Michael Louis Cusimano and Racquel Williams in "The Last Five Years."               Photo by Ken Jacques

            Love is happy, love is sad. Love is sad, love is happy. This is the rotating sensibility of Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years,” a musical chronicle of a relationship (and subsequent marriage) based on his own that soured. In the two-handed piece, young Jamie and Cathy take their turns singing about themselves, about each other and about where as a couple they are headed. The irony is that though they’re on stage together much of the time, they exist in completely different points in the five-year relationship: Jamie goes from the first blush of love to the anguish of the breakup; Cathy is in despair mode when the show begins and is wearing a too-good-to-be-true smile at the finale.
            This parallel-time device is enough to distinguish “The Last Five Years,” which debuted in 2001 and is now onstage at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town, from a run-of-the-mill romantic musical. Brown’s script (he wrote the book, music and lyrics) amplifies the fact that lovers, or spouses, are rarely on exactly the same page.
            Cygnet’s Jamie and Cathy are the mutually adorable Michael Louis Cusimano and Racquel Williams. They look,sound and move so well together that their performances are almost balletic. Each is completely comfortable with the score’s overly sincere ballads of longing or loss, though their comic moments are best, as when budding actress Cathy goes through the humbling rituals of auditions and writer Jamie’s publishing ship comes in. To some degree, Cusimano and Williams are more likable than their career-obsessed characters.
            That director Rob Lutfy has the pair nearly constantly in motion keeps the proceedings from feeling static, which was an issue when this same musical was presented a few years ago at the now-shuttered ion theatre in Hillcrest. Justin Humphres’ set design and the subtle lighting conceived by Anne E. McMills help foster a sense of intimacy.
            Most notably of all is the exquisite musical accompaniment behind stage directed and orchestrated by Patrick Marion. Making up the supple ensemble are cellists Erika Boras Tesi and Diana Elledge, violinist Sean Laperruque, bassist Mackenzie Leighton, guitarist Jim Mooney and Marion himself on piano.
 (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/30/19.)

OB Playhouse & Theatre Co. turns the midwestern high school experience fiendishly upside down with its splendid production of “Heathers The Musical,” a 2013 show by Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy based on the cult film “Heathers” from 1988. While not as relentlessly dark as its cinematic inspiration, “Heathers The Musical” traffics unapologetically in murder, attempted suicide, nihilism and the grimmest facets of teen angst – all elements that made Daniel Waters’ movie that starred Winona Ryder and Christian Slater so memorable.
But the stage musical, directed at OB Playhouse by Manny Bejarano, relies more on anarchic spirit and often-profane parody than on the schematics of the original film. Its poppy score flits from purposely outrageous or sassy ensemble numbers to tortured balladry, and the recurring anthem “Seventeen” somehow ties it all together.
The likable Kate McNellen portrayed Veronica Sawyer, the insecure girl who initially befriends the uber-popular but mean-spirited Heathers, in OnStage Playhouse’s production of “Heathers The Musical” two years ago in Chula Vista. She reprises the central role now in Ocean Beach, with Hunter Brown brooding and dangerous as JD, the disturbed young man she falls for, and Kylie Young, Alexis Dytko and Tyra Carter playing the mini-skirted Heathers. The large cast is aptly costumed and coiffed to represent the “types” in a high school population, and Michael Mizerany’s athletic choreography has them moving with the precision of a fevered pep rally.
The OB Playhouse is limited in performance space, but the actors are freed from the stage and placed within the crowd throughout – an immersive device. A four-piece band led by Ian Brandon sometimes overwhelms the vocals, though this is probably more a consequence of the Newport Avenue theater’s acoustics.
Then there’s the audience. OB Playhouse’s crowds – young, enthusiastic, ready to party – are unlike any others in town, which makes a show here a good-time experience. Even one as wink-wink subversive as “Heathers The Musical.”
            Fittingly, it was announced on opening night that those who attend the performance of “Heathers The Musical” on Halloween Night are encouraged to come dressed as their favorite Heather.
 (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/23/19.)

