YOHEN
at the David Henry Hwang Theatre
Reviewed by Polly Warfield
With the insightful, multi-layered new play Yohen, both playwright Philip Kan Gotanda and the nurturing East West Players brilliantly fulfill a bright promise implicit in East West's 1979 premiere staging of Gotanda's playful and tuneful early work The Avocado Kid (or Zen in the Art of Guacamole). We spotted Gotanda as a valuable new voice in the theatre then, and by golly, we were right!
In Yohen, retired African-American Army pro James (Danny Glover), tells Sumi, his Japanese war bride (Nobu McCarthy), now his wife of 30-plus years, "You gotta change‹I gotta change." All God's chillun gotta change. Change is what this play is about‹its necessity, its difficulty, the pain and displacement of it. The play's title means change: Yohen, we're told, is a Japanese term for the occasional distortion or scarring of a ceramic vessel caused by the intense heat of its firing.
The marriage of James and Sumi is undergoing this process. The year is l986; Sumi now alone inhabits their comfortable home in the quiet, unsung city of Gardena, Calif. (which, as Gotanda knows‹and so do I, for I happen to live there‹is exactly the right setting for this play, because of the Japanese-American cultural influence there, which in fact predates this century). In four intermissionless episodes‹four meetings, four comings-together and breakings-apart‹we see James and Sumi try to salvage their troubled union.
"I want to start at the beginning," Sumi says. He arrives, rather clumsily, like a suitor on a first date, empty-handed. She chides him gently: "Didn't you bring something?" Next time he comes with flowers and food in a paper bag‹but, as she points out, "I ate already." Finally he arrives with flowers and candy. It seems his awkward wooing may succeed. She settles at last into his arms, at rest against his shoulder as if she belongs there; they dance to Cole Porter's love song, "You Do Something to Me," and we believe it. Even so, the play ends on a note of irresolution, up in the air, the way life is.
Ann Bowen directs with fine appreciation of the play's nuances and a musical conductor's feeling for the natural rhythm and cadence of its speech. McCarthy, herself a WWII Japanese war bride, remains almost incredibly radiant and exquisitely lovely. She is an actress of remarkable range, grace, and power who turns in a performance that should rank among the year's best. Glover offers staunch support with his own special kind of deceptively easy expertise.
Edward E. Haynes Jr.'s attractive set reflects the serene aesthetic of Sumi's heritage; Doc Ballard's lighting, as always, enhances. Haunting music bridging the scenes is uncredited; perhaps sound designer Miles Ono should be thanked. Special plaudits to creative costume designer Joyce Kim Lee, who clothes McCarthy for each scene in an outfit that perfectly captures its essence.
Gotanda chose a wonderfully apt metaphor with his concept of yohen's misshapen object, transmuted in a crucible of change into something of special value, truly unique‹no other like it. Sumi says, "I still don't feel American sometimes." But she is an America that is becoming‹a place like no other that ever has been, of disparate elements fired in a crucible into a yohen assymetrical but uniquely strong and beautiful. So we devoutly hope.
"Yohen," presented by East West Players and the Robey Theatre Company at David Henry Hwang Theatre at Union Center for the Arts, 120 N. Judge John Aiso St., Downtown L.A. Jan. 13-Feb. 5. (800) 233-3123.
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THE THOUSANDTH NIGHT
at North Coast Repertory Theatre
Reviewed by George Weinberg-Harter
After the playwright Carol Wolf saw Ron Campbell play all 26 parts (including the drag queen narrator) in a serio-comic stage adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, she told him she wanted to write a show for him in a similar vein. The results of their subsequent creative collaboration became this extravagantly zany tragicomedy, which is something like a blackly humorous collision between Incident at Vichy and The Arabian Nights. (During earlier stages in its development, the play was called Monsieur Shaherazad.)
Upping the dramatis personae portrayed by Campbell to a reported 38 characters (if anyone can keep count), as well as deepening the mortal seriousness of the framing device, The Thousandth Night tells the story of a French cabaret performer who, during the Nazi occupation, tries to forestall his deportation to a concentration camp by acting out the tales of the similarly imperiled and dilatory Shaherazad.
Together with the rest of his considerable vocal and physical skills as an actor, the thing that always makes Ron Campbell so remarkable in these multiple role monodramas is his ability to do a lot more than merely sketch or create impressions of the often brief and fleeting characters that people the plays. It may all boil down to an exaggerated voice, stance, or walk‹but as in the best caricatures (such as Max Beerbohm's drawings), those outer lineaments seem to proceed from a clear and precise inward perception of a character's real essence. In short, Campbell is always acting, not just doing vaudeville turns. And so the audience is never shortchanged, and never wearied, even in a long succession of wildly silly portrayals that may flicker into and out of existence within the space of several seconds. Even while doing goofy comedy, Campbell maintains some fundamental sobriety.
In A Tale of Two Cities, although playing a drag queen's impression of Ronald Colman's portrayal of Sydney Carton, he managed to project, through what might have been layers of facetiousness, a true and moving feeling of tragedy. And this same sense of comic and tragic double consciousness is increased in the more immediately fatal predicament of The Thousandth Night. Sydney Carton went to the guillotine at two levels of remove from the narrator of A Tale of Two Cities, whose greatest concern was to quiet a whining infant. But Guy de Bonheur, the seemingly doomed narrator of The Thousandth Night, is about to be shipped to Buchenwald unless he can find salvation by entertaining his audience of gendarmes.
At one point he even pleads with the audience to vocally intercede for him. But, in a reversal of the Tinkerbell Phenomenon ("If you believe, clap your hands!"), the audience cannot believe they are really gendarmes, and so remain guiltily silent onlookers‹allowing us a tiny hint of what it might be like to be an accomplice through inaction to an atrocity.
Originally designed to be literally transported in a suitcase to any venue (as it has been, to Edinburgh, London, Israel, Telluride, etc.), The Thousandth Night, directed by Jessica Kubzansky, is here given a rare fully realized production, with costumes designed by Campbell himself and a highly effective lighting design by Scott Sizemore and sound design by Don Peterson, as well as an ominous and detailed set design, by Marty Burnett, of red brick and black iron.
"The Thousandth Night," presented by and at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987D Lomas Santa Fe Dr., Solana Beach. Jan. 9-Feb. 14. (888) 776-6278.
