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| | | 06/11/2009 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: The sensual glory of La Traviata, a perfect “date” opera, is heightened by programming it to follow the austerity and experiments of a new Die Walkure, Wagner’s story where marriage equates with doom, in a production in which the orchestra was muted and obscured from view with a black tarp. In Traviata by contrast, love consummated by marriage is the unquestioned goal, and nothing is muted. The florid gardens, the paneled room, and the carmine party with gypsy and Spanish dancers are the bac ...... | SUMPTUOUS SETTINGS, GORGEOUS TRAGEDY - LA TRAVIATA TRIUMPHS AT LA OPERA
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| | | 04/27/2009 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: Justin Tanner has a following. And for good reasons. His Plays are exceedingly funny, indecent, and expertly performed. The audience at Voice Lessons could be heard commenting on other Tanner shows they have seen over the years. And, they compare, as people do, Voice Lessons to those shows past. Not in terms of quality, but outrageousness, which is of course why one goes. Voice Lessons expands the Tanner oeuvre by actor humiliation for our cringing hysteria. The short and stout Tanner regular M ...... | JUSTIN TANNER'S VOICE LESSONS - EXCEEDINGLY FUNNY, INDECENT, AND EXPERTLY PERFORMED
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| | | 04/25/2009 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: This show is a breathless, intermission-free joyful blast through the canon that leaves the audience doubly impressed with the power and the stamina of the performers, as well as the clever recreations of the songs. The performers have different styles, so everyone in the audience can have a favorite. The songs of Burt Bacharach sung in Dionne Warwick’s unadorned style over Bacharach’s sophisticated arrangements were marvels of storytelling in song, modulated, melodious, and catchy. The uptow ...... | BACHARACH’S BACK: AMERICAN IDOLS PERFORM THE MASTER'S BEST
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| | | 04/19/2009 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: Whether you fear or love opera, whether your taste runs to madrigals or American Idol, whether your iPod playlist has rock or Broadway, you will be enchanted by the smooth romance of The Birds, by one of the last romantics, Walter Braunfels. And if you seek the truly rare, there are only four performances in all of this work that is almost never performed. LA Opera revives an Opera each year as part of its “Recovered Voices” series, which is based on the almost surprisingly accurate instinct ...... | DELIGHTFULLY EXCELLENT BIRDS ON DISPLAY, BRIEFLY, AT LA OPERA
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| | | 04/18/2009 - PASADENA by Mark Share: If You Could Meet Anyone From History . . . There’s a remarkable show that has grown from a single NoHo workshop performance to what will be the 100th performance on May 3, 2009 after popular and critical success in LA, Edinburgh, and New York. A group of actors each studies up on a famous historical person, and for fifteen minutes or so takes up that persona in a small theater where the audience gets to interact, question, debate, and partake of a conversation that otherwise you would have to ...... | INSIDE PRIVATE LIVES
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| | | 09/06/2008 - WEST LA by Mark Share: Driving to see the revival of the 1990 musical Once on this Island at UCLA’s Freud theater, I was listening to coverage of the RNC convention and heard the NPR commentator note that, while a number of people of color spoke on stage, the attendees and delegates themselves were mostly all white. Waiting for the show to begin and watching the patrons take their seats, I mused on whether the NPR comments applied as well at the Freud, because on that night Once on this Island was an all-black show ...... | ONCE ON THIS ISLAND - REVIEW
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| | | 07/11/2008 - LOS ANGELES by Mark Share: If tabloid gossip about governors and pop starlets seems to overdominate our minds and culture, take solace knowing the problem was pretty much the same even in colonial times, as depicted in a favorite play of founding father George Washington, Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, a comedy about most everyone’s insatiable delight in starting and spreading salacious and embarrassing gossip about their friends, enemies, and important people they’ve never met. The play has survived these centuri ...... | THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL AT THE THEATRICUM BOTANICUM
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| | | 03/06/2008 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: Starving artist Winston is satisfied with a romantic life of one-night stands - a “little adventure” and getting away “scot-free” – and an indefinite five-year wait for his paintings to improve and for him to be recognized, until his roommate Jamie, manic and suicidal at the same time, hits upon a plan to counterfeit a lost painting by the (fictional) artist Credeaux and sell it for a fortune to Tess, a society matron and arts patron with a thing for Credeaux and misplaced confidence in Ja ...... | THE CREDEAUX CANVAS AT THE STAGES THEATRE CENTER
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| | | 12/10/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: THE LAST SCHWARTZ AT THE ZEPHYR THEATRE ON MELROSE Huckabees are ascending, not just in the political realm but on also stage. Steffany Huckaby as Kia, the fish-out-of-water girlfriend brought to a family reunion is a delightfully vacant and lovely airhead from the same lotus land as Heather Graham and Marilyn Monroe before her. Huckaby delivers each of her lines with perfect comic phrasing that is complemented by her blond hair, sunny smiles, and wide-open eyes. Kia’s role as written by Debor ...... | THE SCHWARTZ IS DEAD; LONG LIVE THE SCHWARTZ!
