People who need people to tend to the mini-mall they have in the cellar of their Malibu estate are the luckiest people in the world. Or so the premise of Jonathan Tolins’ Buyer & Cellar would have us believe. Now Barbra Streisand really does have facsimiles of shops, stocked with her own belongings, underneath her mansion. That much is true. What is fictionalized in Tolins’ one-man-play, currently earning laughs at the expense of Hollywood and excess at the Old Globe’s theater in the round, is the notion of a struggling actor (David Turner) tending Barbra’s shops, and getting to know the misunderstood star in a way he never expected (though a savvy audience will). Even if you couldn’t care less about Streisand and divadom, this is an inarguably funny show. Turner plays multiple characters (including Barbra) without high camp but with lots of stamina and heart.
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Mercedes Ruehl rules on the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, portraying Diana Vreeland, the iconic “Empress of Fashion.” The one-woman show Full Gallop, written by Mary Louise Wilson and Mark Hampton, premiered at the Globe 20 years ago and has come full circle. Wilson played the role in ’95. Today it’s Ruehl’s turn, and she’s clearly having a blast channeling a woman who viewed life in rich, vivid color and lived it to the fullest. That said, there’s not much dramatic tension in Full Gallop. Ruehl’s Vreeland drops names, reminisces about society and fashion, and quips up a storm, all while ensconced in a blood-red room furnished with a cozy lounge, rich carpeting, ornate little tables and beaucoups flowers. Full Gallop doesn’t really gallop anywhere monumental, but Ruehl makes it a fun ride.
If you’re in a generous mood, you can appreciate the absurdity of Christopher Durang’s Baby with the Bathwater, a wicked indictment of incompetent parenting swaddled in broad comic wrapping. To wit: dipsomaniacal John and neurotic with a capital “N” Helen refer to their new little one not as “he” or “she” but as “it.” The nanny who arrives like a twisted Mary Poppins, complete with umbrella, happily tosses “It” into the bassinet like a loaf of bread. Another mother not named Helen leaves her own infant at home alone with a hungry dog, which proceeds to devour the baby. All the dark humor is intended to stimulate our serious thinking about parenthood, childhood, gender and societal expectations.
So it does. Yet the laughs in Durang’s 1983 comedy, now on stage at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights, are hit and miss. There’s a hysteria to the performances of Amanda Sitton and Brian Mackey as the unqualified parents of “Daisy,” not seen until well into Act 2, that is more irritating than funny. While the always good-for-a-yuk Shana Wride milks every moment out of the subversive-nanny role (and a couple of others later), those antics, too, turn tiresome after awhile. By the time the teenaged Daisy appears, she is the he that he always was – you’re reading that correctly – and wants badly to understand himself and the world around him. But whatever understanding we come to embrace for the character, earnestly portrayed by J. Tyler Jones, must compete against a familiar unseen-psychiatrist bit and the shrill return of Sitton and Mackey as the older but still outta control Mom and Pop. The raucous tone of the production suggests that our understanding is less important than our laughter anyway. The Diversionary production, directed by Andrew Oswald, pays tribute to the play’s ‘80s incarnation, with nuggets like “Tainted Love” “and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) bridging scenes. Kate Bishop’s costume designs are delightfully retro, and the various wigs worn by supporting actress Kailey O’Donnell nicely create the illusion that the Baby with the Bathwater cast is bigger than you thought it was. If Jeff Bridges’ antihero from “The Big Lebowski” were to have a son, KJ from Annie Baker’s play The Aliens would do nicely. Now Lebowski was a good-hearted stoner, while KJ is a good-hearted slacker (though he does like to drink tea laced with psilocybin mushrooms). But they’ve got enough in common that when you experience KJ (Brian Butler) hanging out behind a coffeehouse with his pal, Jasper (Reed Willard), you may have a stoner-slacker flashback.
This is not to minimize Baker’s play, running through Dec. 12 at ion theatre, which is strangely mesmerizing despite the fact that it mostly consists of KJ and Jasper and the teenager (Tyler Oakley) they befriend sitting around near a dumpster, shooting the you know what. But Baker’s script possesses a sneaky intelligence to it, and there’s a sweetness to the relationship between KJ and teenager Evon that’s hard to resist. There are no aliens, by the way, in the extraterrestrial sense. That’s the name (one of them) of KJ and Jasper’s on-and-off band. “Imaginative” is the word that best describes Big Fish, Moonlight Stage Company’s closing offering of its outdoor amphitheater season. Its trippy screen projections, versatile set pieces and colorful costumes combine to transport you to a circus, to an open field of daffodils, to an Old West town, to the cave of a giant, and more. These are all memories from the manically creative mind of Edward Bloom (Josh Adamson) – or are they? Are they instead fantasies? Fish stories if you will?
