bY jOHN fARRELL

Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles

What: Play adaptation by Helen Borgers of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, directed by Borgers, presented by Long Beach Shakespeare.
Where: Richard Goad Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach
When: Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. through October 22.
Tickets: $20, $10 for students.
Information: (562) 997-1494, www.lbshakespeare.org

By John Farrell

The fog of Dartmoor rolled into the lobby of the Richard Goad Theatre Saturday night long before “Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles” was presented inside the 30-odd seat theater.

The effect was intended to be a dramatic one, though from the outside it looked more like several cigarette fiends had decided to attack with unhealthy criminal intent.

The air cleared, though, and the presentation of the play, in an original adaptation by the company's Artistic Director Helen Borgers, who was also the actual director of this production, proceeded with less smoke and mirrors and a surprisingly cogent and faithful adaptation of the original 1901 work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Borgers, who is a Shakespearean expert by avocation, has as much respect for Conan Doyle as she does for the Bard, and kept most of the rich language of the text, and all of the situations in the book, intact. She also managed to make the play, restricted to the small stage of the Goad, a rip roaring good ghost story, with the occasional howls of the hound, heard in the background, keeping the audience on the edges of their comfortable seats. Her only problem: Doyle, in writing this story, leaves Sherlock Holmes out of much of the middle of the piece, and so she must as well.

That was a shame because Richard MacPherson, who played Holmes, was one of the best incarnations of the detective to make it to the small theater, with a sharp profile, a clear speaking voice and enough of the English accent to color every Holmesian remark with authority. Company regular Carl Wawrina had the bigger role as Watson, who goes down to Dartmoor with Sir Henry Baskerville (the clear-voiced and impressive Daniel Moseid) to protect Sir Henry and investigate the strange death of his uncle Sir Charles Baskerville, but he was less adept as Watson than MacPherson as Holmes, and didn't live up to MacPherson's stature. And it should be noted that the fact that he was writing to Holmes, who said he had to stay in London on business, was never clearly made out. In pursuit of textual accuracy a chance to get Holmes more involved in the mystery was missed.

Mike Austin was an amusing Dr. Mortimer, whose walking stick, left behind at Baker Street, was an amusing bit of mis-deduction by Watson. Kevin Douglas Dunn, as the Baskerville's household butler Barrymore, and Summer Gorbea as his wife, were perfect representatives of the ancient British serving class, and when Mrs. Barrymore was finally revealed as the sister of escaped convict, sympathy was more the feeling than horror.

Beryl Stapleton (Adrienne Marquand) was a lovely love interest for Sir Henry, though when she was discovered to be married to another it wasn't much of a surprise. James Stapleton (William Christopher Ford) was from the first a man who showed great curiosity about Sir Henry's business on the Moor, but it wasn't until the end of the play that he became more than just a country squire. Gorbea doubled in the small role of Laura Lyons. Perry sites had a small role as Frankland but, embarrassingly, went up on his lines and Wawrina was unable to help him much.

Borgers stuck to the text of the story but still managed to create, in the small space of the theater, a realistic battle between Holmes and Watson on one side and the fearful, if not really seen, Hound, who was shot and careened off across the moor without actually staining anyone with his make-up. The smoke, which was used mostly at the beginning (with a few Prison Guards looking for the escaped murderer Seldon) was dissipated by the play's end.

This isn't the definitive stage “Hound,” but then their probably isn't one. It is true to its sources, and gives a very clear and much appreciated look at the actual language used in the story, which is often otherwise neglected. Just be prepared for a little smoke at the beginning.

 

Private Lives

 
What: Play by Noel Coward, directed by Luke Yankee, presented by International City Theatre
Where: Center Theatre, 300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach
When: Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. Through September 18.
Tickets: Thursday $37, Friday-Sunday $44
Information: (562) 436-4610, www.internationalcitytheatre.org
Three stars

By John Farrell

Nothing speaks for Noel Coward like “Private Lives,” his extraordinarily witty, extraordinarily improbable and extraordinarily delicious comedy from 1930 that has been revived by International City Theatre in a brightly mounted, sharp-looking production at the Center Theatre in Long Beach.

Coward himself starred in the original 1930 production alongside Gertrude Lawrence, and every line sparkled with Coward’s brittle and sometimes misogynist humor, from the remark that “some women need to be struck regularly, like gongs,” to the wry remark about the “potency of cheap music” when one of Coward’s own songs is played by a distant orchestra.