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SKYLIGHT
at the McClatchy Mainstage
Reviewed by Barry Wisdom
Sacramento Theatre Company artistic director Peggy Shannon continues her successful raids on the Pacific Northwest's rich resources of theatrical talent with STC's McClatchy Mainstage production of David Hare's Skylight. In recruiting director Victor Pappas (on loan from Seattle's Intiman Theatre) and actors Frank Corrado and Gina Nagy, also mainstays in the Portland/Seattle/Tacoma area, former A Contemporary Theatre artistic director Shannon has assembled all the components necessary for a thoughtful examination of love, honor, betrayal, and class warfare.
It's a lot of ground to cover in two and a half hours, but Hare's well-spoken lovers, Kyra Hollis (Nagy) and Tom Sergeant (Frank Corrado), take a few dramatic pauses in catching up after a three-year separation following the discovery of their affair by Tom's wife. Kyra, once an integral part of Tom's ever-growing restaurant/hotel business as well as the Sergeant family, went on to become a teacher of underprivileged youth in a part of London far from the glitz of the home she knew.
Meanwhile, Tom's wife grew ill‹eventually dying and leaving Tom burdened with guilt and anger over her lack of forgiveness for his transgression. Kyra, 20 years Tom's junior, calls him on his unsurpassed ego regarding this point (as well as many, many others). "Why should she have?" she asks him incredulously. Indeed, while the first act deals with each politely‹well, almost politely‹listening to each other's accumulated life stories from the preceding three years, the second is a revealing look at just how opposite this attractive couple is.
Corrado, in a reprise of the role he played last spring at Berkeley Rep, is perfect as the egocentric restaurateur who has built an empire but cannot understand how his ex-paramour could be happy, not only without him but surrounded by the squalor of the lower classes. Motivated by a guilty desire to make all things right, he wastes no time in offering her the services of this bloke or that to fix her heat or provide her with the proper cheeses.
She, on the other hand, is dealing with her own guilt‹as Tom says‹by "performing an act of contrition" and closing off the outside world by eschewing newspapers and television. "I've become my anger," she admits. Nagy matches Corrado's accomplished, nuanced performance word for work, gesture for gesture, as the bird who has not only flown but grown.
Good, too (though a bit old for the role), is Culley Johnson as Tom's son, Edward, who seeks to bring Kyra back into the family fold. Credit Pappas for keeping the talky exchanges kinetic even when the scenes consist of just two people looking at each other, one with her arms crossed, and the other with his hands in his pocket.
"Skylight," presented by the Sacramento Theatre Company at the McClatchy Mainstage, 1419 H Street, Sacramento. Jan. 12-Feb. 7. (888) 478-2849.
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THREE DAYS OF RAIN
at the Reiersgaard Theatre
Review by Jeremy Kemp
Director Allen Nause polishes another masterful production with this cerebral and complex exploration of the mystical folklore and emotional scars that accumulate across generations in dysfunctional families. With spot-on casting by Nause and deft execution by a trio of solid performers, this emotional production of Richard Greenberg's much-performed play pokes into sensitive tissues without killing its patient.
The intricate script features three actors playing six roles in two generations, a vast time shift and several love triangles. Greenberg's play is deliciously perplexing in the way it invites so many possible interpretations without dragging the audience down well-traveled paths.
The play starts in 1995 with young Walker sprawled on the floor of a vacant Manhattan apartment. Walker's architect father has died, and his sister Nan comes to fetch him for the reading of the will. The two share unhappy childhood memories while thumbing through their father's discarded diary, which is filled with unemotional observations. The old man left his fortune to the children but inexplicably passed the family's masterpiece home to his architect partner's son, Pip. Walker assumes this generosity is born of guilt‹that his father was remorseful for hitching a ride on his partner's star and gave Pip the house as atonement.
The play's genius becomes apparent when the characters, and the actors playing them, transform into their parents for Act Two. Greenberg turns the clock back 35 years, and David Ivers as Walker in the first act becomes Walker's father, Ned. Marilyn Stacey as Nan becomes her mother Lina in the second, and Michael O'Connell is Pip's father Theo.
Where Ivers plays '90s Walker as a flighty depressive, he transforms into a completely different character for '60s Ned: Though stricken with a frightful stutter and cowed by his tyrannical partner, Ned has hope. He's undergoing therapy for the impediment. He's building an architecture firm with odd design jobs. And he finds his muse in sexy Lina, played by Stacey with warmth and allure.
If Greenberg leaves many loose ends hanging and fails to deliver a coherent close, he does succeed in making a fresh new statement about the way grown children project false histories on their parents. Walker assumes his father was guilty for stealing success, when in fact he was guilty about stealing Lina.
Tim Stapleton's simple set is well used. He's drawn structural features in light blue chalk directly on the floor and walls to mirror architectural plans. Sound designer Martin John Gallager's creates a rich Manhattan soundscape, complete with intermittent sirens and breaking glass.
"Three Days of Rain" presented by Artists Repertory Theatre at the Reiersgaard Theatre, 1516 SW Alder St., Portland. Jan. 12-Feb. 21. (503) 294-7373.
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LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
at the San Jos Center for the Performing Arts
Reviewed by Judy Richter
With Jerry Herman's memorable music and lyrics and Harvey Fierstein's book, La Cage Aux Folles stands as a very funny, yet very touching love story. What's so wonderful about it is that the love is between two men, Albin and Georges, who have happily lived together for 20 years and who own and operate a transvestite nightclub show on the French Riviera. La Cage also has winning production numbers and characters one can care about. American Musical Theatre of San Jos capitalizes on these assets with a strong cast led by Broadway veteran Lee Roy Reams as Albin, the club's star, and George McDaniel as Georges, its producer and emcee.
This production starts slowly, with a less than crisply played overture, but by midway through the first act, it's hitting on all cylinders. By the end, it has the audience cheering, thanks not only to the two stars but also to the supporting cast. In fact, it's a supporting player, James Patterson as Jean Michel, Georges' 24-year-old son, who ignites the production with his fine singing of "With Anne on My Arm." After that everything goes well.
It's particularly interesting to watch Reams as he skillfully builds his character both as drag performer and as a man being hurt by people he loves. Reams works the audience like a seasoned pro in the first-act presentation of the title song, then delivers a moving, defiant "I Am What I Am" to end the act. He and McDaniel have a good rapport in such songs as "Song on the Sand" and the comic "Masculinity." Act Two is highlighted by the poignant "Look Over There," sung by McDaniel and later reprised by Patterson, and by "The Best of Times," a beautifully developed production number.