You may remember Daniel Wallace’s novel “Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions” or more likely Tim Burton’s 2003 film based on the book, “Big Fish.” This 2013 stage musical (book by John August, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa) is a natural extension. While less wacky and more sincere than Burton’s film, Big Fish the musical, directed at Moonlight by Steven Glaudini, is a mostly merry carnival ride, with just the right amount of human warmth. (Its conflict stems from Bloom’s son, played by Patrick Cummings, trying to find out “the truth” about his eccentric – and dying – dad’s past.) The always magnetic Bets Malone teams with the resourceful Adamson to give you true characters to root for, and the musical score is unpretentious if innocuous. The defining “How It Ends” sequence late in Act 2, however, is undeniably moving. At that point, the question of what’s real and what’s imagined becomes secondary to the preciousness of life itself. And now for something completely different. If you ever played blind man’s buff as a child, you remember it as a kind of tag with a blindfold. Innocent stuff. Not in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, the second act of which features a harrowing game of blind man’s buff played by anything-but-innocent adults. Nothing is as it seems in this three-act conundrum, Pinter’s second play, onstage at Moxie Theatre courtesy of the fledgling New Fortune Theatre company.
The Birthday Party, directed by Richard Baird, is just New Fortune’s second full-length production since last October. While less bold than the Henry V it staged in little ion theatre, New Fortune’s The Birthday Party is a tense affair that, like much of Pinter, raises more questions than it answers. Baird and Henerson play inscrutable hitman types who descend upon what may or may not be a boarding house run by Marcus Overton and the marvelous Dana Hooley. Amanda Schaar and Max Macke (playing the most miserable “birthday” boy you’ll ever see) round out this cast. The Birthday Party is obscure but absorbing. Before you let holiday shopping get the better of you, consider catching Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy, which winds up its run at the San Diego Rep on Dec. 6. A heady, expressive performance by Amanda Sitton, beauitufl sets by Sean Fanning, and haunting Tibetan music arranged by Michael Roth are just three of the reasons to bond with this enlightened story about parents confronting the heart-rending decision of whether to let their 3-year-old son, evidently the reincarnation of a lama (or teacher), grow up without them on the other side of the world in a monastery. Sitton portrays the boy’s mother and does with such sensitivity that you’ll feel you are in her shoes.
Ruhl’s play has its draggy places, such as the Act One meet-cute flashback about the mother and the boy’s father (Napoleon Tavale). But what Ruhl (the vibrator play, The Clean House) imparts about academia, teachers and those who make the greatest sacrifices is smart and important. The sheer peace of the Buddhist way pervades all as Ruhl’s narrative melds with the production’s exquisite music and dance. Cygnet Theatre in Old Town has kicked off its new season with what it calls its biggest production ever – two dozen performers and six musicians. The show is one of the all time great American musicals, Gypsy, and Cygnet is worthy of it. Start with a no-holds-barred Mama Rose, Linda Libby, who played the same part a few years ago on the much-smaller ion theatre stage. Add a Louise-turned-Gypsy who radiates body heat in Allison Spratt Pearce. And to bring the house down, you’ve got Marlene Montes, Kendra Truett and Marci Anne Wuebben as three burlesque strippers who, to paraphrase just one of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s wonderful songs, got a gimmick.
Yet as with any production of Gypsy, the proof is in the Mama Rose, on whom “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and much, much more depends. Libby has the requisite nerve and verve, but it’s the vulnerability she brings to the fore in Act 2 that distinguishes her. Both Spratt Pearce and Manny Fernandes, portraying Rose’s frustrated beau Herbie, share some aching stage moments with her, when the complexity of these relationships is in focus. While the customers at a ritzy Upper East Side restaurant dine on overpriced fare, four busboys living paycheck to paycheck toil with remarkable precision and perseverance behind the scenes. But the teamwork and camaraderie among Peter (Edred Utomi), Whalid (Spencer Smith), Jorge (Jorge E. Rodriguez) and Pepe (Jose Martinez) becomes paranoia, desperation and ultimately worse in Elizabeth Irwin’s penetrating My Manana Comes at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. This one-act play faultlessly directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg must be appreciated on two levels: the rigor and meticulousness of the actors playing busboys hard at work, and the personal interactions between them that tell an important story about minimum-wage survival, exploitation of workers and clashing cultures.
Spanish is spoken abundantly during the action (Rodriguez and Martinez portray Mexicans working in the U.S. to better their families’ lives), though the tensions and confidences between the characters should be clear to all. Playwright Irwin has attempted to give each man a back story, but in a one-act some are more substantial than others. One thing is for certain: each man has something to cling to and something to lose – a fact no doubt lost on the unseen diners gorging on foie gras. On the silver screen, it was known as Capra-corn – old-fashioned, feel-good depictions of Americana directed by the prolific Frank Capra. One of his most beloved movies, released in 1938, was a film adaptation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1936 play You Can’t Take It With You. The play, like the film, is a likable show that’s as comfortable as the quilt Grandma knit for you. So it goes with Lamb’s Players Theatre’s current production, directed by Kerry Meads. The laughs come easily in this quaint tale of a wacky family and a couple of stuffed-shirt potential in-laws. Frolicking on a homey set (by Mike Buckley) that you’d like to put your feet up on is a buoyant cast that includes the comically adroit Steve Gunderson, Danny Campbell, John Rosen and in two equally uproarious roles, Eileen Bowman.
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AuthorDavid L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic. Archives
May 2024
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