Stage Struck Review | Reviewing Theatre For Over 40 Years

Time 2020-10-27 13:09:18

Web Name: Stage Struck Review | Reviewing Theatre For Over 40 Years

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The musical No, No Nanette, though originally a product of the 1920s, became a hit first on Broadway and then in stages large and small around the nation beginning in the 1970s. As such it sparked a revival of the classic old school musical filled with frothy songs, tap dancing, and a remarkably simplistic romantic plot. Still, it s fun to see the one which started it all, at least in modern terms. Now one can, at the Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater in Claremont.The plot is typical: Jimmy Smith, a good-hearted, wealthy businessman goes behind his skinflint wife s back to platonically assist three women from around the country who inspired his sympathy. Now they are coming to see him and he asks his lawyer and friend Billy, whose spendthrift wife spends all he makes, to square the three women away so they will no longer intrude upon his life. In the midst of this, Billy s ward Nanette, despite having decided she loves Billy s nephew Tom, decides she wants to sow a wild oat or two before marrying him. Through secrets and happenstance, all these folk end up heading for the same Atlantic City cottage at the same time. Hilarity, and a lot of song and dance, ensue.Erin Dubreuil makes a sweet Nanette, singing and dancing with skill and style. Tracy Ray Reynolds gives Billy s wife Sue a flamboyant glee. Colette Peters radiates sensibility but still cuts a mean rug as Jimmy s more cautious mate. Frank Minano has a lovely time as the over-generous, innocently enthusiastic Jimmy, making him a lovely accompaniment to the equally pure adventuring of Dubreuil s Nanette. The other characters, and the versatile chorus, give the show its fluffy feel. It s all light-hearted fun.Still, the real standout of this production is Mary Murphy-Nelson as the grumpy, and extremely funny maid, Pauline. As she threatens to quit, dances with and scolds her vacuum cleaner, and otherwise offers commentary on the world at large and the silliness of the proceedings around her in particular, Murphy-Nelson s comic timing remains the best thing in this show.Director John Lalonde knows how to create order out of all this silliness. Choreographer John Vaughan has the tappers tapping and the waltzers waltzing with Busby Berkeley-esque period style. The set by Chuck Ketter adapts well. One can argue that it is tough to cut a three-act show into the required two a Candlelight production must have, but even this is done with a kind of confidence which takes the audience along for the ride.In short, No, No Nanette is light, frothy fun. Songs like Tea for Two have re-entered the American songbook because of it, and even the most titilating moments are nothing which could offend anyone of any age. At Candlelight, of course, this comes with a good meal and (should one wish) a luscious dessert.What: No, No Nanette When: through April 13, doors open for dinner at 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and a special Thursday performance April 11, 5 p.m. Sundays, and for lunch matinee at 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday Where: Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater, 455 W. Foothill Blvd in Claremont How Much: $63 $78 adult, $30 $35 children 12 and under Info: http://www.candlelightpavilion.com or (909) 626-1254 ext.1 Deborah Strang as the demanding Amanda and Rafael Goldstein as the increasingly detached Tom in Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie at A Noise Within in Pasadena. [photo: Craig Schwartz]One of the seminal works of American theatrical literature is Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, the play which vaulted him to fame. It was in my high school English textbook, in the equivalent for that preliminary English course everyone has to take in college, and one of the great plays studied in my theater lit course. It appears on stage with remarkable regularity, and has been on television more than once. A sad and introspective tale, it can be taken as Greek tragedy, as a statement on America s disconnect, as one of several Williams treatises on the tawdry aftereffects of Southern culture, or simply as a character study.At A Noise Within in Pasadena what seems to win out is character study. Perhaps this is because the four-person cast contains the strongest performers in the ANW membership stable. Co-Artistic Director Geoff Elliott has given these performers space to create far more rounded and interesting characters than on some occasions, and there are haunting moments in the production worthy of special note. If only there wasn t an over-literal tacked on ending to annoy a Williams aficionado at the play s close.Deborah Strang makes comparatively (and interestingly) subtle work of the unsubtle Amanda, a faded Southern belle whose desperate hold the youth she enjoyed before marrying the wrong man has poisoned any possible connection with her only son. As that son, Tom, Rafael Goldstein radiates with resentment, thwarted ambition, and an edgy empathy for his disabled sister.Erika Soto makes Laura,  the sister, more complex than is often seen. The touchingly memorable moment shared, thanks to a particularly apt bit of direction, with the audience when she looks in a mirror and can actually see herself as beautiful for a moment will stick with the observer long after the play ends. Likewise Kasey Mahaffy as Jim, the gentleman caller, gives a nervous edge to the part which intimates a connection that just almost comes off. It makes the pain and the depth of their scenes worth the entire production.Kasey Mahaffy as Jim and Erika Soto as LauraFred Kinney s scenic design is clever, but the adaptability it has to have is mostly due to the one weird twist in the direction at play s end. This is a memory play. Memory plays have to stop where the memories end. The fact that Laura s memory will not leave Tom alone, and the underlying question mark about the people/lives he left behind is the lingering fog which gives the play some of its power. Here, that question is answered, nullifying Williams point.Why Elliott chose to do this answering a question which is aways left for the audience to surmise is an abject mystery. Frankly, it seems a sign of distrust, either in his audience or in his performer, or (even worse) Williams himself. In any case, it proves moderately insulting, and fudges what is otherwise a fine, fine production of an American classic.Still, given everything which leads up to that moment, this version of Glass Menagerie is worth taking a look, my sincere, rueful