Its plans to open its new season with the local premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal gone awry, New Village Arts instead launched Season 12 with Bernard Slade’s 1975 romantic comedy Same Time, Next Year. It’s light and fluffy fare, with a few moments of genuine heartache. Real-life couple Manny and Melissa Fernandes obviously have crackerjack chemistry as married George from Jersey and married Doris from Oakland, who meet once a year at the same hotel for a tryst. The twist to the trysting is that they share much more than just sex.
Some of Same Time, Next Year feels old hat (Doris’ going into labor in front of a frantic George), and the nods to hippiedom, Vietnam and women’s lib won’t surprise anyone. But this is a story that purposely spans that era, and we’re reminded by a well-chosen musical soundtrack between scenes. The times they were a-changin’.
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City of the Angels indeed. The L.A. Chicano’s long struggle for justice continues today, even with nearly 30 percent of Los Angeles’ population Mexican and a mayor named Villaraigosa. Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit, being staged for the first time in 17 years by San Diego Repertory Theatre, is a reminder of how bad it once was, and of how far we as a multicultural society still have to go.
This production of Valdez’s 1979 play about the Zoot Suit Riots of the ‘40s is venturesome: a sprawling cast (including Culture Clash’s Herbert Siguenza), an on-stage orchestra, a versatile set enhanced by projected timelines and historical documentations, and costumes (designed by Mary Larson) for everyone from cops and sailors on shore leave to the flamboyant pachucas and pachucos. Directed by Kirsten Brandt, whom Valdez says is the first woman to ever do so, this Zoot Suit is also a partnership between the Rep and the San Diego School for Creative and Performing Arts. Foot-tapping swing music from the band and vigorous choreography by Javier Velasco enliven what is a lengthy affair, especially the first half. The drama is ratcheted up in the second act, when wrongly convicted pachuco Henry Reyna (Lakin Valdez) agonizes in prison and a strident reporter hellbent on freeing him, Alice Bloomfield (Jo Anne Glover) becomes his reason to keep believing. The Calvary-like persecution of the play’s spectral, ever-present El Pachuco (Raul Cardona) is a heavy-handed ploy, but a scene in solitary between Henry and the figure he realizes is inside him is an a-ha moment that doesn’t shout its significance. Lakin Valdez is intensity personified as Henry, and Glover’s Alice is at once fiercely committed and vulnerable. Siguenza, in multiple roles, is a welcome presence, and Cardona is a too-cool El Pachuco, though his singing gets drowned out by the band and backup chorus. With its knife fights, swing-dance sequences and one hilariously ribald second-act number, “Hardball,” Zoot Suit is packed, perhaps overly packed, with action, and the pachucos’ winning of their appeal transpires without build-up. Yet this is a passionate work with cultural gravity and a sense of history. While illuminating the complexity beneath the Soviet-Afghan war, J.T. Rogers’ Blood and Gifts also places the wrongheaded conflict in a human context. The play, making its West Coast premiere at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum, is a spy story with a soul. James (Kelly AuCoin), an operative from the United States, which is secretly funding the Afghan response, is in the crosshairs of the Middle Eastern intrigue. So are his British counterpart, Simon (Daniel Pearce), Russian agent Dmitri (Triney Sandoval) and Khan (Demosthenes Chrysan), an Afghan chieftain. Owing to the eloquence of Rogers’ script and taut direction by Lucie Tiberghien, these four are not mere white hats or black hats. They are men of strengths and frailties, foes by sociopolitical definition who care about their causes but also about each other in a way that makes each a sympathetic figure.
Blood and Gifts’ riveting story is enhanced by Kris Stone’s dramatic but understated scenic design. Matt Richards’ evocative lighting contrasts shadowy, wartorn Afghanistan with ivory tower Washington, D.C. Among a stellar cast, Pearce and Sandoval soar as American James’ counterparts inside Afghanistan, while the stentorian Chrysan is able to bring moments of tenderness to the role of warlord Khan. The haunting resolution of Blood and Gifts, foreshadowing events pre- and post-9/11, will reside in you – and trouble your heart. When asked if she believed in love at first sight, Mae West famously replied “I don’t know, but it sure saves time.”