The play is about Elyot Chase (Freddie Douglas) and his ex-wife Amanda Prynne (Caroline Kinsolving) who both on their second honeymoons, having been divorced from each other for five or so years after a very stormy marriage. They meet quite by accident when they are each on their second honeymoons, Elyot with his new wife Sibyl Chase, (Jennice Butler,) Amanda with her new husband Victor Prynne (Adam J. Smith.) The respective honeymoon suites share adjacent balconies but the couple manage inadvertently to avoid each other until Amanda, in a double-take, spies Elyot in her compact’s mirror. The two soon find that they are still in love, despite the years, and run off together, abandoning their new spouses. It turns out they are still in love, in the bad old way, and Sibyl and Victor finally corner them in Amanda’s Paris apartment, where their relationship begins to unravel again.

In the ICT Version Elyot Chase, Coward’s role, is played by Freddy Douglas who, if he doesn’t quite have Coward’s presence does have a wonderful and wonderfully trained speaking voice, capable of making every scintillating syllable count. Kinsolving is a less effective stand in for Lawrence. She looks every inch the wonderfully attractive woman who still inspires Elyot’s love, (and she look stunningly lovely in Costume Designer Kim DeShazo’s costumes,) but Director Luke Yankee apparently couldn’t quite get her to be as clear-voiced as Douglas. Their chemistry is near-perfect but their love-making, and love-fighting, is sometimes damaged by Kinsolving’s rapid speaking.

Butler’s Sibyl is a lovely flirt, but hardly in the same category as Amanda, a light-weight personally who comes across, as she should, as not quite up to Elyot’s standard. Smith’s Victor is very upright, very sober (except for those cocktails) and just the kind of man you would never imagine Amanda marrying: invariably safe and solid, without any sense of adventure at all, as British as a London Post Box and just about as exciting.

In a small but interesting role is Wendy Cutler, as the French maid Louise whose abrasive accent shows up Victor and whose antics include a piano-side pratfall that may actually have been an accident.

The set, designed by Kurt Boetcher, is an elegant and inspired affair: two large balconies looking out over the Mediterranean in Act I and easily dissolved into Amanda’s Paris Apartment in Act II. Plenty of room as the actors manage to avoid one another for the first half of the first act becomes an intimate flat (with record player and record to smash over Elyot’s head) in the second.

As effective as Amanda and Sibyl’s lovely period dresses are (especially those worn on their respective wedding days,) the other costumes are just not as good. Perhaps Elyot and Victor would wear business suits, but hardly the really boring business suits they do wear, with matching sham handkerchiefs in their pockets and, despite the fact that both men are slim, no waistline at all. This may have been the look in 1930, but it is hard to imagine Noel Coward's Elyot in so charmless a suit.

Those quibbles aside, “Private Lives” is, over 80 years later, still a biting and hilarious (and slightly frivolous) play. A lot has happened since then, wars and the end of Empire, but there is still charm in hearing Amanda and Elyot trying to figure out their emotional lives in the sharply biting language that is the play's endearing and enduring best feature.

John Farrell is a Long Beach theater critic. More of his work can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com.

A Southern Exposure

What: Play by Kelley Kingston-Strayer, directed by Gina Stickley, presented by Little Fish Theatre
Where: Little Fish Theatre, 777 Centre St., San Pedro
When: Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through September 10, extra performances Sunday, August 28 at 7 p.m., Thursday, September 8 at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $25, $22 for seniors and students
Information: (310) 512-6030, www.littlefishtheatre.org
Two and one-half stars

By John Farrell

Can There be anywhere in contemporary America where, among literate adults who claim to be up-to-date on current events, the word “Gay” only means happy or carefree?

Apparently.

That place is in Kentucky, where “A Southern Exposure,” a comedy of bright intentions and serious sentiment, is mostly set. “A Southern Exposure” opened at the Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro, where it will run though September 10, with a fine cast, especially Kalie Quinones, who has been in several other Little Fish productions of late and sparkles like a jewel in this one, starring as Callie Belle Hurt, the young and independent granddaughter of Hattie Belle Hurt (Geraldine Fuentes, brought in at the last minute to replace the ailing Jo-Black Jacob.) She is independent, yes, but just as much a part, and an observer of, the old-fashioned ways of her grandmother who raised her and her two aunts, Ida-Mae (Linda June Larson) and Mattie (Cindy Shields.)

The foursome have a long history together. Hattie Belle was forced to raise her granddaughter as her own child when Callie Belle's parents were killed in a car wreck so long ago she doesn't remember then. Ida-Mae has had a part in her life, too, and in Mattie's, a lovely lady who suffers a little from dementia but is always cheerful.

Still, there are a few questions raised by playwright Kelley Kingston-Thayer's award-winning play, which she developed from her own short story, that don't seem quite right. Maybe the three older members of the family really don't know what Gay means, but it is hard to imagine a family so dedicated to education for the daughter of the family also never having met a Jew, or a vegetarian, for that matter.

Ignore these things, though, and you have a play that presents a problem that many parents (and even grandparents) have to face: a young woman who falls in love and wants to move from the friendly comforts of a small town to the excitement (and employment opportunities) of a big city.