if only qualifier to the ending notwithstanding. The Glass Menagerie plays in repertory with Shakespeare s Othello and Mary Zimmerman s Argonautika .AWhat: The Glass Menagerie  When: through April 26, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. March 30, 2 p.m. April 20, 7 p.m. April 14, 7:30 p.m. April 4 and 25, 8 p.m. April 5, 20 and 26  Where: A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd. in Pasadena  How Much: from $25, Student Rush with ID one hour before performance $20, On April 14 all remaining tickets $25 (available online with the code SUNDAYRUSH) or at box office Info: http://www.anoisewithin.org or (626) 356-3121Share this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)MoreClick to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading... As I continued to think about my theme: things which make films different from theatrical productions, I realized I had left out what I personally consider the most egregious did you not understand the point of a single set? moment I have run into in film. I have added it as an addendum to Part 1, so feel free to wander back and check it out.Perhaps the most fascinating thing about stage productions is their ability to convince audiences they are seeing things which aren t there. This is not new. Shakespeare had to deal with it all the time, as the concept of a set as we now know it was unavailable to him. When people in the modern era cut the Bard s plays it is often to get rid of what my mother (who taught and wrote about theater), often referred to as the here we are in the forest of Arden speeches, because in his day you had to explain the setting, as it wasn t really there. (One of the most famous begins Henry V, wherein the chorus enjoins the audience to, among other things, think, when we speak of horses, that you see them )In time, sets became the norm, and in the 18th Century theater stages became elaborate pieces of machinery so that gods could descend from the heavens and things could rise from the depths. Literal was in, image-wise, to the point where, in the early 1910s, my grandmother saw a stage production of Ben Hur which actually had horses running on treadmills for the chariot race. The shift back came when theater, for the first time, had to compete with film. In the same way that photography allowed the rise of the impressionist and then expressionist, etc., art world (you didn t need to paint a tree that looked like a tree anymore, you could take a picture of it instead), the rise of film and television, once seen as a death knell of theater, forced it in many cases to return to what it had been in the beginning. It became, by the mid-20th Century, the last great bastion of suspension of disbelief. Today, theater is in many cases the imagination s great collective gift. The following is not even vaguely a retrospective of innovative productions, but snapshots on a few which captured my attention simply because the lack of set, or the development of a set-within-a-set, and an audience s willingness to go along with and see what wasn t there proved essential in the play s success.Thornton Wilder s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 play Our Town is an especially good illustration of this. In the innovative period of New Deal idealism, this encapsulated portrait of a small New England town was most notable for its study of human nature, and for its staging. The narrator or chorus was the stage manager of the theater, and the fourth wall separating the action onstage from the audience was nonexistent a style Wilder embraced. The set, such as it was, consisted of a few chairs, a couple of tables, and two ladders. Leaning at the top of the ladders, teenaged love interests Emily and George talked out the bedroom windows of their neighboring houses. A couple of chairs created a front porch to sit on and snap beans together. Formal rows of chairs held the occupants of the graveyard. None of those places existed except in the narrator s explanation and the minds of the audience, but that audience saw them nonetheless. Through all the revivals on and off Broadway, even college productions, minimalism and that removal of the 4th wall has remained elemental. This stark format made it ripe for radio broadcasts, and there were several in the days before television took off. A television version of the play aired live in 1955, with major Hollywood stars, but kept to the simplicity of the original staging, as had the only theatrical film in 1940 (though it changed the ending at the studio s insistence). Indeed, the one time I saw the play with actual sets, the power diminished almost exponentially.Wilder did not invent the modern version of this concept, of course, nor was he the only innovator of his time. Indeed, Bertolt Brecht among others was doing similar things in Germany between the wars, and with the escape from Nazism many European avant garde artistic and theatrical innovations cross-pollinated with their American counterparts. Fast-forward to the 1960s. As live theater worked to reclaim its space in American culture from television, sets, in general, tended to become less literal. Of course, one possible reason might be that having no set was cheaper. The ultimate example of this would be the 1960 debut, way, way off Broadway, of the musical The Fantasticks. In its tiny space it also made use of a ladder or two, and a mime who made and removed an invisible wall in the middle of the action. The musical, with its simple comparison of romanticized vs trouble-filled life was infectious, and still holds the record for consecutive performances in the US, at 17,162. This without really having a set at all. (And yes, I saw a production which included an elaborate set and an expanded score from the two-piano original. It fell flat as a pancake.)On the big Broadway stage, however, it was and is not the cost of a set, but the ability to move quickly from concept to concept, place to place, or even in and out of an author s head, without having to move much of anything. A stellar moment in this concept has to be the musical Man of La Mancha, which though following some rules of a standard American musical, broke its own ground.When it came to setting, the story-within-a-story played out not with the shifting sets of Brigadoon or the elaborately intertwined noir vs modern Hollywood set pieces of the later City of Angels, but on a single stage. The shift was in the audience s mind, for the entire play was set in a prison filled with people awaiting trial by the Spanish Inquisition. Yet, though that gave the tone its immediacy, it was the story spun by prisoner Miguel de Cervantes which took over the space. Within that one set, using bits of