Others in the cast who help make the show so successful are Patricia Haug as Jean Michel's fianc e, Ray Reinhardt and Shanon Orrock as her morally uptight parents, and of course the eight men and two women who are Les Cagelles in the nightclub act. Steven X. Ward overplays the role of Jacob, the man who was hired as a butler but who insists on being a maid.
The late Ken Holamon's sets have become a bit creaky in this revival production. Theoni V. Aldredge's costumes are noteworthy, except for the rather drab outfits worn by Les Cagelles in the opening scene. Pamela A. Gray's lighting and Timm Burleigh's sound both add to the show, as does Nick Rafello's choreography. Musical director/conductor Craig Bohmler does a good job pulling the orchestra together after the overture. And credit Marc Jacobs for the effective direction.
In addition to the music, what makes this show so endearing is Fierstein's book, based on Jean Poiret's play. Neither preaching nor offending, it allows the audience to see that love is love and that family is family no matter the circumstances.
"La Cage Aux Folles," presented by American Musical Theatre of San Jos at the San Jos Performing Arts Center, 255 Almaden Blvd., San Jos . Jan. 15-31. (888) 455-7469.
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ART
at UCLA/James A. Doolittle Theatre
Reviewed by Scott Proudfit
There's nothing a critic loves more than to be the one courtier in the crowd to point out that the emperor is, in fact, naked. But it's a temptation that must be overcome. Because, to be fair, if the emperor were a peasant, our initial impulse would be much more sympathetic.
Such is the case with Yasmina Reza's one-act, in its West Coast debut after garnering the 1998 Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. Had this been a little backstreet production, no doubt we would, along with everyone else, be clamoring to champion a promising new voice in the theatre. For Art, in many ways, is a clever and original play. But considering that this play has been chosen as the best that Broadway has to offer for the entire year, who can deny at least the desire to act the giant killer?
Art offers some very funny dialogue, three great performances by three great actors, and an interesting examination of the fractured relationships between men when their "change of life" inevitably comes. But if you're expecting a challenging discussion of art, a radical use of text or space, or even a difficult emotional experience to grapple with, stay home. For Art is not high art or revolutionary art. It is art aimed carefully at the self-satisfied middle-class audience looking for a pleasant and amusing night at the theatre.
This is the kind of play in which the term "deconstruction," but not the concept, is used as a offhand joke, one which the audience heartily enjoys. Had Tom Stoppard or Tina Howe or even Christopher Durang written Art, the public would probably at least have been offered a definition of the term before the laugh lines. But Art is not about ideas, much less a dialogue of viewpoints; it's about laughing at pretense from our secure seats.
The author and most of the audience are securely on the side of Marc (Alan Alda) as he derides his friend Serge (Victor Garber) for buying a white canvas for 200,000 francs‹the crime around which the play revolves. When Marc finally breaks his polite silence and chides Serge for buying that "piece of shit," the audience practically gives a standing ovation. It's at this point that you realize that Reza is not planning to provoke her patrons, but merely hoping that they're ready to join in the sardonic guffaws. And they are.
The guileless Yvan (Alfred Molina) is thrown into the mix to add fuel to the fire by his "can't we all just get along" attitude, which only provokes the two combatants all the more. Molina is the most compelling of the three because he occasionally reveals a human side‹as the victim of his friends' venom and the future victim of a difficult marriage. It's no surprise that he was more recognized than his counterparts when the awards rolled out last year. Molina's much-praised frantic monologue, in which he describes the sharp claws of the terrible women in his life, is the only moment in Art in which the experience meets the hype. He is mesmerizing.
Alda and Garber also hold their weight. Still, after exchanging light Seinfeld-like barbs through most of the show, it's tough to believe some of their later confessional pronouncements, such as Alda's, "I was your mentor. I loved you and I loved what we had." (I'm paraphrasing, but just barely.)
It's easy to see why this play has succeeded, why I would recommend it to most people, and why it will continue to draw satisfied crowds throughout its local run. Art is short, funny, and slick (due in great part, no doubt, to director Matthew Warchus), and it lets three consummate performers strut their stuff. But is it great art? Marc's hearty laughter at first viewing the white canvas would be appropriate here.
"Art," presented by David Pugh, Sean Connery, Joan Cullman, and Ahmanson Theatre/ Mark Taper Forum at UCLA/James A. Doolittle Theatre, 1615 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Jan. 19-Mar. 14. (800) 447-7400.
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THE MOTOR TRADE
at the B Street Theatre
Reviewed by Barry Wisdom
As the B Street Theatre has demonstrated in recent productions of Norm Foster's The Melville Boys and Morris Panych's Virgil, the Great White North's most attractive exports aren't syrup and C line but accessible scripts featuring very funny, albeit flawed, contemporary American characters. Foster's The Motor Trade, the company's current production, is a showroom model of this Canadian trend in serio-comedic playwriting.
B Street artistic director Timothy Busfield makes a high-octane return to the stage he co-founded, as star and director of this finely tuned vehicle about a pair of Newfoundland used car dealers whose business and friendship both break down during the course of one blustery winter's day.
The weather outside is fitting, as Phil (Busfield) and Dan (Greg Alexander) have been snowing customers‹and each other‹for more than 12 years as partners in Doral Valley Motors, where the unspoken slogan is "Caveat Emptor." When not out on the lot "moving iron," they can be found idling in the office, swallowing day-old donuts, warmed-over coffee, and oft-told tales until it's time to get Chinese takeout next door or a lap dance across the street.
Phil, the more obnoxious of the two, continually intrudes into his widowed partner's personal life‹from his son's choice of a "gay" vocation (travel agent) to his lack of female companionship ("Sex is like bridge: If you don't have a good partner, you better have a good hand.") Ever-fidgety Phil is even more so today. His wife (Julianne Somers) has just left him, an income tax agent (Mollie Michie-Lepp) has finally tracked him down for an audit, and Dan‹who was never interested in cars to begin with‹is secretly looking to sell out his half and buy a shoestore franchise.
Phil's a perfect fit for the kinetic Busfield, who shows off considerable range as he shifts gears from an amiable, Fargo-flavored ramble about the 1960s Maple Leafs to a revved-up, hyperventilated speech on the importance of friendship. But Busfield's greatest success comes in keeping the failed Phil real and likable. Though he occasionally swerves close, he always manages to avoid veering into caricature.