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| | | 11/02/2007 - GLENDALE by Mark Share: Laughing at misery might be the subtitle of Samuel Beckett’s 1950’s masterpiece that is pure mid-century modern with a style that is manly minimalism in the IBM-corporate style with terse language and harsh, open staging, while the interior themes are as traditional as a Colonial 1950’s suburban home, with a sympathetic range of human condition considered – rich man, poor man, king and commoner, God and man, man and beast, master and servant, high and low language, and the wondering whether ...... | WAITING FOR GODOT AT A NOISE WITHIN IN GLENDALE
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| | | 10/19/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: The musical Hair may not shock as it did when it premiered nearly 40 years ago. The songs are now comfortingly familiar. Rock music itself has become commonplace in musicals – Duncan Sheik’s Spring Awakenings youth-angst show on Broadway won this year’s Tony. But Hair still boasts a remarkably large number of simultaneously (and briefly) naked performers, drifting clouds of tobacco and what smelled like weed, and simulated sex acts among cross-dressing performers. One of the male leads even ...... | HAIR AT THE MET THEATRE
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| | | 09/10/2007 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: On the same day that one of The Three Tenors was laid to rest, another was as alive as could be. While Luciano Pavarotti achieved the summit of artistry by drawing on his singularly angelic high-C’s, Placido Domingo has athletically bounded like the gifted utility player he is through diverse roles on and off stage in the opera world. This weekend found him honoring his friendly rival, attending rehearsals and the opening of Fidelio as the General Director of the LA Opera, and directing the LA ...... | BEETHOVEN’S FIDELIO AT THE DOROTHY CHANDLER PAVILION
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| | | 09/09/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: An Irish evening of brogues without the sadness, drink without disease, and Anglo-Irish relations without the troubles, that is what Ray Bradbury delights the audience with in his tales from a misty pub in the hinterlands of the distant isle. Bradbury, best known for his cautionary FAHRENHEIT 451 and for science fiction and supernatural tales, like THE ILLUSTRATED MAN collection, creates a loving postcard from his year in Ireland 50 years ago. There are songs beautifully sung and stories stirri ...... | FALLING UPWARD: OR, TO EIRE IS HUMAN, TO FORBID DIVINE AT THEATRE WEST
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| | | 09/04/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: On Facebook, the social networking phenomenon, Pirates vs. Ninjas is a leading application, in which friends recruit you to one side or the other - more than one million people for each side so far. So, a little theatre should have no problem filling the seats based on the brand name alone. If the run succeeds, then next year may bring us a live version of Facebook’s slightly less popular alternative, Zombies vs. Vampires. As you might expect, humor is the focus, with swaggering pirates and si ...... | PIRATES AND NINJAS: AN EXTRAVAGANT ADVENTURE AT THE THEATRE OF N.O.T.E.