dark wood and a few costumes and props, the tale of Don Quixote de La Mancha came to life. As if to point out what was happening, every once in a while the workings of the prison come back to break up the fantasy, but it proved easy to pull everyone, including the audience, back into the fantasy world. Recently, three differing productions have stood out to me, as they pointed to the use of this hugely simplistic style of set (although that is really usually the result of very not-so-simple, subtle design). Berkeley Rep s pared down Into the Woods , placed all the performers, many of whom doubled as musicians, in chairs lined the edges of the stage, coming into the piece as required. There have been enough concert versions of Sondheim musicals, so this is not surprising, but it differs greatly from the elaborate costuming and visuals of the original, and it was if anything more powerful as a result. Paula Vogel s Indecent, fresh from Broadway, lined up its cast under a screen where projections in Yiddish and English (Brecht would be proud) helped one through the true story of a famed Yiddish playwright whose one popular work, which had made him famous in Europe, was destroyed by the hesitant culture of New York theater in the 30s. With virtually no set, the lights and the actors created theater stages, intimate homes, and rich communal spaces, and once again the audience went right along. The projections even allowed the performers to quote the play in the original Yiddish, by creating supertitles evocative of many modern opera productions, and again the audience just moved right along with it all.Finally, the continuing (once the COVID-19 virus has run its course) tour of the brilliant Come From Away uses one simple set, chairs and tables to create everything from a plane to a bus to a school hallway to anywhere else needed, while the small acting company, simply by donning a hat or a jacket, became the many, many people who lived in or arrived in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11. It lost out in the Tony Awards to the fine, but highly set-and-projection-driven Dear Evan Hanson. Still, it is by far the show most likely to stand the test of time, in part because it is powered by the sparking of audience imagination. And that is what the theater can do: plug the audience s imagination into the workings onstage, creating something larger than any bit of wood and canvas could possibly achieve. We are such things as dreams are made of says one of Shakespeare s characters, speaking not only to the play it is from but to the whole idea of theatrical performance. Of course, as with my concerns from the first part of this musing, when you take something from the stage and, rather than filming a stage performance, turn it into the usually more literal format of classic movie-making, adjustments must be made. Doing it right can create a classic. Doing it wrong, or doing it with the wrong stage piece one so dependent on the audience s imagination that trying to fill in those blanks weakens the whole can ruin the thing, even perhaps to the point of making folks not want to see the original stage version anymore.Note: Having come through a move across country, holidays, and the replacement of my right knee, I was just getting ready to reach out to local theater, and local press in my new town about coverage, etc., when the coronavirus became a concern for us all. So, instead of writing about current productions, I thought I d offer up some musing on what we can use to entertain us.Many theater lovers across the nation are settling in for a significant withdrawal period, as COVID-19 makes crowding into plush or not-so-plush seats to experience live events idiotically dangerous. Some are discussing watching time-honored plays and musicals in the versions created for Hollywood over the years. In some cases this may prove the perfect antidote, but the relationship between stage and screen has often been fraught, for a number of reasons.To start with, of course, there were the olden days of the Hays Office, which developed rules of decency for the film industry. Though now chuckled over (remember all those early television shows like I Love Lucy where married couples slept in twin beds), those rules sometimes hamstrung an attempt to get a powerful stage production accurately on the screen. Take, for example, the first film of Lilian Hellman s breakthrough play, The Chidren s Hour. The centerpiece of her theme that a lie spoken often enough becomes the truth (a commentary on what was happening in Hitler s Germany) was a reference to possible lesbianism in a time when that was not considered decent. That first film of the play, in 1936, could not mention lesbianism, so had to change the supposedly shocking transgression between the two women, and even though Hellman worked on the screenplay herself, the impact was significantly reduced. Only the remake, in 1961 is true to the original thematic content and thus power of the original.On the other hand, and perhaps because of the control exerted by Katharine Hepburn, the 1940 film of The Philadelphia Story , for example, is in large part simply a gentle expansion of the Philip Barry play which, with Hepburn in the leading roll, had literally saved New York s Theater Guild, and with it her own reputation. (She had come back to New York after being labeled box office poison as a result of a series of flops following her 1934 Best Actress Oscar for Morning Glory. )Always savvy in business, Hepburn had purchased the film rights to the play herself, with the help of Howard Hughes. This let her negotiate with MGM to produce the film. She was able to shepherd the adaptation for screen, and get the director she felt would be best for both her and the content. As a result the play becomes even better as it is able to physically wander farther than the few rooms in which the stage play was set, and even gently maneuver around the Hays restrictions regarding discussions of marital relationships. The central point to Hepburn s story is that she had enough control to keep the feel of the play, as well as the content, true. This, in part, because of her ownership, and because the director, George Cukor, was someone she knew well enough to know he would respect what had made the play work. Sometimes, the same director who directed the play directed the movie, and if the director understood both genres well, that could also work, even while wrestling with Hays. Take as prime example, Elia Kazan, who was Tennessee Williams favorite director, for both stage and film versions of his work. (We will put aside here, Kazan s testimony in front of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, naming names and