            Rather than relying in the manner of a Shakespearean comedy upon magic or a merry mix-up, “Ring Round the Moon” hinges on a theatrical parlor trick: an actor seemingly being two places at the same time. In one instant, bon vivant Hugo (Brian Mackey), the host of a midsummer night’s fete, is exiting stage left. In another instant quickly following, Hugo’s kinder, gentler twin brother Frederic (also Brian Mackey) is entering from stage right or from down stage. This dizzying device is employed just the right number of times in Lamb’s Players Theatre’s frothy production of “Ring Round the Moon.” In other words, not to the point where it becomes exasperating or loses its comic zing.
            Credit for the fluency of these transitions must go not only to the smooth execution by Mackey, a frequent Lamb’s performer, but to co-directors Robert Smyth and Deborah Gilmour Smyth, who ensure that these and others of the rambling play’s comings and goings delight more than distract. (Gilmour Smyth also portrays one of the comedy’s funniest figures: the wry, knowing and sometimes stogie-puffing Dowager Countess, aunt to twins Hugo and Frederic.)
            “Ring Round the Moon,” written by English playwright Christopher Fry (“The Lady’s Not for Burning”), is an adaptation of French dramatist Jean Anouilh’s “L’Invitation au Chateau” (Invitation to the Castle). Its flight of fancy is that aristocrat Hugo has recruited a beautiful commoner, Isabelle (Joy Yvonne Jones), to his country manor house for the purpose of being magnificently gowned and to lure smitten brother Frederic from the heels of snooty Diana (Rachael VanWormer). Cocksure Hugo refers to this as his “huge and dark design.” Naturally, he has another, private motive, and just as naturally this ruse will go haplessly off track.
            The comedy’s lengthy first act spends a great deal of time introducing its many characters, some of which feel extraneous. But the cast at Lamb’s is a sparkling group. Even those in strictly supporting roles, such as David McBean as the deadpan butler Joshua and Cynthia Gerber as the Dowager Countess’ dippy attendant Capulet, have moments to shine.
            In sequences choreographed by themselves (along with Gilmour Smyth), Siri Hafso and Donny Gersonde practically dance away with the whole show. They, like everyone on stage, are opulently costumed by Jeanne Reith.
            Mackey’s physical and oratorical stamina aside, the revelation of this production is Jones, whose presence is commanding without her even speaking, and when she does, with fire in the weightier second act, her Isabelle articulates the play’s moral: money can buy neither love nor happiness. (She makes a point of a very different kind in a wild throw-down with VanWormer’s Diana.)
            Though not exactly subtle, when Isabel and filthy-rich party guest Messerschmann (Manny Fernandes) literally tear up and toss into the air notes of currency, “Ring Round the Moon” further decrees that wealth and class are unimportant, or at least they should be. Happily-ever-afters needn’t depend on either one.
 (Review originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 10/22/19.)

Roxane Carrasco in "Bad Hombres/Good Wives" at San Diego Rep.                   Photo by Jim Carmody

            The narco telenovelas so popular in Mexico and Latin American countries are the chief inspiration for Herbert Siguenza’s wild and crazy comedy “Bad Hombres/Good Wives,” a world premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theatre that is a guaranteed good time. A certain amount of abject silliness is expected from a spoof of this kind, and “Bad Hombres” delivers, but what makes it work is that no sight gag is belabored, no joke is run into the ground, and no one scene is allowed to drag. This joyously subversive spoof directed by Sam Woodhouse, the Rep’s artistic director, is paced just right.
            Siguenza, playwright in residence at the Rep and a co-founder of the Latino comedy troupe Culture Clash, has drawn from not only over-the-top narco telenovelas but Moliere’s “School for Wives,” creating a romp that has an ardent feminist message amid all the clowning. The story set in the early ‘90s in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, finds chauvinistic drug-cartel kingpin Don Ernesto (John Padilla) recruiting a young girl raised in a convent (Yvette Angulo) to be his submissive, subservient wife. This gesture of muscle and machismo is soon compromised by the girl’s encounter at a train station with a handsome stranger (Jose Balistrieri), who turns out to be the son of Don Ernesto’s recently deceased rival in the drug trade.
            But these complications are implying drama that is never taken seriously. Any tangible conflict is defused by the presence of Don Ernesto’s maidservant Armida (Siguenza, hilariously in drag), by the widow of his dead rival, an eye-patched banda superstar named Lucha Grande (Roxane Carrasco) and by a harried priest with fetishes (Ricardo Salinas, a Culture Clash cohort of Siguenza’s). Love and women’s rights conquer all in the end.
            Whether it’s the raucous singalongs and dancing to the onstage music performed by Adrian Kuicho Rodriguez or the sheer zaniness of Siguenza, Salinas, Carrasco and the rest of the entertaining company, “Bad Hombres/Good Wives” is an undeniably fun theater experience. Among the many hysterical scenes is one in which Armida (Siguenza) instructs the bride-to-be Eva (Angulo) on the art of seducing a man. Memory burn is all but ensured.
 (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/16/19.)