The problem is, they aren't really very compelling problems. Yes, Hattie Belle wants her granddaughter to stay with her and not move to New York. Yes, Callie Belle screw up her first romance, but she finds a good job and a real joy in New York City, and is more in touch with her family back home than many young women would be. But all the action, even the ending of the play, is more soap opera than substance: attractive, comic characters engaged in by-play and some deep thought, but a conflict, such as it is, that is emotionally compelling only because you care for the characters, not because you are surprised or challenged by what finally happens.

Still, there is plenty of charm in this play, for all its weaknesses. Fuentes, who took over the role of Hattie Belle with only six days notice, is fine as the grandmother and, though she carried a script with her opening night, she didn't seem to much need it. Larson's Ida-Mae is a calming force in the frequently comic storm of the family life, and Shield’s Mattie is as funny as all get out in her Wonder Woman outfit, and her simplicity is anything but stupid. Quinones is beautiful and funny and patient: you don't wonder at her New York success and are glad she has had such good parents, all three older woman giving her something of themselves.

“A Southern Exposure” isn't a great play, but it is charming, and director Gina Stickley manages to create a very successful production, even in the small Little Fish space. Go to see a light-weight play filled with great acting, but not much plot. Go to see Quinones in a part she dominates. But don't go expecting Tennessee Williams.

John Farrell is a Long Beach theater reviewer. More of his work can be found at www.byjohnfarrell.com

 

A Southern Exposure tells a coming-of-age story set in Kentucky but resonating everywhere

A Southern Exposure

What: Play by Kelley Kingston-Thayer, directed by Gina Stickley, presented by Little Fish Theatre
Where: Little Fish Theatre, 777 Centre St., San Pedro
When: Tonight at 8 p.m., tomorrow at 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through September 10, additional performances Sunday, August 28 at 7 p.m., Thursday, September 8 at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $25, $22 for seniors and students
Information: (310) 512-6030, www.littlefishtheatre.org

By John Farrell

Kentucky is a ways from Texas, and even farther from Southern California, but “A Southern Exposure” isn't just about the south, but about human relationships wherever you find them.

“A Southern Exposure” is the new play that the Little Fish Theatre is offering up

opening this weekend in San Pedro. It tells the story of four woman in the present-day south, one a young woman who moves to New York at the end of her college career to live with a young man she met in college, another the grandmother who raised her, and two great aunts who are also concerned with her life.

The play is by Kelley Kingston-Thayer, a first-time playwright who originally wrote the piece as a short story, then expanded it into a one-act play and finally created the two-act production that Little Fish is presenting. Kingston-Thayer describes herself as “a little Kentucky housewife,” which she may be. She is also the first place winner in this years Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights.

Geraldine Fuentes plays grandmother Hattie, a person the play's director, Gina Stickley, describes as “your basically typical Southern controlling woman: loving and sentimental but hard-ass, judgmental and very religious.” Fuentes took over the roll well into rehearsals, replacing another actress who was unable to perform because of illness. She had, as of Tuesday, only six days of rehearsal, but was not finding any difficulty. “She is really working hard to get on board with the role, and is a true professional,” Stickley said.

Kalie Quinones plays the young daughter, Callie Belle, who disrupts the family by falling in love and moving from Kentucky to New York. Linda Larsen is Ida Mae, the aunt who acts as peacemaker in the family, and Cindy Shields is Mattie, the youngest of the sisters but a woman afflicted with dementia, which sometimes allows her moments of insight, but at other times leaves her hopelessly confused.

The play takes place largely in the Kentucky kitchen of the family, where much of the passion and family feelings are expressed, but it also takes place in the New York apartment Callie Belle lives in, and in the bedroom of the Kentucky home. As usual Little Fish, which has only limited space in its theater, makes the most of its opportunities: “Dealing with the limited space has been a challenge,” Stickley says, “But we have adapted and made the play real for the audience.”

The play is set in present-day Kentucky, and the accents have to be genuine for audiences to appreciate the story. The Kentucky accent isn’t a mystery to Stickley, who knows it well. “The Kentucky accent isn't far from the Texas accent,” Stickley pointed out, “and we have worked hard to get that accent right. We did some pretty significant work on the accent right from the start, and now I only occasionally have to make corrections.

Stickley, herself an actor, knows all about the Texas accent. She is originally from Texas (though you don't even hear a whisper of Texas in her speaking voice now: “I had my Texas accent completely strained out of me in acting school.” But though she speaks like every actor should, she can keep track of the speaking patterns her cast employes.

“This play takes place in the south,” Stickley says, “but it is about everyone who has a close relationship with an older family member. Hattie has raised Callie Belle since she was a baby, when Callie Belle's parents were both killed in a car accident. It is Callie Belle's coming of age story. And it is a story that everyone can recognize and relate to.”