Alexander's underplayed performance is also honest, revealing that Dan is really the more pathetic character. For while Phil loves his life on the lot, Dan has been consigned by circumstance. The show is clearly Busfield's to make or break, but without Alexander's talent for restrained, subtly flavored characters (displayed in last season's brilliant Lawrence & Holloman), Phil's bombast wouldn't be nearly as effective. Also keeping it real are Somers and Michie-Lepp.
Set designers Judith Cleaver and David Fulk have done well in extending the ambience of a used car lot office beyond the narrow confines of the B Street's center-ring stage. Also appropriately tacky are Jennifer Busfield's costumes; particularly fetching is Phil's bolo-tie-and-galoshes ensemble.
"The Motor Trade," presented by and at the B Street Theatre, 2711 B Street, Sacramento. Jan. 10-Feb. 21. (916) 443-5300.
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FRIDA KAHLO
at the Unity Arts Center
Reviewed by Claudio Grazioso
A few years ago, Frida Kahlo enjoyed something of a rebirth in the art world and the popular culture, quickly rising to the rank of legend. Art historians studied her, museums and galleries showed her work, card companies splashed her images onto postcards, and the world at large was finally met with her haunting, almost brutal gaze. Rub n Amavizca's play, Frida Kahlo, presented by Grupo Teatro de Sinergia, seeks to capture the woman, pained and indomitable, that mothered the legend. Thanks to a seemingly fearless cast, he largely succeeds.
Using what the press release calls a "Kahlo-eidoscopic" technique, the play starts with Kahlo the art student first flirting with the well-known muralist, Diego Rivera, then incorporates both the heartbreak he brought her and the physical pain she endured throughout most of her life as a result of an almost divinely unlucky combination of illness and accident (in one trolley car incident, young Kahlo was literally run through with a rail).
Writer/director Amavizca draws excellent performances from his cast, led by the alternately luminous and ravaged Yvette Cruise. She's near brilliant as a woman who loved furiously without ever surrendering. Amavizca's Frida Kahlo is consumed by passion, but through her art she also consumes it. Cruise approaches the role voraciously. She is supported by the tragically Falstaffian Daniel Mora as Rivera. Also noteworthy is Cecilia Bográn as Cristina.
The most intense moments, are, of course, between Cruise and Mora. These talented actors bring vigor to their relationship, playing as skillfully off the subtext as off the text. And Amavizca has supplied them with an overall fine script. Some lines are worthy of being engraved in stone, most notably: "Neurotics have created everything great in this world."
There are some weak spots, though. The device of Judas (Guillermo Verd"n), a sort of acrobatic Greek chorus, with both a manner and a costume suggestive of Batman's the Riddler, is distracting. Judas' presence underscores Rivera's absence, and while Cruise and Verd"n have some good moments, an actor as talented as Cruise doesn't need a device to play off of‹and certainly not one so stagey. Also, some of the scenes regarding Rivera's infidelities get repetitive: The riveting shrillness of anguish becomes, at times, simply shrill.
Still, near the end, when I was feeling a bit too overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu, Amavizca's deft script had a surprise for me. It was Kahlo's lament, "How can I explain to him my need for tenderness, my years of loneliness?," delivered wrenchingly by Cruise. Under all the fury, the brilliance, the fight of a legend, there is only the human need for tenderness. Played out on Antonio Escalante's bright and haunting set, Frida Kahlo is definitely worth a look.
"Frida Kahlo," presented by Grupo Teatro de Sinergia at the Unity Arts Center, 2344 W. Fourth St., Downtown L.A. Jan. 14-Feb. 7 in English, Feb. 11-Mar. 14 in Spanish. (213) 382-8133.
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SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION
at ArtShare Los Angeles
Reviewed by Les Spindle
Howard Barker's poetic period drama Scenes From an Execution, set in 16th-century Venice, is rich with intelligent musings on the nature of art and the challenges an artist faces amid social and political pressures. But the play would benefit from fewer pompous philosophical diatribes, and some of its dramatic conceits border on the pretentious. Director Gleason Bauer's rendition is passionate, atmospheric, and mostly well acted, but needs a more cohesive concept, as scenes sometimes vacillate between stylized conventions and a more prosaic quality.
Bernadette Sullivan leads the accomplished ensemble in her zesty portrayal of Galactia, a free-thinking artist commissioned by Urgentino (Miguel Perez), an arts patron, to paint a giant mural commemorating the previous year's bloody Battle of Lepanto, in which the zealous Roman Catholics soundly trounced the Muslim Turks. As the secular Galactica starts her mammoth project, she immediately runs afoul of the church, which had expected a hawkish celebration of Catholic supremacy, not Galactia's truthful yet ugly depiction of the horrors of war.
In addition to Sullivan's fiery interpretation as the lusty, rebellious Galactia, Perez scores as the self-serving Urgentino, Dylan Jones acquits herself forcefully as Galactia's alienated daughter, and Steven Sennett is very funny as Urgentino's foppish brother. Dennis Cockrum is appropriately detestable, albeit amusing, as the self-satisfied Cardinal, though some of his line readings lean towards a flip, 20th-century sensibility. Loren Rubin's performance as Galactia's competitive artist lover Carpeta lacks range, and there are weaknesses among some of the supporting performers, at least one of whom disconcertingly attempts an Italian dialect, while everyone else in the play adheres to standard stage English.
Another odd discrepancy is the modern-dress attire Urgentino displays when he removes his robe. All the other costumes by Trampas Thompson appear to conform to the period. A distracting element is an unnecessary character named Sketchbook (Kaaren J. Luker), who lurks in the background, presumably as the embodiment of the various emotions Galactia is expressing throughout her scenes. If either of these devices have useful points, they don't register.
Aspects that do connect strongly are Matt Aston's tastefully subtle production design, including ambient lighting and set pieces, and Jef Bek's first-rate original musical score, which effectively accents the mood, gorgeously performed by Lisi Sari Alpert on cello, Caroline Gray Andres on violin, Bek on keyboard, and with lovely soprano vocals by Melodee Fernandez. Despite my reservations, this ambitious production of a highly challenging play is a praiseworthy effort by a risk-taking company.