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| | | 08/23/2007 - LOS ANGELES by Mark Share: CHARLES PHOENIX PRESENTS . . . BOB BAKER: THIS IS YOUR LIFE! The puppets are here! Avenue Q playing at the Ahmanson, Noah’s Ark
at the Skirball, and from August 30 through September 2, 2007, Charles Phoenix Presents . . . Bob Baker: This Is Your Life. Bob Baker is the octogenarian LA native who for a lifetime has constructed and performed with his world-famous marionettes at his own theater just west of downtown. Charles Phoenix has taken LA audiences down many nostalgic and humorous roads w ...... | HE’S GOT THE WORLD ON HIS STRINGS
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| | | 08/17/2007 - WEST LA by Mark Share: Reprise! opens its 11th season with a flood of romance, dance, and jazz courtesy of the Rogers and Hart 1936 classic, On Your Toes. The musical gives gifted stage actors the opportunity to enthrall the audience with a panoply of skills; along with dramatic acting, there are songs to be sung, pianos to be played, ballet, jazz, tap dance and Russian and Irish accents. The actors have a wonderful time, and so does everyone fortunate enough to be in the room. The show is light and sweet as cotton c ...... | ON YOUR TOES AT THE UCLA FREUD PLAYHOUSE
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| | | 03/19/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: SPACE THERAPY AT THE ZEPHYR THEATRE. Theater companies are as ephemeral as new restaurants; both rely on an unstable amalgam of talent, returning customers, and landlords. Just two years ago, Justin Tanner’s new Third Stage Company was big news. Some nasty comedies followed. Now it is over. The real estate has been sold, and Tanner’s company has been replaced by, rumor has it, a children’s theater. So Tanner, without a theater company or permanent home, presents his newest play in Hollywood, ...... | LOVE INTERGALACTIC STYLE AT THE ZEPHYR THEATRE
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| | | 03/09/2007 - WEST LA by Mark Share: BILLY CONNOLLY LIVE AT THE BRENTWOOD THEATRE The renowned comic briefly returns to LA from his Scottish home to rant and muse about what he has learned of the human race in his 64 years. He is hilarious. Connolly likes LA, and even pronounces Tujunga right, recounting his visits to the Aroma Café (apparently) and a new age shop nearby, as well some experiences with religion, the supernatural, his children, his own poor childhood, women he’s known, and a truly funny bit about why we should all ...... | BILLY CONNOLLY LIVE AT THE BRENTWOOD THEATRE
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| | | 03/02/2007 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: A Night at the Opera without Clothing. A group of disrobed young people enjoying combinations of couplings and triplings, on stage, with songs – is it Hair? No, get out your opera glasses; it is the pleasure palace of the Goddess Venus in a new production by the Los Angeles Opera of Richard Wagner’s Tannhauser. The advertising and signs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion warn or entice patrons with promises of sex and skin. Tannhauser delivers a night of high-brow naughtiness. This opera concer ...... | TANNHAUSER AT THE LOS ANGELES OPERA
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| | | 02/15/2007 - BURBANK by Mark Share: Who’s Going To Do It? STAGE STRUCK AT THE COLONY THEATRE. In the same bloody and bitchy vein as Sleuth and Deathtrap, the tables keep turning and the plot-twisting revelations never cease in Simon Gray’s four character play where someone is always about to become murderer or victim. As we have come to expect at the Colony Theatre, the production and performances are polished. The setting is domestic; a husband and wife in suburban London with an American lodger (going on in stereotypical fash ...... | STAGE STRUCK AT THE COLONY THEATRE
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| | | 02/02/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: “From the Big Screen to the TV and Back” Disney’s Peter Pan at the El Capitan. Here I am again at the movies in Hollywood, with my seven-year-old, seeing a movie that has played countless times on our home TV, but in the splendor of Disney’s movie palace the El Capitan Theatre. Choosing to go to the theater to see a movie that is available for home viewing may not be as atavistic as listening to music on AM radio or wearing a windup watch, but it’s definitely not what people tend to do. Th ...... | DISNEY’S PETER PAN at the El Capitan