A family's holiday dinner turns volatile in "Noura."                                                             Photo by Jim Cox

            From the opening moment of Heather Raffo’s “Noura,” when the title character (played with arch desperation by Lameece Issaq) stands alone in the snowfall until its abrupt though unsatisfying end, this one-act drama pulsates with tension. A Chaldean Christian refugee who has left her homeland of ISIS-terrorized Iraq for a new life in Queens, N.Y., Noura feels herself in the psychological and emotional vise of two worlds: past and present. In the San Diego premiere of this play at the Old Globe under the direction of Johanna McKeon, questions and platitudes predominate during a claustrophobic Christmas celebration among Noura and her husband Mattico David), young son (Giovanni Cozic) and lifelong friend (Fajer Kaisi). The anticipation and subsequent arrival of an orphan college girl from Mosul precipitates the startling revelation of secrets and the articulation of sentiments long-suppressed or festering.
            For an hour-and-a-half play that takes place in a very short time window “Noura” traffics in complications, personal conflicts and identity crises enough for a work three times this length.
 (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/9/19.)

Cashae Monya (left) and Tamara McMillian in "Intimate Apparel."                           Photo by Daren Scott

            New Village Arts’ production of Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel” is among the finest stagings the Carlsbad theater has accomplished in recent memory. Thoughtfully directed by Melissa Coleman-Reed and featuring a superior star turn by Tamara McMillian, this realization of Nottage’s 2003 play about an African-American seamstress clutching at love and dreams is sublime in its storytelling and engulfing in its sadness.
            A creator of fine intimate wear around the turn of the 20th century, Esther (McMillian) yearns for a meaningful life of her own and one in which she may be cherished and desired like those for whom she sews. The prospect of a long-distance lover (sending letters from Panama) buoys her hopes. In Nottage’s intelligent script, very little turns out as one might expect, and Esther’s strength and heart are tested throughout. The NVA cast in this deliberately paced but literate drama also includes Cashae Monya, who brings to bright but bittersweet life the part of Esther’s wayward friend, Mayme.
 (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/9/19.)

Casey Likes (center) stars in "Almost Famous" at the Old Globe Theatre.             Photo by Neal Preston

            Cameron Crowe’s stage-musical adaptation of his 2000 film “Almost Famous” is ebullient, joyous and warm, shining a strobe light not only on his youthful (he was 15) pursuit of a career as a music journalist but on the vagaries and excesses of the 1970s rock culture. Like the film from which it was adapted, the world-premiere musical is also, as Crowe has called it, a “love letter” to San Diego and to his mother, Alice.
            Crowe’s collaborators on this adaptation being staged at the Old Globe Theatre are Pulitzer Prize winner (for the edgy musical “Next to Normal”) Tom Kitt and Tony Award nominee (for “Wolf Hall, Parts 1 and 2) Jeremy Herrin, who directs. “Almost Famous” the musical relies heavily on songs written for it (music and lyrics by Kitt, with lyrics also by Crowe), with a couple others that were used in the film (“River” by Joni Mitchell, who was in attendance at the Globe on opening night; Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” and “Fever Dog,” written by Heart’s Nancy Wilson for Stillwater, the fictitious band in both the movie and this musical).
            There’s no question that this project is close to Crowe’s heart, and it’s his affection for this at-once thrilling and anxious time in his young life that is so eloquently brought to the fore. Casey Likes is just about perfect as William Miller (the Crowe character), mentored by acerbic rock critic Lester Bangs (Rob Colletti, colorfully playing the cynical yin to William’s wide-eyed yang.) Stalwart too are Anika Larsen as William’s uber-protective mother, and both Colin Donnell and Drew Gehling as the battling but mutually charismatic front men of Stillwater, with whom William goes on tour as an assignment for Rolling Stone magazine. Solea Pfeiffer is “Band Aid” Penny Lane, and while her ballads feel a little repetitive, she renders each with tenderness.
            The production at the Old Globe, which Crowe as a boy used to attend with his mother, is outstanding, from Derek McLane’s versatile scenic design to David Zinn’s costumes to the sound design of Peter Hylenski. Recurringly throughout its more than two and a half hours, “Almost Famous” looks, feels and sounds like a rock concert. Nothing could make Cameron Crowe happier than that. Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/2/19.)