"Scenes From an Execution," presented by Zoo District at ArtShare Los Angeles, 801 E.4th Place (at Hewitt), Downtown L.A. Jan. 9-Feb. 14. (323) 769-5674.
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GREGORY, GREGORY
at the Beverly Hills Playhouse
Reviewed by Madeleine Shaner
Greg Lewis has many talents, the greatest of which may be his ability to sit in front of a roomful of strangers and turn them into friends. In Gregory, Gregory, his modest assessment of his life till now, he sets himself and his parents down in front of the audience and weaves the threads of life, family, and career into a warming blanket that helps dispel the chilliness in our own dark corners as we nod in recognition. He's not a standup comedian, but much funnier, because the very real humor that comes across is purely a product of a naturally inviting, perceptive personality.
And he is appealingly grateful for his talent. He doesn't tell us what a terrific harmonica player he must have been to have been scouted and taken on tour as one of the members of the world-famous Harmonicats at the age of 15; he just shares the excitement he felt at being chosen, and the joy of being a professional performer, on the road and earning $600 a week‹more than his father made in a year. His memories are still 100 percent alive as he morphs into that teenage boy. As half of the comedy team Lewis and Christy, he played the top nightclubs and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. He went on to appear in films, write plays, and produce films.
Through it all, the figure of his father looms large: a feisty restaurant owner in Chicago, with a great, loyal heart and a lot of love in it for his gently rebellious son, who didn't want to follow the Greek immigrant's destiny in America (to own a restaurant). At one point in his monologue, Lewis becomes his dead father, speaking through his son, eschewing the advice, granting him the freedom to become what he has to become. It's quite moving. Another monologue, about the loyalty and nobility of a dog, doesn't quite make it. Parts of it are scarcely audible and it stops the show, in a negative way.
The highlight of Lewis' performance is his tour through the harmonicas he has collected and played over the years, from a tiny instrument that seems in danger of being swallowed while it's played, to a 15-inch monster he scarcely has to tickle to play "The Flight of the Bumblebee." Like the harmonicas he pulls from his kit bag, Gregory, Gregory, under Robert Walden's direction, is a pleasing grab bag of humor, reminiscences, and shared memories of good times, mistakes made, opportunities taken, family ties, friends, instruments, and boarding houses. In short, it's a delight.
"Gregory, Gregory," presented by Artemis Productions, in association with Camelot Artists at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, 254 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. Jan. 15-Mar. 7. (310) 839-5266.
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THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE
at the Alley Theater
Reviewed by Holly Hildebrand
The Alley Theatre production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane is the first in the country outside New York, where this dark drama is still a hit. Last year, it was nominated for six Tonys and won four, although not for best play. Now, Houston audiences get a chance to see what all the fuss is about; in general, it seems to have been justified.
The production is well acted and imaginatively mounted. Ethan McSweeny's direction is brisk and sure. Kevin Rigdon's set design effectively contrasts the squalor of the main characters' home with the expansive beauty outside. But there is something a little bit easy about the whole thing.
Written by the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh when he was only 25 (he's 28 now), Beauty Queen focuses on a mother/daughter battle of wills in a small Irish town. Maureen is 40 and virginal; she longs for a lover but seems condemned to spend her days caring for her vicious old mother, Mag. Suddenly, though, a chance for love and happiness comes into Maureen's life in the form of Pato Dooley, a former neighbor who's been working in England. Reunited with Pato at a party, Maureen brings him home, and they spend the night together. In outright defiance of her mother, Maureen doesn't care at all that Mag should see her with her lover the next morning. When Pato, who's returning to England, promises to write, the battle between Maureen and Mag goes into full swing.
The result, some are likely to say, is tragic. When one considers Maureen's history as a young woman, though, this characterization might seem debatable. And that's the problem I have with the play: The background McDonagh gives Maureen explains away her actions all too easily. How much darker‹and scarier‹Beauty Queen might be if the playwright had probed a little deeper into his character's psyche.
That said, Beauty Queen is absorbing and even shocking. Alley company members Bettye Fitzpatrick (as Mag) and Elizabeth Heflin (Maureen) are both excellent. In his Alley debut, Craig Bockhorn is a warm Pato. And Adam Stein, as Pato's brother Ray, delivers some of the funniest moments of the evening.
"The Beauty Queen of Leenane," presented by and at the Alley Theatre, 615 Texas Ave., Houston, Tex. Jan. 8-Feb. 6. (713) 228-8421.
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PROFIT
at the Eclectic Company Theatre
Reviewed by Terri Roberts
The Beatles were right: Money can't buy you love. It can buy the illusion of it, but the awful truth of pretense echoes loudly in a hollow heart. The risky relationships between love and money are the currency of Profit, a new play by Catherine Castellani premiering at the Eclectic Company Theatre. Though intriguing and well-acted, Profit could benefit from some minor tweaking and clarifications.
Khrystyne Haje plays Christina Jayne, an attorney on the fast track for partnership in her male-dominated firm. When she receives a big promotion, her friend and co-worker, Audra (Kate A. Parker), decides to surprise her with a celebratory message delivered by a male stripper named Matt (K. C. O'Neill). But when Christina pays him extra to stay the night and sleep with her, she crosses a dangerous line. Power-hungry and eager to prove her ability to play with the big boys, Christina puts Matt "on retainer," making him exclusively hers and subject to her every command. What begins as playful frivolity is eventually complicated by Christina's affair with another lawyer, Patrick (co-producer Kevin Black), and her inability to find her way out of the maze she has built.
Profit's semi-expository style occasionally misfires, as in the opening phone call between Audra and Christina; it becomes difficult (mostly on Audra's end) to tell who's being addressed. Matt's desire to hang up his hustler lifestyle comes on us rather abruptly, and even one semi-healthy relationship‹even if only referred to and never seen‹would add some needed contrast to Christina's dilemma and heighten the drama.
Parker underplays her comic relief role to good effect, though she speaks like she's been watching way too many episodes of Friends; it works for the character, except that many times she cannot be heard. Haje is impressively strong as the career-conscious Christina. O'Neill is as scrumptiously easy on the eyes as Haje, and convinces as the young hustler who wants out. Black succeeds in making what could be a cardboard cutout character‹the powerful and morally challenged corporate attorney‹into a flawed and sometimes amusing human being.
Black is also responsible for the clean, sparse set design, which perfectly accentuates the emptiness Christina feels, and the life she has chosen for herself.