“A Southern Exposure” opens tonight, and plays through September 10, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. plus a performance on Sunday, August 28 at 7 p.m. and a performance Thursday, September 8 at 8 p.m.

John Farrell is a Long Beach theater critic. More of his articles can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com.

 

Bus Stop shows its age at Kentwood Players

Bus Stop

What: Play by William Inge, directed by Max Heldring Stormes, presented by Kentwood Players
Where: Westchester Playhouse, 8301 Hindry Ave., Los Angeles
When: Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. through August 20.
Tickets: $18, $2 discount for students, seniors and military members
Information: (310) 645-5156, www.kentwoodplayers.org
Two and one half stars

By John Farrell

Like every play in the canon, William Inge's “Bus Stop,” which opened at the Kentwood Theater in Westchester Friday night for a run through August 20, ages with the passage to time and the change in people's attitudes.

When the play opened on Broadway in 1955, the public must certainly have been a little shocked at the attitudes of the four people who arrive by bus at a small cafe in Kansas and are stranded there overnight because of snow and the violent wind. There is Cherie, the non-too-innocent bar singer who has had a fling with Bo, the rodeo hero and is essentially being kidnapped by him back to his ranch in Montana, Bo himself and his wise friend Virgil and the Shakespeare-spouting Dr. Lyman, a charmer who is also a incipient child-molester on the lam.

Back then the play's comedy must have been mixed with serious questions about the play's sexually charged story, the serious doings of the bus driver and the waitress, Cherie's very serious concerns about kidnapping, Dr. Lyman's intent with the teenaged waitress. Fifty and more years later the Kentwood Players and director produced a work that is all charm and warmth despite the howling wind outside, but without any of the piece's hardly concealed menace. This is 2011, after all, and what was both unspeakable and unspoken in 1955 is hardly noticed nowadays. What was threatening then is no more than a sit-com now, and that is how “Bus Stop” comes across in Westchester, a homey episode of a very modern “Beverly Hillbillys” with even Granny getting some actions upstairs.

Cherie is Jessee Foudray, and her accent is right out of the Ozarks, her figure good enough to catch the attention of any man. She isn't quite afraid of the occasionally violent Bo Decker (Sam Hambrecht) but she doesn't want to go with him to his Montana ranch: at least at first she wants to continue her singing career. Bo, in a hat a little too big for him, is crazy and violent enough to get into an off-stage fight with the local sheriff, Will Masters, (John Russell channeling Matt Dillon) a bear of a man and a natural peacekeeper. Bo calms down after he has been knocked down, and only then reveals that Cherie is the first and only girl he has ever slept with. That changes her attitude towards him.

The cafe is run by Grace Hoyland, Valerie Ruel) a middle-aged woman who has seen everything and has been left by her husband years ago, and Elma Duckworth, (Janet Lee Rodriguez) a teenage charmer who isn't quite as innocent as she seems. Grace sneaks upstairs for an assignation with bus driver Carl (Neil Engelman.) Dr. Gerald Lyman (David Kunzle) is also along for the ride, a many-times married alcoholic and college professor who has, we find out, been chased from Kansas City for seducing under-aged girls. And there is Virgil Blessing, (Andy Grosso) Bo's best friend and the one voice of reason in the crowd: he ends up alone and standing out in the cold.

Cherie is the center of attention in this crowd (the role was played in the movies by Marilyn Monroe) and she has all the charm and personality needed to be the center of that attention and convey Cherie's slowly growing realization of her love for Bo. Bo isn't quite up to that: he yells effectively and storms around a bit but is never quite convincing. Dr. Lyman is full of quotations and no menace at all, and Elma is hardly taken in by him, though she enjoys the attention. Grace and Carl make a good-hearted pair and Virgil, in a small role, makes more of his character than anyone else.

“Bus Stop” may not be over the hill, but here it is a social comedy, full of the feeling of the plains: wind and weather and cold loneliness, but not a single jot of the embarrassment and menace it had half-a-century ago. It isn't a drama at all.

John Farrell is a Long Beach theater critic. More of his reviews can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com

(1) Stones at Little Fish and Entropy General at Alive Theatre (2) Taming of the Shrew at LBPH, Mr. Marmalade at Garage

By John Farrell

Little Fish Theatre, which is the busiest show in town, has two plays on offer for the next few weeks, “Italian American Reconciliation” on Friday and Saturday night (plus a couple of odd days as well) and “Stones in his Pockets,” filling their Wednesday and Thursday night slot this week and next. They are both entertaining (though “Italian American Reconciliation” is not at heart a nice story, though told with plenty of humor) but if you have time for only one, go see “Stones.”