making himself somewhat of a pariah in chunks of the theatrical and film industry.) Kazan understood Williams vision, as can be readily seen in A Streetcar Named Desire both on stage and in the 1951 film version with Vivian Leigh and (reprising his stage role) Marlon Brando. Again, with the decency rules in effect there were certain things which could only be hinted at, but the atmosphere kept to the essence of the play: that the characters lived in very close contact, in a heated, claustrophobic atmosphere, a breeding ground for extremes of passion, particularly the baser ones. Sadly, though this film version worked, the later 1984 made-for-television one, directed by John Erman didn t. The reason was that he did not clue to that very claustrophobia. When Blanche Dubois is trapped not only in her own imagination and memory, but in this closed, hot, teeming apartment complex, everything bleeds out. It is the nature of confinement. When Blanche wanders all over New Orleans voicing her fantasies about the genteel nature of her life to this point, in the open air, by the sea, under the sun, surrounded by a beautiful city, it didn t work, despite Ann-Margaret s very solid performance. If Blanche isn t literally and figuratively backed against a wall, the rising tension has time to dissipate. She has to be stuck for it all to work.Although it was handled better, shifting in the movie from a single-set beauty parlor to more of the small town it exists in, in Steel Magnolias was also in danger of losing the punch of the play. This, because women knew (and in some places still know) that the one place men will not ever come and thus a true sanctuary was that beauty parlor. That was, to be frank, the point of the play: that sense of gender-specific community. Which is enough for today. I do have more, though. Part 2 will focus on those things done on stage which simply cannot translate to film with the same effectiveness because they depend upon the audience s suspension of disbelief, a thing which does not appear in the same way in a movie theater. I mean you may be able to believe, as long as the film lasts, that Luke Skywalker grew up on a planet with two suns, or even in The Force, but not in many of the kinds of things stage directors use to charge the imagination. But that s for next time.UPDATE: A day after writing and posting this, it hit me that I hadn t mentioned the film adaptation from a single-set play which frustrated me the most, perhaps because I fell in love with the play and the adaptation hurt the film so much that nobody, seeing it first, would ever think of seeing it in any form again. That was Romantic Comedy, based on Bernard Slade s 1979 Broadway play. The play, as with Slade s best work, is episodic in nature, and deals with the emotional connections between two people who are not, in the classic sense, a couple. In this case, an older and fading male playwright takes a young female writer under his wing. Their first collaboration turns out to be a terrific hit, and they became a writing team. On the stage, the play takes place virtually entirely in the room in which they write. The older playwright s wife comes in and out on occasion, as does the younger woman s male love interest. Their theatrical agent hovers sometimes like a mother hen. Still, this is their room and what they do there defines more than anything else who they really are, in a relationship which is characterized as being far more intense than a marriage.When this was adapted for film in 1983, and directed by Arthur Hiller, all of that was lost. I won t get into the casting of Dudley Moore as the lead, which was also a detriment, but when you take intensely important, intimate speeches, and literally chop them up so that a few lines are in the room, a few are in front of Lincoln Center, and a few are in the house of a theater during rehearsals, you remove that intense intimacy, and you end up doing a travelogue of theatrical New York which is a total distraction from not only the speech itself, but the sense of sanctuary for two intense and intelligent writers which is the core of the play. I was reading a review by theatrical critic Laura Pels in the New York Times, and was struck by my immediate resonance with her lead paragraph: When classics get adapted or updated, I often find myself asking: What s the added value? What do you get from Shakespeare with penguins that you don t get better from Shakespeare straight up? I suppose this is because, to some extent, I m trying not to see my life as Shakespeare with penguins , for I have left my well defined, life-long comfort zone of Los Angeles County for another land: Louisville, Kentucky. It is much smaller (I m trading a county of over 10 million for a county of just over 700,000), but still an artistic hub, and it is where my wife grew up and many members of her large extended family still live. And I am retired from the day job, so it is right to be in a state of reinvention. I just don t want it to be too random, or worse, get in the way of who I am or what I want to achieve.On the other hand, this resonated with me because Pels questions are ones I have often had to ask as a critic as well. Looking, as she was, at Shakespeare or Moliere, or even Ibsen, Williams or Miller, I am well acquainted with the fine line between innovation which makes the story relevant to a new audience, and the kind of messing with the original which becomes a distraction. (You ll notice nobody seems to do this with Shaw, and I m sure it is because any decently superstitious director/adaptor knows that Bernard Shaw will rise from the dead to slap you silly if you mess with his work. He was a remarkably adamant man.)When I think of this, two instances come to mind. In the first, one director I used to review frequently was obviously so sure that nobody would get Shakespeare s jokes that she had fairies do gymnastics as they talked, or rustics (peasants) engaging in constant slapstick. Not only was this exhausting for the performers, it meant you really couldn t hear the lines to see if they were funny or not. Granted, there is a long, supposedly clever speech toward the end of As You Like It which every director would like to cut, but can t because of a costume change. It may have been funny in Elizabethan times, but its entire context is lost on a modern audience and there you could have the character stand on his head or juggle and it would make the scene a whole lot better. On the other hand, the rustics in A Midsummer Night s Dream, or the watchmen in Much Ado About Nothing, if performed by people who know how to speak Elizabethan English naturally, can be very funny indeed, because the lines actually are. The second