"Profit," presented by Kevin Black and Peter Soby Jr. at the Eclectic Company Theatre, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., N. Hollywood. Jan. 15-Feb. 13. (323) 769-5201.
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VINCENT
at the Court Theatre
Reviewed by Polly Warfield
Greater love hath no man than the brotherly love Theo Van Gogh had for Vincent, as we see in this one-man theatre piece written by Leonard Nimoy in tribute to both of them. It is performed here by actor Sam Lovett and directed by Cynthia Parks. Director and performer both come to us from the Santa Cruz-based Central Coast Theatre, of which both are co-founders, and Lovett (as did Nimoy in the play's premiere staging at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis) plays both the artist and his almost preternaturally patient art-dealer brother.
What bitter irony to contemplate the hoopla and hullabaloo that now surrounds current exhibits of Van Gogh's peerless works at the most prestigious art galleries around town, the astronomical sums they bring to enrich businessmen and collectors who had nothing at all to do with their creation, and to compare these with the miserable conditions of the artist's life. When at last Theo managed to sell one of Vincent's paintings, "The Red Vines," it went for a mere 400 francs, and according to Theo's account was the only painting of Vincent's that ever found a buyer.
Although Theo, delivering an elegy to his recently deceased brother at a lecture hall in Paris in 1890, ardently rejects as a canard the prevalent assumption that his brother was mad, it is difficult not to see him as such‹and, however we revere his genius and applaud his noble intentions, it might not have been good to have known him. Indeed, he led a life fraught with terrible suffering, much of it self-inflicted, as in the sensational severed ear incident. According to Theo, this was caused not by an encounter with a prostitute but one with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, whom Theo sees as his brother's nemesis.
Poor dear Vincent hurt no one but himself, which he did often, stubbornly, incessantly, and usually out of some misguided goodness of his heart. If he was a mad genius, he was also some kind of mad saint; Theo, eminently sane, was saintly as well. Actor Lovett shifts easily and instantaneously from one persona to the other, with subtle changes in the way he holds his shoulders, his head, and most of all his eloquently expressive eyes. Shifts in the beginning are clear and distinct; as the 70-minute piece progresses, they become slightly more blurred. But always Lovett's compassionate empathy for his subjects is evident and deeply moving.
Nearing the finale, he flings open a curtain to reveal a panorama of glowing, gorgeous Van Goghs that are joyously triumphant, afire with beauty, a brave, blazoning testament to Vincent's spirit that lifts the heart as it brings tears to the eyes.
The simple set design is by director Parks, unobtrusive costumes by Thomas Marquez, and the exceptionally fine lighting‹often dark, and at one point provided by a lone flickering candle‹by Rob Meyer.
"Vincent," presented by Chapeau Productions at the Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., Jan. 14-Feb. 21. (323) 660-8587.
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CLEVELAND RAINING
at the Sweetooth Theatre
Reviewed by Charlene Baldridge
In a production by San Diego Asian American Repertory Theatre, Sung Rno's comedy Cleveland Raining showcases a New York playwright of promise and a struggling company artistically on the rise.
The play is a curious combination of real and surreal, the raw and the refined‹at one moment maddeningly slapdash and then in the next, suddenly deeply moving. Obliquely, the play concerns injury, loss, abandonment, and betrayal. The script veers from poetic beauty to ham-handed pronouncements. It packs an overworked kimchee gag (yes, it truly smells rotten and yes, if you like it, that proves you're Asian, at least in this script). It also contains so many portentous moments that one finds oneself wanting to cover one's head and sigh in the dark. This is not a bad play; it just misses the mark, and maddeningly so.
Jimmy "Rodin" Kim (Robert Dahey) has dreamed for a year that there will be another Great Flood, so he constructs a Volkswagen that will float. Assisted by a stereotypically stupid mechanic named Mick (Norman Victor MacKinnon), he designs an engine that will run on emotional loss. Meanwhile, Jimmy's sister Mari (Connie Kim), a bright young medical student, sees an accident in which a motorcyclist named "Storm" (Kimberly Miller) is injured. Shortly after Storm arrives it begins to rain. Lots.
The action is cinematic, with short scenes followed by blackouts. The acting is of a high quality. Dahey is especially effective as the conflicted Jimmy. A UCSD graduate, Miller is full of bluster and swagger. Kim is luminous, and MacKinnon does what he can with his caricatured role.
Asian American Rep's artistic director, Andy Lowe, gives Rno's play a fluid staging, with a mighty assist from Dahey's imaginative set and Lowe's own lighting design.
"Cleveland Raining," presented by the San Diego Asian American Repertory Theatre at Sweetooth Theatre, in the basement of the Maryland Hotel, 630 F St., San Diego. Jan. 8-24. (619) 272-5996.
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SISTERS MATSUMOTO
at the Leo K Theatre
Reviewed by David-Edward Hughes
The world premiere of Sisters Matsumoto, a new drama by gifted Asian playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, is a real let-down given the quality of his earlier works, like The Wash and Ballad of Yachiyo. Although it was workshopped by Seattle Rep last year, the script still plays like a rough draft, and Sharon Ott's uncharacteristically static direction and turgid pacing don't help. Only a gifted cast brings life to the story, and they are notable more for individual performances than as a well-meshed ensemble.
The title sisters are returning to their childhood home in Stockton, Calif., 1945, after being in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during much of WWII. The two older sisters have their husbands with them, while the youngest is still grieving the loss of her fianc in the war, where he fought with the all-Nisei regiment against the Japanese. Their hope of rebuilding the family farm is dashed by the discovery that their beloved father, who died in the camp, had sold the farm without their knowledge. This revelation leads to a pat, predictable, and heart-warming conclusion, though the play seems to be ready to end several scenes before it does.
As the severe and authoritarian eldest sister Grace, Kim Miyori takes a potentially unsympathetic character and makes her behavior and actions understandable and warranted; Miyori glows in the scene in which Grace finally erupts on the eve of the family's departure from the farm. The best-defined character and most engaging performances are by Lisa Li as the zaftig middle sister Chiz, and Stan Egi as her Hawaiian-born ("Buddha-head") physician spouse Bola. Though both nominally written as comic relief roles, the actors make them the truest and most alive characters on the stage. Their scene near the end, in which Chiz recalls her childhood on the farm, is the best-written section of Gotanda's play, and the pair make it even better.