In fact, if you don't have time, make time to see the Irish comedy that features only two actors, David Graham and Bert Pigg, taking on all seventeen parts in a story that has heart and point as well as brilliant performances, all at a break-neck speed. “Stones” is ostensibly about the comic impact a Hollywood production has when it comes to a remote Irish village, but the play is really about two men who learn about themselves and their own lives while experiencing life as extras on the set.

Tickets for “Italian American Reconciliation” are $25, $22 for students and seniors. It plays though May 28, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Thursday, May 26 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 15 at 7 p.m.

Tickets for “Stones in his Pockets” are $18. It runs Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. through May 12.
Venue: Little Fish Theatre
Address: 777 Centre St., San Pedro
Information: (310) 512-6030 or visit www.littlefishtheatre.org

“Entropy General” is an original play by Ryan McClary staged by the ever-inventive Alive Theatre in a former automobile garage in Long Beach with minimal sets (including four borrowed hospital gurneys) and plenty of medical hilarity, but with a point. It starts with two victims rushed into the hospital emergency ward, one with a steering wheel embedded in his chest, the other a cute teenage cheerleader dead of a drug overdose who keeps coming back to life to offer commentary on life and death. It's a MASH-inspired look at medicine and other important things, and ends with a pie fight.

Due to Long Beach City regulations it can only be offered two night every other week, so the play isn't being produced this weekend but next, and then two weeks later. After the Saturday performances Alive is presenting “Post Mortem,” a “grotesque burlesque” that is just as entertaining. Go for one, stay to see the other.

Tickets for”Entropy General” are $15-$18, for “Post Mortem” $5. Both play through May 28, “Entropy General” Friday May 13 at 8 p.m., Saturday, May 14 at 2 and 8 p.m., Friday May 27 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, May 28 at 2 and 8 p.m. “Post Mortem” will be performed Saturday, May 14 and Saturday, May 28 at 11 p.m.
Venue: The MADhouse
Address: 624 Pacific Ave., Long Beach
Information: (562) 818-7364 or visit www.alivetheatre.org

It sounds like a gimmick: putting Shakespeare's “The Taming of the Shrew” into the wild west, but it works wonderfully well at the Long Beach Playhouse, especially since Amber Bonasso, as the shrew Kate, brightens up her performance with a wickedly knowing eye for the comedy of her situation. David Santana, as Petruchio, is as rough on her as the play calls for, but is also ready to address the audience directly to explain his situation. It makes for a great show, and director Gregory Cohen uses the modified thrust stage to bring the action right out to the audience.

Tickets are $22, $20 for seniors, $12 for students. Performances through May 28 are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Sundays at 2 p.m. through Saturday, May 28.
Venue: Long Beach Playhouse Mainstage Theatre
Address: 5021 East Anaheim, Long Beach
Information: (562) 494-1014 or visit www.lbplayhouse.org

“Mr. Marmalade” is the invisible friend of four-year-old Lucy, and he isn't what you'd expect a four-year-old to conjure up from her imagination. He snorts coke, drinks, goes through rehab and has a failed relationship with Lucy and does it all in the space of one very busy night. Lucy, a survivor if ever there was one, gets over him and starts to learn how to play dodge ball with her non-imaginary friend Larry (Au Pacheco.)

It's all in an evening's work in the Garage Theatre's production of Noah Haidle's iconoclastic play. Lucy is Calli Dunaway, and she tries to be all sweetness and light, but Mr. Marmalade (Angel Correa) is pretty much of a corrupting influence, even if he is imaginary. Bradley, (Joe Howells,) Mr. Marmalade's equally imaginary manservant, is much more likeable. Amy Lou Sebelius plays Lucy's Mom and Mathew Anderson her boyfriend (they both double other roles.) The play is a simple romp through a four-year-old's slightly nightmarish dream life. Or is it real?

Tickets are $18, $15 for students and seniors. The play continues through May 21, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.
Venue: Garage Theatre
Address: 251 East 7th St.' Long Beach
Information: (562) 433-8337 or visit www.thegaragetheatre.org

 

Hollywood Fringe Festival offers hundred of plays through June 26

Four Clowns: Romeo and Juliet; Porters Macbeth; Smoke and Mirrors

By John Farrell

The Hollywood Fringe Festival is too big to cover. In its second year there are so many things going on that even people who have the time to be there for the whole thing (it runs through June 26 this year) have only seen a few of the hundreds of shows in the Fringe or associated with it. Below are brief reviews of some shows seen so far, two by Long Beach based director Jeremy Aluma and, separately, the Alive Theatre (which is also giving two more performances of it's hit “Entropy General” in Long Beach this weekend.) If you find time this weekend, go to Hollywood. You'll find plenty to see, and there is food, too, from restaurants and from local restaurant trucks strategically parked near the dozens of venues.

