakes this year, the knockout Caroline, or Change arrives from New York in the 11^th hour—featuring most of its original Broadway cast—and changes everything. Perhaps the most important musical chronicle of America’s sometimes rocky past since Ragtime, Caroline features a haunting score by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie) and surprisingly simple yet insightful script and lyrics by Tony Kushner, who enters bold new playwriting territory as he tops all his Angels in America Emmys and Tonys with this majestic accomplishment. Taking place in Louisiana in 1963 around the time of Kennedy’s assassination ("Our almost friend has gone away," Caroline sings) and in the midst of the civil rights movement, the title has a dual meaning: the barrage of social changes which churn around an upper-middleclass southern Jewish family dealing with the death of the mother, and the bitter but proud $30-a-week black maid (Tonya Pinkins), a poverty-level single parent who mourns her dreams—and fantasizes about being kissed by Nat King Cole—as she does her employers’ laundry. Although Caroline is a simple little tale of acceptance and relationships which cross ethnic and social lines, it works remarkably well on the massive Ahmanson stage, as Caroline’s daydreams come alive to sing their hearts out in the family’s basement—characters with names such as the Washing Machine (Capathia Jenkins), the Dryer (Chuck Cooper), the Moon (Aisha de Haas), and a three-girl Supreme-like trio collectively known as the Radio (Tracy Nicole Chapman, Marva Hicks and Kenna Ramsey). Riccardo Hernandez’ versatile set opens inventively to accommodate Caroline’s escape into her dream world, then reduces again to a bleakly dank basement ("There is no underground in Louisiana, only underwater") to show the struggles and true emptiness of her daily life.
Caroline is adored by the Gellman family’s young son Noah (11-year-old Benjamin Platt, in an amazing debut performance), who sees her as a majestic heroine despite the fact that the maid is nothing but cold and purposely unfeeling toward him in return. But in the evenings, as she sits on her shanty porch at home and his bed is flown in on the other side of the stage, the two quasi-friends converse in their individual thoughts, which for him are intertwined with visions of using his allowance to buy comic books, bubblegum, and Barbie doll dresses on the sly (after all, the character is based on Kushner himself as a child).
Noah has a habit of leaving his change in his pants pockets, which Caroline dutifully deposits in a cup on the washer. This infuriates Noah’s new stepmother (Veanne Cox), who tells the boy and Caroline that the maid may keep any money he leaves behind. At first fiercely resistant to the idea, Caroline soon becomes conflicted, especially with the approach of Christmas and considering her desperate lack of funds to help make it a happy one for her three kids.
George C. Wolfe’s direction is nothing short of inspired, as are virtually all the performances, particularly Tony winner Anika Noni Rose as Caroline’s defiant daughter, the voice of a brave new generation; the astonishingly honest and charismatic Platt (who alternates with Sy Adamowsky in the role); and Cox as his weary stepmother who seems ever-ready to say and do absolutely the wrong thing as she struggles for an acceptance of her own.
David Costabile is also a standout as Noah’s distant dad, who plays a series of mean clarinet solos as he silently mourns the loss of his first wife (and tells his son, "A boy of your age should sleep without a light on and your mother is dead and there is no God" in one sorrowful breath). Alice Playton and Reathel Bean are also wonderful as Noah’s paternal grandparents, as is Larry Keith as his new politically cranky step-grandfather. Of course, the fact that Pinkins lost the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical this season in the title role is more than a tad disheartening, as she gives one of the finest musical theatre turns in American history—particularly in the riveting Act Two solo "Lot’s Wife," in which she offers the most memorable musical theatre performance in song since Ethel Merman first stepped onstage and sang "Rose’s Turn" in Gypsy several decades ago. Followed by that other major disappointment in balloting this year—you know, the one that so unbelievably affects the very future of democracy and presents Americans as complete idiots worldwide—obviously things are a’changin’ again since we fought the good fight thirtysomething years ago. I can only surmise it must have been all those mysteriously clueless people in the Red States who voted for the Tonys this year as well. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772. Comments? Write to us at: Letters@Reviewplays.com

The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?

The Evidence Room

Eat Me

A Winter People

Theatre @ Boston Court

Reprinted from Entertainment Today - 09-04-04

Theater District

at the Black Dahlia

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Celebration Theatre

Mamma Mia!

Pantages Theatre

Enchanted April

Pasadena Playhouse

Matt & Ben

Acme Comedy Theatre

Joe Fria & Dorie Barton (Back: Tara Chocol & Liz Davies)	Flow My Tears was the only one of Dick’s works that he allowed to be transferred to the stage, mainly because it was adapted by his "special" friend Linda Hartinian. First staged at the original Culver City version of the Evidence Room in 1999, Tears has now flowed over to the artistically unquenchable home of LA’s best counter-culture theatre company in celebration of their 10^th anniversary, directed for the second time around by ER’s equally unquenchable artistic director Bart DeLorenzo.
Somewhere during that brief jaunt to Zurich, poor Jason (Joe Fria, who works as though Humphrey Bogart has studied physical comedy with Jerry Lewis) is somehow stripped of his identity—a capital offense on 1998, it seems. No one recognizes the guy whose latest hit recording, "Nowhere Nothing Fuck-up," is number one on the charts, replaced in this alternate nightmare world by Louis Panda’s "Memory of Your Nose." Not even his longtime paramour Heather (ER regular Dorie Barton) has a clue who he is, sending him deeper and deeper into the underworld to try to survive his stalking by Javert-obsessive police inspector Felix Buckman (Tony Maggio).	Joe Fria
Dorie Barton & Joe Fria	Along the way, he encounters a series of voluptuous Dick-ian women, including ID forger Kathy Nelson (the always-delightful Liz Davies, foggy-voiced star of Michael Sargent’s American Nympho at ER); scorned paramour Marilyn Mason (a sadly underused Wendy Johnson); and Alys Buckman (Tara Chocol), sexually insatiable sister and lover of the pursuing cop. There are a pair of knockout cameos by Lauren Campedelli as a crusty barfly with whom we can all identify when she suddenly screams out, "I hate LA!" (to which Jason responds, "So do I. So do all of us. Live with it") and Colleen Kane as a sweetly dysfunctional potter who has more interest in getting her recently finished wares to the post office to mail off to a boutique in Northern California (some things never change) than come on to the guy like every other woman does. Photos by: Sibyl Wickersheimer

	The staging and inspiration for this exciting New World is Playwrights Arena’s resident wünderkind Jon Lawrence Rivera, who has reconceived this hot musical theatre composer’s song cycle into a true event. He introduces a quartet of seemingly incongruent characters who begin the evening alone and lost in not so private thought as part of the audience. As the lights slowly dim, their voices emanate from four different inconspicuous locations as they sit around the hip two-story space with the rest of us, an eclectic conglomeration of cozy tables, chairs and couches huddled around the room in Trefoni Michael Rizzi’s incredibly innovative one-time redesign of the Rubicon.

The performers walk through the crowds, singing from tabletops, squatting on the arms of patrons’ overstuffed easy chairs and even, for the ever-game Cindy Benson, descending from a brass fireman’s pole.Benson, the rubber-faced, enormous-voiced musical Kathryn Joosten of my generation, is at her glorious best here as a troubled wealthy housewife escaping a bad marriage, beautifully complimented by Anthony Manough as the coffeehouse’s bartender (Manough really does just that before and during the show, it seems, or it’s a clever ruse that got me) waiting for a break, and fresh-faced ingénues Joan Almedilla and Kevin Odekirk are delightful as a pair of star-crossed lovers who finally get to share a sweet duet or two.