Michi Barall is engaging as youngest sister Rose, and is well-paired with Ryun Yu's warm, natural turn as Henry, a childhood friend and Rose's eventual new fiancee. Nelson Mashita struggles with the role of Grace's pro-Japan-minded husband Hideo, Gotanda's most awkwardly written character, and Will Marchetti, as the family friend who betrays their trust, makes him less of a cardboard villain than he might be.
The handsome and versatile set by Kate Edmunds neatly positions the family house on a turntable opening up a wide variety of varied angles from which to view the scenes, and Nancy Schertler's lighting, along with Lydia Tanji's post-WWII costumes, are also exemplary. Sadly, the original music by Dan Kuramoto is by turns jarringly out of period or faux '40s pop.
"Sisters Matsumoto," presented by the Seattle Repertory Theatre at its Leo K Theatre, 155 Mercer St., Seattle. Jan. 11-Feb. 13. (206) 443-2222.
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FLYIN' WEST
at the Pasadena Playhouse
Reviewed by Terri Roberts
Freedom is a powerful thing, and Sophie Washington knows it. She knows what it means to the soul of a black woman to own her own land, to be able to protect her children and family, and to have charge of her own body and heart. She knows how hard-won freedom is, and will do anything to keep it.
In Flyin' West by Pearl Cleage (Blues for an Alabama Sky) and directed here by Shirley Jo Finney, the time is 1898. A new century approaches, full of opportunity and change. Sophie and her kin live in the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas. Though white speculators threaten to overtake it for the valuable land, Sophie means to keep Nicodemus safe from their interference.
Sophie (Michele Shay) is a tough-as-any-man woman who won't hesitate to sling the snake eyes of a rifle in the face of anyone stupid enough to threaten her, her adopted family, or her land. That includes her uppity brother-in-law, Frank (Tony Colitti), who comes for a family visit with his wife, the excitable Minnie (Ariyan Johnson), from their London home for Minnie's 21st birthday. The family includes Sophie, sweet-natured sister Fannie (Tina Lifford), and feisty old Miss Leah (Michelle Davison), who's staying with Sophie and Fannie. Wil Parish (Darryl Alan Reed), a neighbor who's sweet on Fannie, helps Sophie deal with Frank when things get ugly soon after he and Minnie arrive. Adding interest is the fact that Frank and Sophie are both mulatto. And while Sophie considers herself completely black, Frank rejects that part of himself and is desperate for the social acceptance and benefits of a white man.
Unfortunately, the details of Sophie's background and the reason why Miss Leah has been staying so long with these women are not answered‹or if they are in Cleage's play, they are missed in this production's too-rapid delivery, too-soft speech, or its dropped-off ends of sentences. Indeed, vocal patterns are a significant problem here. There's a fine line between good, clear diction and over-pronounciation, and Colitti and Johnson cross it, sounding like students of Henry Higgins. Understandably, their characters are from London, and yes, Frank is an arrogant ass, but too much is too much. Lifford and Davison have scattered moments of the same problem, as does Shay, who is also noticeably deepening her voice for a rougher effect. The overall result is a group of fine actors trying way too hard to do their jobs who just need to relax.
A studied perfection also plagues Dana Wood's costumes and Gary Wissmann's set: Not a speck of dirt or sign of wear and tear touches any one's clothes, and the house, though lovely, has the smooth, flawless look of a model do-it-yourself kit. On the other hand, Victor En Yu Tan's spectacular lighting makes us long for the clear, high blue of a Kansas prairie sky.
"Flyin' West," presented by and at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Jan. 17-Feb. 21. (800) 233-3123.
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TONGUE OF A BIRD
at the Mark Taper Forum
Reviewed by Rob Kendt
More poem than play, Ellen McLaughlin's Tongue of a Bird is as icy and desolate as the expanse of Adirondack mountains over which her heroine, the solitary search-and-rescue pilot Maxine, roams in her Cessna looking for signs of an abducted girl. McLaughlin's themes are all stated, and restated often, in the crystalline but unaffecting monologues she gives her characters‹three generations of independent-minded women who turn to the skies, either literally or figuratively, for solace and end up isolated, disembodied, whether in madness, forgetfulness, or restlessness.
But in Lisa Peterson's curiously stiff new production, it is only in the play's dialogues, especially between Maxine (Cherry Jones) and the nervous-wreck mother of the lost girl (Diane Venora), that Tongue of a Bird gets a pulse going. Elsewhere, it is tough to watch the brilliant, sympathetic Jones‹who exudes a seemingly effortless, down-home authority even in Maxine's most vulnerable moments‹have to work so hard to give her long speeches drama. She fares little better in the limply surreal passages in which McLaughlin has the ghost of Maxine's mother (Sharon Lawrence) hover overhead in an Amelia Earhart get-up, or has the bloodied specter of a girl who might be the object of Maxine's search (Ashley Johnson) rollerblade teasingly around her. For all their superficial peculiarity, both visions are predictably there to help Maxine toward closure‹as is Maxine's Polish-American nana (Marian Seldes), who, with her cute immigrant abruptness and vim, might as well be a vision, too.
Presumably Maxine's hallucinatory mid-life crisis is provoked by her current search-and-rescue case. It's a strained, literal-minded metaphorical connection‹searching, flight, mothers and daughters‹but it does give us Venora's character, Dessa, a logorrheic parody of a single mom who yearns desperately to do something about her daughter's absence. In Venora's expert and fearless hands, Dessa is funny, pathetic, and moving; her scenes with Jones' rueful Maxine on a nighttime Cessna flight are the production's emotional high point‹but not, unfortunately, the play's.
Rachel Hauck's blue-sky set is distinguished mainly by its absence, which is about right, but the multi-leveled sliding-door exits and entrances, complemented by Mary Louise Geiger's dramatic lighting, are patly portentous, as is Gina Leishman's two-tone music/sound design (ominous low notes for the heavy recovered memories, skidding pan flutes for the ponderous tonal shifts). Indeed, if Peterson's production feels stylized but strangely uninflected, aestheticized but artless, it may be because beneath all of McLaughlin's imagery and language, Tongue of a Bird is quite a conventional narrative of emotional loss, recovered memory, and pyschological healing. But like that ghost floating above Maxine, McLaughlin renders it from an airless height when what it could use is a lot more earth under its feet.
"Tongue of a Bird," presented by the Center Theatre Group and the Joseph Papp Public Theatre at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A. Jan. 14-Feb. 7. (213) 628-2772.