That’s one of the storied Mae-isms that populate actress-playwright Claudia Shear and James Lapine’s Dirty Blonde, which is wrapping up the season at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town. Part tribute, part send-up, Dirty Blonde is a campy one-act play with musical numbers, tirelessly performed by a cast of only three. Melinda Gilb does double duty: as Mae West from her vaudeville days through her octogenarian self-parody, and as Jo, a present-day would-be actress who’s a fan. Steve Gunderson inhabits a variety of roles, the chief one being Charlie, a bespectacled longtime Mae devotee who feels his fandom to a surprising extreme. David McBean tackles a handful of peripheral characters, of both genders. Comprised of short scenes that flit between past and present, Dirty Blonde tells the parallel stories of Mae West’s eyebrow-raising emergence and inevitable decline and Jo and Charlie’s awkward friendship. With virtually no props and only a projection screen as backdrop, the play relies on the actors’ physicality, the over-the-top gowns and all those Mae West one-liners. Mae and Jo aren’t the only ones wearing the gowns, by the way. Turns out Charlie is persuaded (it’s not clear why) by Mae to dress up like her one day, and this becomes a habit he can’t break. Dirty Blonde, which Shear performed to acclaim on Broadway in 2000, could just as easily function as a howling drag revue, and if fully “musicalized” someday, Dirty Blonde could be more fun than Legally Blonde. At Cygnet, it’s wink-wink, cross-dressing fun, although rather wearying. Mae West herself was so overboard her theatrical characterization needs no help. Perhaps that’s why Jo and Charlie, whether they’re sharing Almond Joys or literally wrestling, have more complexity than the Hollywood icon they both adore. To the very end, no holds are barred in this production. Which brings us to another Mae-ism: “I like restraint – if it doesn’t go too far.” Nobody will accuse Dirty Blonde of being restrained, and if it goes too far, well, Mae would probably be OK with that. Ion Theatre opens its seventh season with the local premiere of Roberto Aguirre Sacasa’s The Mystery Plays, two interconnected one-act works directed by Glenn Paris. The first, The Filmmaker’s Mystery, suggests the playwright’s affection for Hitchcock, for Poe and most of all for fate at its most supernatural. But the tale of a young filmmaker (Ethan Tapley) who meets a charming stranger on a train (Benjamin Cole) and ends up escaping a deadly destiny waffles between melodrama and magical realism, and its spookiness never really takes hold. The more visceral and absorbing Ghost Children features a strong turn by Gemma Grey as a woman reliving the brutal murder of her parents and younger sister by a baseball bat-wielding brother (Nick Kennedy). Grey’s recognition of her culpability is quietly startling, and her struggle to forgive (if not forget) something unspeakable is human and restrained.
Nestled behind our hearts, its chain embedded between sinew and bone, is a pocketwatch dutifully ticking. Each tick brings us closer to our last breath, and none of us knows when that will be. Well, almost none of us. For those whose so-called “mortal clock” ticks away not beside the heart but in the brain, desperation reigns. So goes Marisa Wegrzyn’s play Hickory Dickory, the second offering in Moxie Theatre’s new season. Set in a suburban Chicago clock shop in two time periods, Hickory Dickory plays with the idea of a mortal clock as a metaphor and as a literal timekeeping device. There’s more subtlety and greater emotional resonance in the metaphor and in how the awareness of life’s fleeting nature inspires sacrifice and love. When the mortal clock is tangible, when it can be held and wound and even surgically removed, Hickory Dickory’s reflections lose much of their elegance.
At Moxie, Jennifer Eve Thorn directs a cast of five in which all but one play dual roles. That would be Samantha Ginn, whose raucous Cari Lee, on account of her broken mortal clock, gets to be 17 years old throughout all 18 years of the story. In ripped jeans and baggy T-shirts and part of the time pregnant, Ginn plays most of Hickory Dickory in fourth gear, but hers is a part with definite license to do so. The others in the ensemble – Jo Anne Glover, Justin Lang, John Anderson and the particularly winning Erin Petersen – bring energy and nuance to their respective dual parts without requiring significant costume or makeup changes. At times the shouting on stage is as loud as an old episode of “Maude,” but in junctures where the cast settles into the melody and depth of Wegrzyn’s words, Hickory Dickory is almost prayerful. Besides a delightful clock-shop set designed by Jennifer Brawn Gittings, the production relies heavily upon the visual theatrics of a pair of mortal-clock surgeries, complete with meticulously mixed anesthetic concoctions and modest stage blood. Consequently, Hickory Dickory is in every sense a dark comedy. It is neither grim nor moralizing. Its assertion that love trumps the fear of mortality may not be unprecedented, but it is inspiring. This is not your father’s Addams Family -- although father might like this Morticia’s dress, which looks like it was plucked from Elvira’s closet.
