Weekend Theater Reviews

Including All About Walken, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Monday, Feb 12 2007

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MOONLIGHT Harold Pinter’s 1993 play is pretty much about sleeping in the bed you’ve made during your life. Here there are two: the deathbed of a garrulous old man, Andy (Mitchell Ryan), and, across the stage, a foldup mattress belonging to one of his two estranged sons. Andy spends much of his remaining time on Earth needling his stoic wife, Bel (Cinda Jackson), about a long-ago affair he had with her best friend, Maria (Kathryn Harrold) — a woman who was also Bel’s lover. Triangles have always been Pinter’s favorite shape, but this 70-minute work merely comes across as a quick proof of the earlier carnal and power geometries that made him famous. (The Caretaker , Old Times and Betrayal, to name a few.) Perhaps what’s missing is the familiar Pinter blend of menace and melancholy — qualities that emerge neither from Andy’s rambling reminiscences nor from the string of surreal, vaudevillian conversations held in a seedy bedsit between sons Jake (Russell Milton) and Fred (Dan Cowan). Nor do they during appearances by Maria, or by an old acquaintance of Andy’s named Ralph (Paul Jenkins), or by the brothers’ spectral sister, Bridget (Eliza Dean). Even if this cast’s British accents were pitch perfect, which they’re not, director John Pleshette’s production is similarly lacking something. Perhaps Ryan’s dying patriarch isn’t hard enough, or Dean’s Bridget as ethereal and clear-voiced as she needs to be in a play that is Pinter at his most ambiguous. LOST STUDIO, 130 S. La Brea Ave., L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; thru April 1. (323) 871-5830. (Steven Mikulan)

MUSIC FROM A SPARKLING PLANET The recently homeless West Coast Ensemble christens its new Silver Lake space with this charming valentine to childhood hopes as remembered by three basically decent guys in their mid-30s who have lost their way. Hoagie (Chris Damiano), Miller (David Kaufman) and Wags (Michael Spellman) spend an evening at a bar testing each other on TV trivia from their pre-adolescent days. The joyful recollection of local cartoon hostess Tamara Tomorrow (Kelly Lloyd) sends them on a trek to find out what happened to the long-ago kiddie-TV icon. Flashbacks to the 1970s portray the rise and fall of Tamara in partnership (business and romantic) with television producer Andy (John O’Brien). Ultimately, the two plays merge to create a very satisfying, sentimental story. Director Richard Israel’s extremely light touch keeps this confection of a play engaging and enjoyable with actors who display artful truthfulness in their performances. Marina Mouhibian’s clunky silver costume for Tamara is a comic wonder, and Kurt Boetcher’s nonliteral set beautifully evokes the period with a collage of ’70s furniture pieces. West Coast Ensemble at LYRIC-HYPERION THEATER, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru April 1. (800) 595-4849. (Tom Provenzano)

(Photo by David Elzer)

(Photo by Joe Regalbuto)

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RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY In Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s epic musical, John Doyle’s staging consists of a series of artful but static tableaux, which leave Mark Bailey’s evocative and evolving sets, in conjunction with Thomas C. Hase’s theologically sculpted lighting and Weill’s very interesting score, to compensate for the paucity of dramatic interaction in the staging. Somewhere along Route 666, an old truck carrying crooks on the run (Patti LuPone, Robert Wörle and Donnie Ray Albert) breaks down. Rather than pan for gold (because that involves work), the trio establishes a town built on prostitution and gambling. You can tell this is God’s country — a little joke by atheist Brecht — because a hurricane that’s devastated the region makes a sharp detour around Mahagonny. By Act 2, the cloud-riven backdrop is saturated in neon, advertising “loving” and burgers. Poor Jimmy McIntyre (Anthony Dean Griffey) commits the allegorical, hangin’ crime of running out of cash. In a throwback to the medieval morality play Everyman, all who once swore by Jimmy leave him to face the grave alone. Everyman was gunning for Heaven, but everyone knows that Jimmy’s goin’ nowhere but down. Even his favorite whore, Jenny (Audra McDonald), won’t lend him $100 to spare his life. The score’s dissonant beauty — juxtaposed against musical anthems that recall Bach cantatas — has an intensity in Act 2, accompanying pedantic kick-or-be-kicked literary themes of self-reliance in a heartless economy. (Translation by Michael Feingold.) LuPone struggles with some of the musical challenges that include melodic climbs that are like trying to scale Angels Flight in army boots. McDonald’s voice is as rich and gorgeous as her amply paraded figure. (Ann Hould-Ward’s post-Charleston-era costumes contain a nice blend of grime and sluttiness.) Albert is more typical of the leading singers, a large man standing like a block of stone while emitting a resonant basso profundo in a concert with actors who move, but don’t really act. Los Angeles Opera at the DOROTHY CHANDLER PAVILION, 135 N. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; schedule varies, thru March 4. (213) 972-8001 or www.laopera.com. (Steven Leigh Morris)

ROMEO AND JULIET With Capulets as Republicans, Montagues as Democrats and their offspring the innocent victims of their vitriol, this stirring production of Shakespeare’s tragedy epitomizes the Zeitgeist of America’s 21st century. Keith Mitchell’s set comes plastered with red, white and blue bunting and recent newspaper clippings. The symbolism that director extraordinaire Joe Regalbuto and company impart is as clear as a high-def TV newscast. In present-day Verona, California, Romeo (Matty Ferraro) and his cohorts sport Bush, Cheney and Reagan masks at the costume ball where fair Juliet (Gina Regalbuto) awaits. Juliet’s father (Christian Lebano), whose brutality bubbles beneath a putatively benign surface, sports an American flag pin on the lapel of his somber blue suit. The cast is superb, as Shaun Baker’s poetic Mercutio, Joshua Wolf Coleman’s sympathetic Friar Lawrence, and, despite an exaggeratedly stereotyped accent, Livia Treviño’s lively Latina nurse are joyful to watch, as are Ferraro and Gina Regalbuto on the balcony and beyond. By play’s end, it’s hard not to view our star-crossed lovers as stand-ins for the unwitting dead strewn throughout the world’s killing fields — all because our major political parties can’t get their shit together. Loaded Media Productions and Theatre Planners at ART/WORKS THEATRE, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru March 17. (323) 960-7846. (Martín Hernández)