involves a production group which fell into the habit of putting in costume non-sequiturs where they made no artistic sense: bowler hats or batwing glasses in what are otherwise naturalistic, clearly 18th Century settings of definitely and comfortably period plays. Like is this supposed to tell us it s a comedy? Certainly, playing with time period and construction, especially when it comes to costuming, is a thing, but there should be a reason for it, not just a pair of out-of-place glasses that add absolutely nothing to either the character or the play. This does not mean I am opposed to taking, say, Shakespeare out of its time period. I have a friend in Britain who apologized for taking me to the RSC theater in Stratford, because it wasn t going to be real Shakespeare because it wasn t being done in doublet and hose. (It was a terrific production of As You Like It that even the 16-year-old me knew was extraordinary.) Adaptations of time period that work can create a freshness which brings a great work to a new generation. Orson Welles 1930s production of a Voodoo Macbeth, or his Julius Caesar set in Mussolini s Rome, or a great and far more recent Julius Caesar at the Mark Taper Forum set in the time of Kennedy, were historically powerful. The Royal Shakespeare Company s addition to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival, a production of Much Ado reset in in the glamour of the Restoration period, was magical. More recently, Ian McKellen s Hitlerian Richard III was stunning onstage (though deadly on film, but that s another discussion).Which brings me back to my own situation. I have made a big life shift, and I m not done thinking it through. I don t want to paste things on which will turn out to be superfluous. I am for the first time in 15 years a home owner. That s not superfluous. I have references from theatrical friends and my editor to reconnect with theater here, from a local dinner theater to Actors Theatre of Louisville, a highly respected regional company. How I reconnect with that side of my life, now that I m settled in, will either result in penguins or profundity. Still evaluating the approach. And, of course, it being Kentucky, there is politics. Living in a blue city in a red state has its own drama. Is that a penguin for my life, or a chance to make change? Today it is exactly three months since I first set foot in my new home. Still, I still find my L.A. roots are a part of me. In any case, I m not in Los Angeles anymore, though I still receive emails from press representatives for shows I would love to see Ah well. A shout out to my friends and colleagues in the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle. A shout out to my friends and colleagues at Pasadena s Blair High School, which once again avoided budget-related shuttering. That life goes on without me. Now it s my job to figure out what this new life is really going to be all about. I ll let you know. Hopefully, it will not include penguins.Children who grew up when I did are divided into two camps: those who think the best Peter Pan is the Disney animated version, and those like me who know that the Mary Martin version is the real one. Of course, both are based on J.M Barrie s original 1904 script for a British panto . The musical Martin brought to television after its triumph on Broadway used much of the original script, adding the music of Morris (Moose) Charlap with additions by Jule Styne, and the lyrics of Carolyn Leigh plus Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Since then, all productions of this musical version, whether Sandy Duncan s and, later, Cathy Rigby s Broadway hits, or more local productions, have honored the panto format: that is, the tradition of having one character (in this case, Peter) played by a cross-dressing performer. In other words, in live theater Peter has always been played by a woman, the most convincingly boyish being former Olympic gymnast Rigby. Now the folks at Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater have decided to defy tradition, go literal, and have Peter be played by a male. Add to this the challenge, well met, of having people fly on a stage notably lacking the flies the large space above a stage where rigging and set pieces can hang out of view and one could not help but be curious. Besides, who doesn t have moments of wanting to sing I Won t Grow Up ?For the show to work, four characters (or three actors) have to be top-notch, and play their often deeply silly parts absolutely straight. Gavin Juckette makes an earnestly boyish Peter, with the serious sense of fun which makes the piece work, even if in defiance of tradition. Randy Ingram, in a practice which does keep to tradition, in the dual parts of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook gives each character individuality, but in both a delightfully overblown sense of self-importance. In the somewhat treacherous role of Indian Princess Tiger Lily always a cartoon, as it would be if made up by a prepubescent British boy Amaris Griggs dances well, proves commanding, and by dealing with Peter as an equal squashes some of one s disquiet over the role s stereotypical underpinnings. Valerie Rose Lohman balances the budding-woman and little-girl-fantasy aspects of Wendy, with Andrew Bar as John and Asher Broberg as Michael doing a lovely job as the Darling children. Add to all of this a delightful collection of lost boys, rather inept pirates (especially Thomas Stanley as Smee always a personal favorite), and forest animals in an ensemble who bring Neverland to life, and you have a genuinely lovely time. John LaLonde s direction keeps the pace moving and the relationships between these fantasy characters engaging. He knows how to use the Candlelight space, using needed entrances and exits through the audience to scoop everyone into the spirit of the thing. Kirklyn Robinson s choreography uses the comparatively small Candlelight stage particularly well, keeping the atmosphere and energy of the piece. Douglas Austin, as musical director, has given the ensemble a lovely blend. Kudos also to Chuck Ketter for yet another set fitting a great deal into a small space. The lighting design by Aspen Rogers and Jonathan Daroca, including the character of Tinkerbell, make the piece work as it does.If you have somehow never seen Peter Pan, this is a good one, even if a bit nontraditional. If you wish to introduce a new generation to the magic Peter has brought to the young for over 100 years, I d go see this version, which comes with a lovely meal (including a kids menu). One warning: tickets are scarce. Get on a waiting list if you need to.There are terms I learned a long time ago not to put in a review, because they are overused to the point of meaning nothing. At least normally. This time, though, there are few words more apt than hysterical or laugh riot or even side-splitting for the deliciously insane The Play That Goes Wrong just opened at the Ahmanson. Seriously, this is one of the funniest things I ve seen anywhere, ever.Pretend that an extremely amateur, pompously overconfident, poorly cast company of players decides to stage a mystery best described as low-rent Agatha Christie. And then pretend that this is done with all the extremes of artifice, technical ineptitude, and sheer bumbling possible. Then you have some sense of what this show contains, but not really. Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields play isn t echoing Monty Python. It isn t a Sherlock Holmes spoof. Rather, it s a terrific send-up of amateur theatricals: occasionally cartoonish, tremendously physical, and impressively silly. As with anything this physical, the old adage applies: it can take greater expertise to do something wrong on purpose than to do something right. The cast of this show lives up to this, handling the necessarily precise direction designed by Mark Bell, and carried out on tour by Matt DiCarlo, while making everything still seem spontaneous. This precision not only keeps the humor rich, but keep the actors safe as the physical comedy reaches heights even such spoofs as Noises Off dare not attempt. The thing must work like clockwork, and it does. The members of the Cornley University Drama Society include Evan Alexander Smith, exuding righteously British pomposity as the group s first-time director who has cast himself as the wise detective. Peyton Crim, whose sonorous voice is a delight, plays the stereotypical British aristocrat, shooting jacket and all, as the brother of the murdered man s fiancé. Ned Noyes goes jaw-droopingly over the top on all occasions as the brother of the murdered man, unconvincingly romantically intwined with said fiancé.Scott Cote s stereotypical butler proves one of the greater comedic assets as the play implodes. Jamie Ann Romero turns the internal play s only female into a delightful comedy turn, and a remarkably physical one she faints with impressive skill. Still, perhaps the funniest aspects of this production are the two techies who disrupt or cope with this deeply flawed troupe s foibles. Brandon J. Ellis gives the overly casual lights and sound guy so much presence he, in his offstage cubicle, is sometimes all you can watch. Angela Grovey s practical, then panicked stage manager turned sudden understudy becomes probably the most howlingly funny performer in the piece. Someone should give set designer Nigel Hook a medal for creating a set which can seem so classically formulaic and can destroy itself to such remarkable comedic effect, without killing the actors. Andrew Johnson s sound design becomes its own comic character. This truly is as ensemble a production as can be imagined. So, drop everything and go see The Play That Goes Wrong. The times are stressful, and the world is a bit dark. We all need a vacation, and a chance to laugh, and laugh you will, almost constantly. My companion admitted afterward that she laughed so hard no sound was coming out. What a great way to spend a summer afternoon or evening.There is an elemental silliness to the movie musicals of the 1930s, but that was intentional. The films offered an inexpensive escape from the strain of the Great Depression, and quite intentionally featured lavish costumes, elaborate settings, and the kinds of visual splendor only the Busby Berkeleys of this world can provide. In 1968, George Maimsohn, Robin Miller and Jim Wise decided to create that silly, upbeat world in small, opening Dames at Sea in an off-off Broadway cafe. Though it has roamed far and wide in the meantime, Dames at Sea has returned to its tiny-stage roots at the Sierra Madre Playhouse. There, once again, a six-person cast must create all the splendor and schlock of the go out a chorus girl but come off a star tap-dancing magic that so enthralled our forebears. Reducing the show once again to its minimalist beginnings works well at SMP. Director Joshua Finkel understands that the only way to play this gentle satire for laughs is to play it straight, and that s what his cast does. Aided by Jeffrey Scott Parsons classic 30s choreography, heavy as always on the tap dancing, and Sean Paxton s musical direction, they manage to make this small, silly show lighthearted fun.Katie Franqueira leads the cast as the idealistic Ruby, arriving in NYC with nothing but tap shoes, hoping to star on Broadway. Franqueira s Ruby has an interesting combination of earnestness and nervousness which makes some of her tap numbers a bit intense, but particularly in a delightfully Busby Berkeley-worthy version of Raining in my Heart, she sings with an innocence and charm which prove quite engaging.As her love interest Dick, the sailor dreaming of songwriting, Aaron Shaw has a loose-limbed charm and the kind of wide-eyed presence which balances Franqueira s Ruby nicely. Marissa Mayer shows the right brassy style as Ruby s new friend in the chorus, while Ruben Bravo nearly steals several scenes as Dick s somewhat goofy Navy buddy. Chuck McLane, in the dual role of the theatrical producer fallen on hard times, and Dick s commanding officer talked into allowing a Broadway show to be staged on board, has a lovely time with each, managing to carve them into individuals with their own silly moments. Jennifer Knox flounces with all the necessary ego as that show s officious and controlling star.Shon LeBlanc a wizard with period costumes for small venues has given the show the right feel. Jeff G. Rack has provided all the right set pieces, including the deck of a battleship, at a size which will somehow fit on the tiny SMP stage. In short, all the pieces are there. In short, Dames at Sea is silly, tuneful, and for some nostalgic. It makes gentle fun of an entire film genre, but not in a mean way. Rather, that almost ferocious innocence proves an antidote to the tensions of our current world, just as was true back then. And in that, even it its occasional awkward moments, this production has something in common with what it celebrates.Also check out the theater s movie series, which celebrates the movies Dames was based on. It continues with Footlight Parade on July 10.In the past week I have seen two theatrical endeavors both nearing the ends of their runs which tackle current social issues by looking at the past. In one case, the history is given theatrical flourish, but is fascinating in its poignant accuracy. In the other, an acknowledged incomplete understanding of history gives a playwright license to