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PHANTOM
at the Welk Resort Theatre
Reviewed by Charlene Baldridge
Arthur Kopit's book for the Maury Yeston musical Phantom allows for a thorough delineation of character and motivation, especially in so intimate a setting as this. Indeed, due to the size of the venue, this Phantom plays like a chamber musical, with accordingly magnified emotional impact. Unfortunately, though, the production is plagued with Welk's usual problems: Four pit musicians do a thin orchestra make, the sound design is poorly balanced and at times recalcitrant, and the musical chorus seems under-rehearsed and fails to coalesce in matters of pitch, diction, and tone quality.
In this adaptation of Gaston LeRoux's 1911 novel, Christine is discovered by the rakish Count de Chandon (Alberto St vans), who recommends she study voice with the director of the Paris Opera, Gerard Carriere, brilliantly played and sung by Darrell Sandeen. Comic relief is provided by the opera's new owners, the pompous Monsieur Cholet (Joshua Patrick Escajeda) and his overblown wife Carlotta, played by the extremely capable Sylvia Lavoie Miller. Her cat-meow vocalises, cackles, and machinations provide witchy fun, especially in her rendition of "A Diva's Work Is Never Done," which puts one in mind of a put-upon Beverly Sills.
Carlotta dismisses Carriere and relegates Christine to the costume department, where she is heard singing by Erik, a.k.a. the Phantom. The role is sung and played with matinee-idol panache by Christopher Sanders. Sanders' second act scene and duet with Sandeen, a musical and dramatic highlight, elicits unexpected tears.
Yeston's music, which cries for additional hearings, is generally good, sometimes fine; his lyrics are always pleasing and frequently inspired. But he includes too much insipid, useless recitative, written as preface to the love duet "You Are Music," making it little wonder that Christine (Carolyn Casey) makes no apparent vocal progress. Indeed, despite Christine's lessons, Casey, an attractive young soprano early in her career, is never more than adequate vocally.
The Paris Opera here seems an unaccountably seedy company, with a mixed bag of purportedly elegant patron attire and opera costumes. Credited only to the theatre, the scenic design allows for rapid changes. Ray Limon's choreography and direction are excellent (though one wonders if that justifies his name appearing in the program in a larger typeface than the authors').
"Phantom," presented by and at the Welk Resort Theatre, 8860 Lawrence Welk Dr., Escondido. Jan. 6-Mar. 27. (888) 802-7469.
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JGOD BLESS AMERICANA
at Glaxa Studios
Reviewed by Wenzel Jones
Goodness knows nobody is fonder of living room floorshows than I. I've seen some wonderful things take place on shag carpeting against off-white walls. But there's a difference between putting on a show for friends who know and love your foibles (and who have access to your liquor cabinet) and moving that same show before the paying public (who have access to neither your personal history nor your intoxicants).
Charles Phoenix has some excellent raw material here. He has been rummaging through yard sales and thrift shops and has amassed a truly impressive collection of mid-century amateur vacation slides, many of which are so generically familiar there's a faint fear your own family may pop up. He has grouped these geographically and presents them as "a retro vacation slide show tour of the USA."
What he hasn't done is scripted the material or found a director to give the proceedings a particular point of view. So although it begins looking as if we're about to embark on a fictional tour featuring various friends and relatives ("There's Grandpa sittin' on the porch..."), it quickly degenerates into Mr. Phoenix pointing out every detail, reading every sign, and limiting his commentary to variations on "Love that [item]," "Dig that [person]," or "Isn't that charming?" It simply comes off as suburban SoCal condescension, and becomes wearying a good half hour too soon. For a slide show to run well over an hour, it probably needs a second character just to inspire discussion and disagreement. A photograph of a woman in a leopard-trimmed coat with matching hat and muff gazing over a copper mine should be a springboard for much better material than "Check out those accessories."
What does shine through is Phoenix's love for and encyclopedic knowledge of large, American-made cars. No automobile is shown without a tender description of its make, model, and paint job. It doesn't matter if there's only one car in the picture or if it's a photograph of a parking lot, each is given its due. One only wishes he had manufactured equally rich tributes to his human subjects.
"God Bless Americana," presented at Glaxa Studios, 3707 W. Sunset Blvd., Silverlake. Jan. 10-31. (323) 665-2456.
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LATINS ANONYMOUS
at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre
Reviewed by Paul Birchall
This anemic collection of comic sketches spoofing Latino American issues‹written by Luisa Leschin, Armando Molina, Rick Najera, Diane Rodriguez, and Cristobel Franco‹is undermined by a frustratingly ersatz tone. In spite of numerous sincere attempts to convey a passionately ethnic mood, Michael Vila's staid and flatly literal staging only explores its themes in the most superficial ways. The show is ironically lacking in the basic Latino flavor that should be its signature spicy strength. If the revue were salsa, it would be a generic brand.
Vignettes intended to convey the confusion and angst of being torn between Anglo and Latino culture basically emerge as being bland and flatfooted, while sketches that are intentionally more surreal seem unintentionally choppy and half-baked. Part of the problem is that the production's affably cheerful four-person ensemble offers performances far too amiable and guileless to convincingly communicate the material's ironic undercurrents. It's also unfortunate that the pacing is disappointingly heavy and languid, and that there's an awkward, undisciplined, unfocused quality to many of the acting turns.
Some of the skits offer intermittently pleasing character portraits‹such as "Menudo," in which Antonio Arratia plays a forcibly "retired" member of that infamous teen boy band, now reduced to waiting tables, or "Latina Aerobics," in which a perky "Chica" personal trainer (Cristina Frias) teaches Latina ladies the proper way to swing their hips and thus be irresistable. However, even in these comparatively amusing sketches, the writing sputters on for too long and the situations don't go anywhere.
In "Samuel Espada," a Latino private detective (Arratia again) attempts to "investigate" why Latino men are compulsively attracted to blonde women, and in "Machos of Omaha," Fidel Castro (Vila) and Juan Valdes (Arratia) duel to show who is the most masculine. These are promising ideas, but nothing is done with them, and the sequences devolve into inconsequentiality. The end result is a production that essentially misses hitting its comedic piËœata by a long shot.
"Latins Anonymous," presented by the Santa Monica Theatre Guild at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre, 2627 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica. Jan. 15-Feb. 13. (310) 828-7519.