 “Four Clowns,” Alive Theatre Founding Artistic Director Jeremy Aluma's brilliant, fierce and visceral comedy, was a hit last yea at the Alive Theatre and a hit this year when the company was asked to present the show at the Long Beach Playhouse.

The four clowns live on. Aluma is taking “Four Clowns” the Minnesota and San Francisco Fringe Festivals this summer, and he has them taking on a new challenge en route: Shakespeare. “Four Clowns: Romeo and Juliet” made its debut last week at the Hollywood Fringe. Two performances are left this weekend June 24 and 25) and if you can go, go. The clowns are just as madcap as ever, though when dealing with Shakespeare they are, for those who have seen them several times, a little friendlier than before, a little more like acquaintances who you know and love. They have lost a little of their edge of angst in the conversion to the Bard, but are even funnier, playing many roles in front of a red curtain suspended from two ladders, giving everyone from Juliet's nurse to Mercutio a look in a fast-paced hour-long show that will leave you hoarse with laughter.

Alexis Jones, the only female in the cast, plays Juliet, Kevin Klein is Romeo, Raymond Lee is Mercutio, and Zach Steele is Tybalt. They all play multiple others, and some of the fun is seeing how fast they can change from one to another. Mario Granville continues to provide piano accompaniment, with Beethoven and Chopin before and after the performance and plenty of musical comments during the action.

Shakespeare seems to have infected the Alive Theatre. Across the courtyard from where “Romeo and Juliet” premiered Alive Theatre's Turner Munch directs “Porter's Macbeth,” the Bard's Scottish play as remembered by the drunken porter from the castle gate. With just nine actors, all dressed in black and red, and with the drink-fogged memory of the porter to tell the story, the result is often funny (especially when the porter stops to tank up, to “refresh” his limited memory of events) but despite his best endeavor to turn “Macbeth” into a comedy the tragic elements will out.

The audience enters the theater with the cast sleeping on seats on the stage. They have to walk through them to get seated. When the play starts the actors slowly wake up and the Porter, Damien Kerr, takes charge, or as much as a drunken porter can take. The first act of the play is done with in a few vignettes: after all, the porter wasn't there for them and when they segue directly into the second it is filled with action, as remembered by the porter and the actors: Kim Bush as the evil Lady Scottish play (the name Macbeth is never spoken: actor's believe the play is cursed,) Dave Honigman as Macduff, Jared Crossman as Lord Scottish Play, Calli Dunaway as King Duncan,, Amanda Knight as Lady Macduff, Kevin Dileo as Banquo and Grace Buehler as the second witch. Using the folding steel chairs and a lot of physical comedy (and playing multiple roles) the finds plenty of comedy in the piece, but Shakespeare trumps them all. The play can be funny, the witches lots of laughs, but when Lady Scottish Play hangs herself at the end, the porter's drunken memory proves that even he knows it isn't funny.

Munch controls the incipient chaos with an eye for laughs, for subtle and non-too-subtle moments of brilliant action, and the sell-out audience Wednesday night loved it all. Hopefully it will be transferred to Long Beach later on.

“Smoke and Mirrors” is supposed to be a one man show, but the very large (and naughty) bunny who keeps intervening in the action in Albie Selznick's autobiographical mix of juggling, magic and reminiscences about his life as a recovering magician may make that claim not quite true. (Then, again, a bunny isn't quite human, either.)

Selznick (only a distant relation-by-name to the famed Hollywood producer) does some slightly kitschy magic tricks as the show progresses, but his narrative is what matters. Each short episode is actually a story of his life, from when he used his namesake to score tickets for “Phantom of the Opera” when it opened in London to his travels around New Zealand, including his encounters with physically handicapped and deformed children. His way with a story is charming and moving: his magic entertaining if not spectacular, but more than enough to engage the audience. And the bunny, as big as Harvey, is a lot of fun. One more performance, Saturday at 4:30, is still available.

If you want to be part of the fun and excitement this weekend go to www.hollywoodfringe.org for more information. Even the last three days of the festival promise lots of excitement.

 

Waiting for Godot

What: Play by Samuel Beckett, directed by Carl daSilva (cq), presented by Long Beach Playhouse
Where: Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 East Anaheim, Long Beach, Ca.
When: This Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through May 7
Tickets:$22, $20 for seniors, $12 for students
Information: (562) 494-1014, www.lbplayhouse.org

By John Farrell

There are a couple of ways to think about “Waiting for Godot,” which opened last Friday at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre for a run through May 7.

It may not be the “most significant play of the 20th century” as it was once voted, but it is certainly one of the few in that category, and it marks the start of the new LB Playhouse Studio series with a note of high expectancy. It suggests pretty clearly that things are going to be different there this season, if the Alive Theatre production of “Four Clowns,” which preceded it in that space, hadn't already proved the same.