With the heritage of Charles Addams’ brilliantly wicked cartoons, a kitschy (to some, beloved) ‘60s television show and two ‘90s films on its shoulders, The Addams Family musical had a lot to live up to when it opened on Broadway two years ago. Fortunately, writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys” collaborators) were clever and intuitive enough to evoke just the right amount of the Addams’ forebears’ past while crafting a book that is true to the characters’ benign ghoulishness. It’s also funny, mostly in the first act. The national touring production of The Addams Family musical-comedy resides through Sunday at the Civic Theatre downtown. It’s the proper-sized venue for the show’s stage magic and cartoonish set pieces. (The latter supercede the laughs in ballad-happy Act 2, but oh well.) The songs by Andrew Lippa are jaunty, serviceable vehicles for a stellar cast’s sight gags and choreography. The pre-intermission “Full Disclosure” number, with the ensemble gathered together like a last supper, best embodies the comically macabre Addams spirit. Never mind the story line – the nearly-grown Wednesday (Cortney Wolfson) wants to marry a “normal” boy (Brian Justin Crum). The Addams Family is a devil-may-care romp for rakish Gomez (Douglas Sills) and statuesque Morticia (Sara Gettelfinger), for the screwball antics of scene-stealing Uncle Fester (Blake Hammond), and for timely interjections of contemporary cultural references (a la Charlie Sheen). Mining for messages (who, or what is normal, for example) or commentary (the value of acceptance) is negligible. This is all about having a ghostly good time, five months before Halloween. The Addams Family isn’t too dark for kids, but it may be too insider and insinuative for most. Pugsley (Patrick D. Kennedy) is in on the jokes, and that’s good enough. The words “Don’t be Afraid” are scrawled on the blackboard backdrop in the first couple minutes of When Last We Flew, which is winding up its run at Diversionary Theatre. Turns out it’s a directive for the restless characters of Harrison David Rivers’ play about being judged and oppressed in Middle America at its most judgmental and oppressive. This is the second time this season Diversionary has landed in Kansas – last summer’s much superior Harmony, Kansas precedied Rivers’ play, which is directed by Colette Robert. When Last We Flew, a non-musical fantasia openly admiring of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-winning Angels in America, is nowhere near that epic. But its account of a couple of confused and truth-hungry high schoolers (Cordell Mosteller as Paul, whose refuge is the bathroom and a worn copy of Angels, and Rory Lipede as Natalie, who gets to travel by tornado) and those who love them (or want to love them) is earnest and articulate. The overt flying and feathers imagery notwithstanding, When Last We Flew does elevate the mind.
Is there anything more played out than reality TV? And yet it won’t go away. Its longevity is rivaled only by its inanity. So a parody of reality television seems superfluous. Nevertheless, reality TV is getting the send-up treatment at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, which is hosting the world-premiere musical comedy Nobody Loves You.
Drawing from “The Real World,” “Survivor” and any number of reality dating shows, Nobody Loves You posits after much song, dance and wisecracks that the only love that matters is the real thing. What’s manufactured for voyeuristic cameras and equally voyeuristic TV viewers is all phony baloney. The title of this musical’s fictitious reality show is “Nobody Loves You.” The cynicism mirrors that of our hero, Jeff (Adam Kantor), who becomes a contestant on a program he despises just to make a point with his ex-girlfriend. Of course, he falls for someone else – not one of the other contestants, but Jenny (Jenni Barber), an assistant producer type. They meet cute and end up that way. Itamar Moses’ story is full of fun and behind-the-scenes frolic, though it’s obvious from early in the going that two of the other contestants, Christian and Megan, are far more interesting than Jeff and Jenni. Christian (Kelsey Kurz) is an aptly named holy roller, and Megan (Lauren Molina) has a body made for sin. Their contradictions are no match for their chemistry – the hot-tub seduction song “Come On In” is just one of their hilarious moments together. Another peripheral character, Jenny’s gay roommate Evan (Alex Brightman), is Nobody Loves You’s funniest and most outrageous (albeit most overdrawn) character. He even outdoes the antics of Heath Calvert as the reality show’s posturing host Byron. Evan’s hysterical “The Twitter Song” is worth tweeting about. Gaby Alter’s music and lyrics are glib and for the most part not too mushy (“Jeff’s Convessional” notwithstanding). There’s no question that Nobody Loves You is a likable, if fluffy, night in the theater. The whole “reality” metaphor may be labored, but love conquers all, and in the end isn’t that what matters? If Shakespeare were writing today for TV, As You Like It would be one of Nick at NIte’s legacy comedies, so often is it produced and enjoyed. The melancholy Jaques aside, it’s always seemed to me a tad fluffy. While the tale of love, reconciliation and masquerade is the same, the Old Globe’s new summer festival production is sumptuous and full of surprises. Director Adrian Noble fills the Forest of Arden with merry song and dance (original music by Shaun Davey), while Ralph Funicello’s set pieces are whimsical – check out how he cleverly conceives trees and blue sky.
Dana Green is a live-wire Rosalind and Jacques C. Smith a not-too-melancholy Jaques, while Danielle O’Farrell makes a howling comic foil as the lovestruck (by the dressed-as-a-man Rosalind) Audrey. This production of As You Like It, though lengthened by its musical inventions, also prospers by them. |
AuthorDavid L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic. Archives
May 2024
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