2007 in the Rearview Mirror

Whoops, there goes another theater year

Comments (0) By Steven Mikulan Wednesday, Dec 26 2007

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7.?Distracted, Mark Taper Forum. Rita Wilson delivered a superlative comic performance as an Everymom beset with a brayingly loud — and ominously inattentive — child, not to mention know-it-all friends and an indifferent husband. Her real adversary, though, was the wired world and the irresistible distractions of its electronic toy chest. Set designer Elaine J. McCarthy’s multiscreen projections of rapid-fire visuals artfully carried the show’s theme, and director Leonard Foglia mounted an equally rapid-fire volley of performances from his ensemble.

8.?An Impending Rupture of the Belly, Furious Theater Company. Suburban paranoia suddenly got a whole lot weirder with Matt Pelfrey’s play. Clay and his pregnant wife Terri live in Pasadena but, goaded by the circle-the-wagons rhetoric of an office colleague, Clay begins to view their home as a fortified bunker nestled in a kind of California Green Zone. When a bullying neighbor allows his dog to crap like clockwork on the couple’s lawn, that rhetoric buzzing in Clay’s head activates the Road Warrior — or is it the caveman? — within. The results were terrifying. Who knew that an apocalypse could be brought on by some dog-do and a 9-iron?

Tina Kronis and Richard Alger in Monster of Happiness (Photo by Jay McAdams)

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9.?Walk’n Thru the Fire, Hayworth Theater. Seemingly forever cursed to be known only as “the Tracers guy,” playwright-actor John DiFusco not only revisited moments from his experience with the Public Theater’s hit production of that Vietnam War memoir, but also of the war itself, along with entertaining and tragic tales about DiFusco’s large Italian-American family. The DiFuscos lived in working class New England and their zest for fun was marked by an unusually high number of early deaths. DiFusco and a talented ensemble relied on movement, music and Kerouacian poetry to bring his stories to life. The show was directed by Che’Rae Adams and Janet Roston.

10.?The Elvis Test, Elephant Theater. Julian Stone’s Graceland potboiler imagined what it must’ve been like, that historic Christmas-season night in 1965, when Elvis Presley dropped acid with girlfriend Priscilla Beaulieu and some Memphis Mafia cronies. Although the script suffered from long moments of exposition and Stone’s reluctance to succumb to the narrative anarchy offered by LSD, Faran Fonté’s impersonation of the King, along with a fine supporting turn by Andrew McGinnis as his tailor-turned-guru, Carl, made the show very watchable. Also helping the eye were Summer Ramsey’s spot-on costumes and a Johnny Cash Meets Shag set design by Davis Campbell and Danny Cistone.