That's one way to look at it. Another is just to say that it is a great play, and nearly sixty years after its first production in France (it was originally written in French and translated later into English by its author, Samuel Beckett) though it is still as difficult as ever to figure out just what it means, the discussion is now civil and significant. It was often a lot more heated in the early days.

The play stars Anthony B. Cohen as Vladimir, short and slight and looking for the meaning of everything, and Karl Schott as Estragon, bigger and just as confused and hopeless. Both are dressed in clothes that are well past there thrift-store days, but with the black bowler hats that denote at least a more of respectability in their limited and at the same time wide-open world, dominated by a single and sparse tree.

In this production they are waiting for the appearance of Godot (pronounced “GOD-oh,” which suggests something which Beckett apparently didn't actually intend.) Whoever he is (and the controversy is as profound now as fifty and more years ago) Godot promised to meet them at the tree, but never shows up. Vladimir and Estragon wait and pass the time as best they can, discussing existence, the Bible, and a bad joke that neither of them remembers.

Into this lonely world come Pozzo (Steven Biggs) and Lucky (Kyle Bryan,) the former leading the latter on a length of rope as his slave. Pozzo is leading Lucky to the market to sell him. When they return in the second half of the play Pozzo is blind and doesn't remember anything of the day before.

“Godot” has been called many things in the discussion that have warred around the play in more than half a century, and one of them is that it is a vaudeville number. Certainly Vladimir and Estragon engage in vaudeville antics, patting each other on the buttocks, doing a routine with their bowler hats that is reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy. But theirs is, for all that, a world of day-to-day despair, always waiting for Godot, whom they have never seen, to meet them. When a boy (played by Terren Mueller is his playhouse debut) comes to tell them Godot is coming tomorrow, they quiz him on this mysterious character, to little avail.

The setting of all this is as evocative as it is sparse. Andrew Vonderschmitt puts a plain, leafless tree made of bent pipes on one side of the stage that is harshly lit and features a backdrop of an endless desert. A few pieces of carpet-covered rocks are all that Estragon and Vladimir have to face every day. (The nights they sleep in ditches nearby, apparently.) All they have is each other and endless waiting. Cohen and Schott are contrasts in size (Cohen is small and wiry, Schott big and lanky) and in style. Vladimir is always looking for something to do, Estragon is often sleepy. They both consider suicide, but it might not work.

Draw your own conclusions: Marx or Freud or a comedy routine gone wrong. But go see this brilliant, entertaining and thought-provoking play, and celebrate the new playhouse and its creative team.

Silent Sky

What: Play by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Anne Justine D'Zmura, presented by South Coast Repertory
Where: South Coast Repertory Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa,
When: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2:30 p.m. through May 1.
Tickets: $28-$66
Information: (714) 708-5555, www.scr.org
Two and one-half stars

By John Farrell

“Silent Sky” is a great idea for a play: tell the story of a genuine astronomical pioneer who, in spite of sexism and a job that paid little for an impossibly big amount of work, discovered one of the vital facts of the universe by insight and sheer persistence.

South Coast Repertory certainly felt that way when they commissioned Lauren Gunderson to write “Silent Sky” for them, the second play Gunderson has written under commission for the playhouse. It is an exciting subject. Henrietta Leavitt, the play's central character, worked for more than a decade as one of Harvard University's “computers” (back when that meant somebody doing the work by hand) and discovered, through the data she personally mustered and cataloged, the relative luminosity of Cepheid variable stars, the so-called “standard candles”that allowed the universe to be mapped and Edwin Hubble (after whom the Hubble Telescope is named) to discover and catalog thousands of galaxies outside our own Milky Way.

The problem is, the explanation above is more detailed than any in the play, and the real story, of more than fifteen years of Leavitt's arduous work, is hidden in the background of a story that tells more about Levitt's love life than her intellectual one, leaves her inspiration largely to be guessed at and even lets the fatal cancer that took her early in life be no more than a simple pain in her stomach mentioned mildly in passing.

Perhaps it was playwright Gunderson's intention to focus on Leavitt's life instead of her work, but even that is often done in shorthand and without much notice: Leavitt worked for 16 years at Harvard before her ground-breaking work was published and no explanation is given for that publication. Meanwhile she has aged 16 years without much personal change in appearance (though one of her colleague's finally appears in a modern for 1910 pants suit.

Monette Magrath makes Henrietta a woman not really of the current (1890s) world (though her Phi Beta Kappa award and graduation from Radcliffe would suggest some worldly experience) and her fascination with the sky, and the telescopic pictures of the sky she works with are feebly suggested by the staging, which makes her offices no more than a desk and a chair, her home a sofa, and everything moveable and changeable. Better we should see her in the cluttered Victorian world that was her real life, and that designer John Iacovelli should have provided.