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| | | 01/26/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: TERRACOTTA WARRIORS at the Kodak Theatre. This “action musical” written and directed by Dennis K. Law, and performed in Mandarin, achieves Mr. Law’s goal, which is to present “the finest aspects of Chinese performing arts and put them in a platform that can rival theater in the West.” It is really encouraging to see a large, diverse audience sharing and appreciating a new cross-cultural work. Visually, the production is stunning. There are about 70 performers, including the sorts of amazi ...... | TERRACOTTA WARRIORS at the Kodak Theatre
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| | | 01/16/2007 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: The theatrical Mary Poppins is a tough ticket to get in London or Broadway, with no West Coast touring companies yet announced, but then you don’t get to sing along at the live show. At this sing-along showing of the 1964 film, subtitles appear for the songs, and the audience is encouraged to sing along, yell out at certain high points, and clap to keep time during the extended Dance in Time rooftop sequence. It’s a chance to enjoy a sentimental favorite with people of all ages in the jewel-b ...... | SING-A-LONG MARY POPPINS at the El Capitan
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| | | 12/11/2006 - BURBANK by Mark Share: In its first two seasons, the Third Stage Company has come to signify wild and profane comedy superbly performed. This world premiere of first-time playwright William Wright’s Texmas fits right in. Texmas is a comic mechanical bull ride, leaving you breathless with laughter. The one-room setting is a tract house living room in Texas, and the action takes place in two acts, on Christmas eve and a few hours later on Christmas morning. There are no children, and so there is little joy. Instead, ...... | TEXMAS at the Third Stage
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| | | 12/02/2006 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: THE RETURN OF THE ONE TRUE KING! THE LION KING AT THE PANTAGES. If you are alive and have not seen The Lion King, then you are missing one of the great cultural events of your time. This musical combines some of the most vital stories of our culture in a breathtaking visual and musical triumph celebrating the creativity of cultures around the world. Lightning rarely strikes twice, and certainly the inventive puppeteer Julie Taymor, the omnipresent songwriter Elton John, and the Disney theatrica ...... | LION KING at the Pantages
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| | | 12/01/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: Good Doll, Bad Dwarf. Mabou Mines DollHouse at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse – part of UCLA Live’s Fifth International Theatre Festival. This is the sort of show that awakens the aesthetic interest of anyone who cares about theater. On paper it sounds intriguing: A classic play, Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” reimagined by an experimental fringe director, Lee Breuer (hailing from our own NoHo – how international is that?), and staged by the Mabou Mines theater company from New York with dwar ...... | MABOU MINES DOLLHOUSE at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse
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| | | 12/01/2006 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: The NUTCRACKER at the Shrine Auditorium. Dance Review by Mark Share. How’s a parent to choose? If Christmas is coming, then so are productions of the Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s bonbon of a ballet about the young girl Clara and her toy Nutcracker doll who in her dreams becomes a handsome prince who defeats the mouse king and takes her to fantasy land. You will be very happy if the Nutcracker you select is the Universal Ballet’s production at the Shrine, playing through this weekend. The produc ...... | The NUTCRACKER at the Shrine Auditorium
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| | | 11/17/2006 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: A TRIP TO LOLLIPOP LAND – TAXI TO JANNAH AT THE FOUNTAIN THEATRE The answer to Elvis Costello’s question, “What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?” is – not much. That’s why Borat, which is a rude poke in the eye to all such fine sentiments, is one of the funniest movies ever. In contrast, picture yourself in a Los Angeles that had never heard of Paul Haggis’ film Crash, where blacks and whites, kids and old men, and Christians, Jews, and especially Muslims treat each oth ...... | TAXI TO JANNAH AT THE FOUNTAIN THEATRE