turn an antique moment in time into something it never was in order to make a point. Both work as pieces of theater, which fascinates me as a long-time teacher of history and a historian, as well as a theatrical critic.Why use history to make a modern point? When is it essential that the history be true, and when doesn t it matter that much? It appears it depends on the purpose history is given in the work itself.The first show up for discussion, closing this Sunday, is Ladies, in its premiere run at Boston Court Pasadena. Playwright Kit Steinkellner uses the inspiration of four historical 18th Century intellectual women who formed The Blue Stocking Society, or (as the playwright says) were feminists before that term was invented, to explore the role of women as writers, artists, sexual independents and free spirits. In this case, the rather uninformed assumptions admitted by the play itself make for fuzzy history, but important social commentary.The second show is the national tour production of Paula Vogel s Tony-winning Broadway play-with-music, Indecent. At the Ahmanson only through July 7, the show essentially chronicles the life of a controversial 1907 play. Developed in the rich artistic world of eastern Europe s Yiddish theater, where it was acclaimed, the piece ran into a firestorm when it opened much later, in English and heavily adapted, on Broadway. Why the difference, and what happened to those involved becomes a cautionary tale on the American Dream and the rise of authoritarianism.Whether using historical figures as the poet does (i.e.: with less interest in accuracy than in spirit) to make a contemporary point, or telling a documentable story of increasing intolerance as a cautionary tale about echoes to be found in our society, the use of history is elemental to each production s impact. That the role of history in one is pretty much the opposite of its role in the other is fascinating, in that they both succeed in placing a current issue in the longer story of human art and intellect.In Ladies, director Jessica Kubzansky has the four Blue Stocking members emerge from a modern base, and revert to the modern narrative simply by putting on glasses. Thus the back-and-forth between a conceived repressive past and a questioning present become seamless and fascinating. The historical figures are real, and did exist. They include a novelist, a painter, a poet, and the woman who has brought these others together to, in this play anyway, advocate for women s place in the arts.How much of what results is an accurate look at the women s lives, and how much is a modern lens clumping together more and less repressive time periods is immaterial to the point of the play. Rather, this is a playwright s own wrestle with a past once inconceivable: that women rejected docility in favor of artistic expression before the concept of women s rights was articulated in English culture. It is the wrestling which matters, not the really rather inaccurate sense of the society which created and either supported or rejected the Blue Stockings (a term which eventually morphed into a catch-all designation for academic-minded women in Britain).Meghan Andrews, Carie Kawa, Jully Lee, and Tracey A. Leigh create the four women plus servants, husbands, and other occupants of their world, then shift to offer commentary not only on those women s stories, but the playwright s internal monologue concerning them. Costumes by Ann Closs-Farley allow quick character shifts, and even occasionally become characters all their own. The focus on women as physical beings, and on desires they may have had along the way is universal, and in the end history (such as it is here) becomes a mere tool for a very modern philosophical musing.On the other hand, Indecent is the true story of Sholem Asch s play God of Vengeance, written in Yiddish in 1907, about an oppressive father whose fortune comes from running the brothel downstairs, and his young, innocent daughter who finds true love to that father s horror with one of the prostitutes below. After a long and successful run in Jewish theaters around Europe, with its leads becoming stars of note throughout that world, it heads to America, is a hit in Yiddish circles there, and then in a bowdlerized version becomes a scandal on Broadway, with its cast convicted of indecency.The story is real, and in this case the history is told with considerable accuracy, yet the story itself is not entirely the point. Once again the tale of artistic freedom, embraced in one part of society and yet increasingly rejected by the more powerful as violating societal norms, and the echoes of that increasingly powerful provincialism and intolerance in our modern world, especially toward recent immigrants, give a gravitas beyond what is simply historical. Indeed, there are elements which speak to Carlos Santayana s famous phrase that those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. Steeped in the traditions of Jewish Europe, with much of the dialogue in Yiddish (in print and in translation to English on the wall above) there is a strong cultural center to the piece. Yet, at the same time, the openness of an artistic Europe is placed against the rigid rules of decency which infected even the segment of the Jewish population of the US anxious to achieve assimilation: where Yiddish culture is rejected for a shot at the American mainstream. Indeed, much has been written about the freedom of the culturally rich Yiddish art scene in New York in the early 20th century, and how it vanished. This in part because of fears of deportation as exclusionary immigration laws stifled attempts to use the US as escape from the rising terror the return to morality via fascism overseas.The intolerance here is both internal and external, with those who cannot abide the loss of freedom returning to a Europe where soon more than freedom will be lost. Still, the moral authority which deems a famous play indecent, the sense of fear surrounding immigration policies, the perceived need to meld into the mainstream to avoid hatred, not to mention the intolerance toward a positive view of lesbian love, sounds a lot like the more judgmental elements of modern America.Under the guiding hand of Tony-winning director Rebecca Taichman a remarkably versatile cast Richard Topol, Elizabeth A. Davis, Joby Earle, Harry Groener, Mimi Lieber, Steven Rattazzi, and Adina Version, with musicians (who also are active characters) Matt Darriali, Patrick Farrell and Lisa Gutkin sing, play, and dance as an elemental expression of culture. They create a myriad of parts to flesh out the story of the play, and its author who wrote only stories and novels, leaving his own play in a dust his actors