Magrath is supported by Amelia White as Williamina Fleming, a Scottish immigrant promoted to photographic work, and Colette Kilroy as Annie Cannon. Together the three of them work to catalog the sky, under the leadership of the never-seen Professor Pickering, who hired only women for the work and might have been an interesting character himself, if he was ever allowed on stage. Nick Toren is Peter Shaw, Leavitt's love interest from a distance and Erin Cottrell is Henrietta's sister Margaret Leavitt whose life, involving the birth of several children, is almost the only indicator we get of time passing.

Director Anne Justine D'Zmura stages all the action on a flat stage where the sky is viewed through the half-opened dome of a telescope, with the desks and furniture and rail of an ocean liner the only things on stage. They move easily from scene to scene and, with a bit more clutter, might tell more of the story. She makes it all work seamlessly but though some in the audience seemed to know what was going on, others were asking for explanations afterwards. Yes, Leavitt made an important, even crucial discovery, but perhaps there was more to it than the largely empty and blank scenery suggested.

“Silent Sky” tells an important story of science (and even a little feminism) but it does so with little of the anguish and terrible load of work Leavitt undertook to achieve her discovery. She deserves better.

 

LB Shakespeare brings Tampa of the 20's To Expo Backroom in Anna in the Tropics

Anna in the Tropics

What: Play by Nilo Cruz, directed by Denis McCourt, presented by Long Beach Shakespeare Company
Where: Expo Backroom Theatre, Expo Centre, 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach
When: Tonight at 8 p.m., tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Sunday at 2 p.m. through May 14.
Tickets: $20, $10 for students
Information: (562) 997-1494, www.lbshakespeare.org

By John Farrell

“Anna in the Tropics” is a Pulitzer-Prize winning look at the Cuban immigrant experience in 1920s Ybor City, the cigar-manufacturing suburb of Tampa, Florida where, for many years, the great majority of cigars for the entire United States market were made by hand by immigrant workers.

The company's Co-Artistic Director, Denis McCourt, premiers a production of that play tonight in the

Backroom Theater of the company's second home, the huge Expo Building on north Atlantic Blvd. A few blocks away from their permanent home at the Richard Goad Theatre and with a very different

set of artistic and logistic demands on the ever-creative company.

For one thing, as McCourt pointed out in a pre-rehearsal interview this week, the “backroom,” which he has used for several innovative productions, has what he calls “a lot of negatives,” but, as he said, the “one positive is that I can shift around in back and do things in an original way.” The “backroom” is just that, a back room in the Expo Center, which for many years was a furniture store in Bixby Knolls. Now owned by the City of Long Beach, the huge space is used for many things, including art exhibits, and LB Shakespeare has mounted a number of plays there, building sets specific to the production, sometimes large, sometimes small.

McCourt chose the play, as he has all he has produced for the company, with an eye to the community he serves, in this case an audience that is predominantly immigrant (Long Beach has a large immigrant population) and one that still remembers the struggles that immigrant experience entailed. “I've never seen “Anna” (produced),” McCourt said, “but I read it many years ago and I've been waiting to do this somewhere. I've been very careful to let the audience know that this is a story they can relate to.”

Not incidentally, McCourt has ties to the Tampa, Florida where the play is set. “I was born in New York City,” the director explained, “but I moved to Tampa when I was young. Ybor City is still there, with the cigar factories turned into night clubs. It still has a hot night life and even then I had a distinct feeling of going into these bars and feeling the atmosphere of workers and their impact on the city.”

The play is in part about how members of a different culture adapt when they come to the United States, and McCourt has the perfect cast for that adaptation. “Most of my cast members are first-generation Americans,” McCourt said. “They have a direct connection to the story the play tells.” McCourt's cast includes actors from families that came from Columbia, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Cuba (the last is where everyone in the play comes from.)

The basic plot comes from the tradition in cigar factories of having a lector read aloud to the workers who were making the cigars while they were working. “That's why so many of the cigars are named for characters out of classic literature, like 'Romeo and Juliet,'” McCourt explained. The new lector in the factory where Conchita (actress Kesia Elwin) works decides to read from Russian novels and reads “Anna Karenina”' (the classic by Tolstoy.) “In the plot line of the classic novel we see many similarities between Conchita and Anna,” McCourt says. “She has a loveless marriage just like the novel's heroine.” The Russian story has a lot of meaning for Conchita, who is married to a black man who has a lover and little respect for her. She decides that she deserves some happiness, just as Anna in the Tolstoy novel does.

“Anna” tells a story of immigrants who want the same things that natives want: success, happiness, love and respect. Its an American story that tells of a time nearly a century ago, but it still resonates today.

“Anna in the Tropics” opens tonight for a run at the Expo Backstage Theatre through May 14.