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| | | 11/17/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: Help Me Obi-Wan! – Carrie Fisher’s One-Woman Show Wishful Drinking at the Geffen Playhouse. At some point during this wonderfully funny and revealing evening, I started to feel as though Carrie Fisher were a part of the family, some distant cousin one gets reports about from time-to-time. She’s always been buzzing around our popular culture; when I was a teen she was Princess (bagel-ears) Leia in Star Wars, then she married Paul Simon for a time, and there was the semi-autobiographical Postc ...... | WISHFUL DRINKING AT THE GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE
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| | | 11/03/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: LONG LIVE THE SALESMAN! Los Angeles audiences are blessed to have on stage two actors so completely inhabiting their roles that it is a relief to see them take their bows at the end of the evening and confirm that they are not the difficult and idiosyncratic characters they have indelibly portrayed. One of these performances is by the actress Cherry Jones as Sister Aloysius in Doubt, which just closed at the Ahmanson, and the other, is by the actor Eddie Jones (no relation to Cherry) as Willy L ...... | DEATH OF A SALESMAN AT THE ODYSSEY THEATRE
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| | | 10/27/2006 - SANTA MONICA by Mark Share: YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANYTIME YOU LIKE, BUT . . . This is the most exuberantly creative show in town right now. Actors mingle with monster/ghost puppets, projected animation, and 3-D silhouette animation. Expanding on conceptual drawings by animator Angus Oblong of an old haunted hotel where a gamut of ghosts mingles with guests, the mixed media mavens of the Rogue Artists Ensemble under the direction of Mark Valdez have made a visually marvelous living cartoon. In the tiny interior of the imposing ...... | THE VICTORIAN HOTEL AT THE POWERHOUSE THEATRE
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| | | 10/26/2006 - NOHO ARTS DIST. by Mark Share: NOHO – YOU’RE INVITED TO THE PROM! If you enjoy fine pop singing, and who doesn’t, then you’ll have a delightful time listening to four songbirds recreate hits of the 50’s and 60’s at The Marvelous Wonderettes. Act 1 takes place at a 1950’s high school prom where the four girls are the performers for their fellow seniors, and Act 2 takes place at the ten-year reunion, where the women are reunited to sing again. There are more than 30 favorites, like Lollipop, Mr. Sandman, It’s My Party, ...... | THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES
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| | | 09/26/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: RARE CHINESE “PEONY” AT UCLA THIS WEEKEND The Met may have stolen some headlines this week by projecting a live Madama Butterfly on the screens in Times Square, but this weekend Los Angeles is the site for an equally accessible but far rarer performance of “The Peony Pavilion.” The opera, written by one of Shakespeare’s Chinese contemporaries, blends tragedy, fantasy, and comedy as the young lovers are divided by death, then revived and married in a happy triumph of love. Noted Santa Bar ...... | RARE CHINESE “PEONY” AT UCLA THIS WEEKEND
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| | | 09/18/2006 - SAN FERNANDO VALLEY by Mark Share: A REAL MOUTHFUL: OMNIUM GATHERUM AT THE THEATRICUM BOTANICUM. Great art ferments slowly from the grapes of wrath. There has been a rush to market a worthy vintage from the attacks of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath, and for the most part the results have been disappointing, foiling even vaunted vintners of scripts like Sam Shephard, who should have allowed his The God of War to wither on the vine rather than dilute his reputation by selling it to a public thirsty for a shared evening of ...... | A REAL MOUTHFUL: OMNIUM GATHERUM AT THE THEATRICUM BOTANICUM
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| | | 09/08/2006 - CULVER CITY by Mark Share: LOVE’S LABORS LOST. Summer is over, but there is still time to catch the sunny and steamy Love’s Labor’s Lost at the Ivy Substation in Culver City. True, Culver City bears the burden of what may be the most unsexy name of a local city (at least since Johnny Carson retired, and with him, the ribbing of Burbank), but French director Simon Abkarian, another August refugee from Paris, seems blissfully unaware of any irony. He starts the show with his own invention, a silent prologue, in which th ...... | LOVE’S LABORS LOST at the Ivy Substation
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| | | 07/10/2006 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: The final performances of the 2005-2006 dance series at the Music Center brought the Miami City Ballet, a 20-year old company that thrilled the audience with its style and skill. Fittingly for the start of summer, the company performed bright and sultry selections infused with jazz. The strong opening was a performance of “Fancy Free,” with Leonard Bernstein’s music and choreography by Jerome Robbins. It tells the story of three sailors on leave in New York City trying to hook up with women ...... | MIAMI CITY BALLET AT THE MUSIC CENTER