could not, and the performers whose lives were forever changed by the parts they played. It is a powerful picture of disconnects, fears, and foundational beliefs.In the end, it is striking to what extent each play s historical context proves essential to the playwright s point. Whether that arc of history is deeply, affectingly accurate as in Indecent, or almost an artifice, as in Ladies, giving a sense of the long arc of history provides a needed underpinning to talking about the world in which we currently live. And that, to some extent, is why history remains important: we are still human beings capable of making the same mistakes those before us did, or learning how not to, by looking back to look forward.What: Ladies When: this production s last two performances, Saturday June 29 and Sunday, June 30, are both sold out Where: Boston Court Pasadena, 70 N. Mentor Ave. in PasadenaI know, it certainly seems like that. I was here, and then suddenly I wasn t. It wasn t intentional, but rather a result of being completely overwhelmed by the (to me, anyway) monumental shifts in life which seemed to all hit at once. I owe a huge apology to Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater in Claremont for not ever writing the review I intended to write about their fine production of Steve Martin s Bright Star, a Eudora Welty-ish tale of class, hate and redemption in the South. I hope some of you went. It was disturbing in places, but strong, well directed, and filled with the bluegrass-tinged music that always reminds me of the musical based on Welty s The Robber Bridegroom which I adored in my 20s. I also owe an apology to the Ahmanson, for seeing and then never writing about the touring production of Falsettos which landed there. It was, to be frank, a bit disappointing to see how dated this had become. What were once triumphant, charming, and sad facts about life in gay America in the early 80s had become dry and thus somewhat slow, stating so many things now painfully obvious. Still, the performers were good and deserved to be celebrated. So what was I doing instead? Well, I was becoming a retired person. Not, at least not immediately, from theatrical criticism, but from the day job. After a total of 40 or so years as an educator, the last 35 of which have been spent at Blair High School in Pasadena (a treasure of a public school which never gets the credit it deserves), on May 31 I literally left the building. Prepping for this is when I discovered my classroom (including the boxes full of stuff which had been schlepped from place to place as we moved out of our main building so it could be refurbished and remodeled) was essentially my attic.Thus I have been sorting through nearly 40 years of educational stuff I had saved, some so old they were printed in purple ditto ink, and tossing away outdated paperwork, sample history textbooks, academic competition format materials, pirated VHS recordings, worksheets, workbooks, and an awful lot of why the hell did I save that? bits and pieces. The things which still had value were handed off to those who will be teaching what I have been teaching. It was weird to be divesting myself of so much, but it was time to go. I still love teaching, and care deeply about my students, but it is hard on the body to stand on linoleum over concrete day in and day out, and my oomph was not optimum. Anyway, on top of this I had promised my wife that when I retired we could move closer to her family. Once she knew retirement was near, her family chimed in with when you move to Louisville advise and comments even before we had decided to return to what was her home town. So, we re returning to her home town (where I also went to grad school, so it is not entirely foreign territory). That meant that what of the last month and a half or so has not been involved with the details of retirement, and passing various educational batons, has been dedicated to house-hunting. This has meant flying back and forth, lots of document-gathering, etc. Found a nice place too, at a ridiculous price for anyone used to housing costs in SoCal.Now I have been coming to grips with leaving my own home town. Let s face it, I love California. I love Los Angeles County. I love the theater culture here, and the extraordinary diversity of people, cultures, arts organizations, languages all of it. I have roots here dating back to the 20s. To walk away from this is a huge shift in some elemental personal paradigms. Still, it is time for a new, and frankly affordable adventure.So, what happens to me, the drama critic? Well, I m not gone yet and there are still some things to see. Still, my son is already talking about a redesign of this blog space to reflect a theater writer talking about Louisville (Actors Theatre especially) and the comparatively nearby regional theater world of Cincinnati. We ll see. I may end up writing more philosophically about theater, its role in culture, and the need for its preservation. Nothing is yet completely decided, and of course the artistic world I move into will have to decide I m worth listening to. This is never a one-way street.So, that s where I ve been. That s where I m going. I am getting over the overwhelming redefinition of my day to day, predicated by walking away from one profession I have practiced for nearly 2/3 of my life, and am beginning to look at what awaits on the horizon. I ll let you know what I find along the way. You may end up as surprised as I probably will be at the results. In the meantime, expect a few more reviews from the L.A. area before I leave town. Expect some from some part of the country even after that, if I can manage it. I am preparing to move, not die, and I ve been writing about theater at least as long as I have been teaching perhaps even a bit longer. This labor of love, which has survived the curtailing of newspaper publication and the shifts in Equity rules, is not ready for a final curtain.As for the school I m leaving behind? I am most proud to have helped found the Gay Straight Alliance there in 2005, and worked hard to create the school s currently touted open and accepting atmosphere, where being a nonconformist in any one of a number of ways is welcomed and appreciated. I am also proud of my work with their strong and creative student government (the ASB). I am told the administration intends to name the ASB room after me, which is touching and humbling. Still, this is a public school district, where bureaucracy can sometimes thwart intent. We ll see. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Join 292 other followers Email Address: Privacy Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

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