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| | | 07/10/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: Whatever theatrical skills Jason Alexander (formerly of Seinfeld) may possess, directing is not among them, as is painfully evident in his bombastic and banal direction of Sam Shepard’s new anti-America play God of Hell. The play would be problematic even with gifted direction. It tells the story of husband-and-wife dairy farmers in Wisconsin (Bill Fagerbakke and Sarah Knowlton), whose bucolic life is turned upside when a visitor appears, followed by a pursuer. The visitor (Curtis Armstrong), ...... | THE GOD OF HELL at the Geffen Playhouse
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| | | 06/25/2006 - WEST HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: Indelible performances highlight this production of Jonathan Larson's one-man show transformed posthumously into a three-person production. Director Scott Schwartz keeps the emotions high and the pace fast in this autobiographical tale of Larson's attempts to get an early show produced on the eve of his 30th birthday. In the lead as Larson's alter ego Jon, Andrew Samonsky shines. He is complemented by Tami Tappan Damiano portraying Jon's dancer girlfriend, Susan, and Wilson Cruz as his friend M ...... | tick . . . tick . . . BOOM! at the CORONET THEATRE
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| | | 06/25/2006 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: A strange and depressing evening of musical theater awaits the audience attending Little Egypt, enlivened by the superb performances of six pros, especially French Stewart whose baroque facial and physical expressions, encompassing elements of mime and dance, epitomizes the sort of portrayal that can only be experienced in a live venue. The story takes place near a convergence of rivers in Ohio among characters who are worse off in every way than the Westside theater audience. This setup, a mix ...... | LITTLE EYGPT at the MATRIX THEATRE
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| | | 06/16/2006 - DOWNTOWN LA by Mark Share: THE MONSTER IN THE HALL: It has seemed inevitable that the visionary puppeteer Julie Taymor would design an LA Opera production since 1998, when LA Opera presented the premiere of Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was doomed by a different artist’s decision to have the singers’ faces entirely covered with masks, eliminating any facial expressiveness. At the same time, Taymor’s groundbreaking work was being lauded in the Lion King, where the animals could not have been more vividly ...... | GRENDEL AT THE MUSIC CENTER
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| | | 06/12/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: The return engagement of this popular comedy portrays two zaftig widows getting their groove back courtesy of the sexual attentions of a charming swindler in a Las Vegas retirement condo. There’s genuine theatrical pleasure in watching such charismatic and comfortable actors, Renée Taylor, Lainie Kazan, and Joe Bologna. Taylor and Kazan are joyously shameless in strutting their thunder thighs, first in frumpy housedresses and then in silly lingerie. I was concerned that the young might be trau ...... | BERMUDA AVENUE TRIANGLE AT THE BRENTWOOD THEATRE
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| | | 06/08/2006 - SAN FERNANDO VALLEY by Mark Share: The love lives of the rich and famous have been a reliable source of entertainment from Zeus and Hera, through Bill and Monica, to Brangelina. The tragic love of Antony and Cleopatra has been retold a thousand times, and unlike, say the history of Henry VI, the broad contours of the story are familiar to an audience even before seeing Shakespeare’s play. But largely forgotten is the tragic love story (if there even was a love story) between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, and his bet ...... | QUEENS IN LOVE: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA AT THE THEATRICUM BOTANICUM AND ELIZABETH REX AT THE NOHO ARTS CENTER
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| | | 05/30/2006 - SAN FERNANDO VALLEY by Mark Share: ROGER WRIGHT AT VALLEY COLLEGE. Roger Wright, who played klezmer music so stirringly in the musical American Klezmer, recently held a Sunday afternoon recital of romantic and modern and also contemporary classical music for the piano. The recital room at Valley College is rather small and stark, and Wright more than overwhelmed the audience with peals of thunderous music and waves of emotion. Wright is young – early thirties – and while his heart is with the romantics like Arthur Rubinstein, ...... | ROGER WRIGHT AT VALLEY COLLEGE
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| | | 05/29/2006 - BURBANK by Mark Share: OKLAHOMO! AT THE THIRD STAGE. Only half a year after its premiere, Oklahomo! has returned, revised. What was said on this website last August still holds true, with a few happy improvements. The same performers (plus Julie Brown!) are on hand, but Tanner is now trim and Tad Coughenour has cut his hair short. Maile Flanagan and Mary Scheer are over-wound springs of comic hysteria. The formerly trudging opening now zooms along. It’s still about a disastrous show within a show, but which, unlike ...... | Oklahomo! - Revisited
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| | | 04/28/2006 - WEST LA by Mark Share: If you have followed the trajectory of the Geffen over the years, from the first season’s motif of a naked man in each production, to years of decent shows interspersed with inconsequential plays and inconsistent productions, then you will be gratified to know that now, in the Spring of 2006, the stars have aligned and the Geffen’s presentation of Arthur Miller’s first popular and critical success, All My Sons, is a more perfect union of vital play and sensational production than you have ev ...... | ALL MY SONS at the Geffen Playhouse
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| | | 04/21/2006 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: EVERYMAN FOR HIMSELF AT THE UNKNOWN THEATER. Nearly a play without words, the wonderful new show Everyman plays like an updated Charlie Chaplin silent film, with our rumpled everyman (an outstanding Michael Gallagher) set upon by the arbitrary mechanics of our modern culture, and steering his own course and finding, despite all odds, romantic love. In place of dialogue (well there is some), the author, director and choreographer, Ameenah Kaplan, tells the story through music, movement, dance, a ...... | EVERYMAN FOR HIMSELF at the Unknown Theater
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| | | 03/31/2006 - UNIVERSAL CITY by Mark Share: KCRW’S SOUNDS ECLECTIC EVENING (March 26, 2006) at the Gibson Amphitheatre. The pun is gone—Mourning Becomes Electra to Morning Becomes Eclectic to Sounds Eclectic Evening—but the fun was there on Saturday night at KCRW’s annual low-key concert for grownups. A little higher ticket price gets you drinks and food at the after party or, for more money, even during the show. And much of the ticket price is tax deductible; if that doesn’t say “concert for grownups” what does? So that teens di ...... | KCRW’S SOUNDS ECLECTIC EVENING
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| | | 03/24/2006 - CULVER CITY by Mark Share: THE STONES at the Kirk Douglas Theatre Bad bored boys are the subject of this boisterous production that should more than satisfy the teen audience that the Center Theatre Group is reaching out to through its youth theatre program, called P.L.A.Y (Performing for Los Angeles Youth). This Australian import (that’s why the title is Stones and not Rocks) concerns a pair of boys, ages 13 and 15, and how they come to pitch rocks from an overpass, killing a motorist. The two actors (Joe Hernandez-Kol ...... | THE STONES at the Kirk Douglas Theatre
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| | | 03/20/2006 - WEST HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: THE ITALIAN IN ME at the Globe Playhouse. Dina Morrone fast engages the audience with her one-woman show; she’s likable and funny in her story of a sexy would-be starlet who ventures, from the care of her Italian immigrant grandparents in rural Canada, to Rome in search of stardom. In the year and a half since I saw Morrone in a workshop version of this show, she has wonderfully enhanced and connected the main scenes with themes dealing with fertility, mortality, and the Italian in her. Still ...... | THE ITALIAN IN ME at the Globe Playhouse
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| | | 03/15/2006 - HOLLYWOOD by Mark Share: Preview of PILGRIM at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre (formerly the Doolittle and the Huntington Hartford). In a step forward for LA theater, a new musical is premiering at a major stage. Pilgrim, which is not about Thanksgiving, promises to be an over-the-top experience with song, dance, acrobatics, a martial artist on stilts, and a rolling three-story set. The setting is medieval fantasy. The music is pop rock. The show seems ready for Xbox 360. The producers proudly offered reviewers a preview ...... | PILGRIM at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre
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