Theater Reviews: Jen and Angie, I'm Just Wild About Harry

Also, Money & Run, Boise U.S.A. and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Monday, Jun 2 2008

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GO MONEY & RUN If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. To lure audiences away from movies and TV, some theaters are taking cues from their competition. Recent successful productions riff off Showgirls, Point Break and Charlie’s Angels; now Wayne Rawley’s popular Seattle serial, inspired by The Dukes of Hazzard and Miami Vice, debuts with its first installment, “Money, Take Run,” in which two hot-blooded criminals, Money (Johanna Watts) and Run (Joshua Sliwa), meet-cute when holding up the same liquor store. Their romantic fireworks are outdone by the goofball supporting characters, which include Tobias Jelinek as a turtleneck-wearing manhunter, Pete Caslavka’s drunken bum, and the grandstanding and fierce Alyssa Bostwick as Big Momma Bob, the local liquor-emporium czarina who wants to see Money strung up by her belly shirt. Rawley’s honed his clever quips and sharp timing — even an opening-credits sequence is a hoot. It’s live, but is it theater? As the narrator (Rawley) tells us to “stay tuned for scenes from the next episode,” and the cast races through a quick montage, the best we and this production can hope is that theater’s fun, albeit flattened reinvention is less disposable than its origins. Lyric Hyperion Theater Café, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake; Fri.-Sat., 10:30 p.m.; indef. (800) 595-4TIX. (Amy Nicholson)

Sandra Tinto

Money and Run

Sandra Tinto

Tomahawk

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Tomahawk

NORMAN’S ARK The Old Testament is back in another musical, this one by Jerome Kass and Glen Roven, nicely staged by Peter Schneider. Though this Trojan Horse has been touring in various incarnations since at least 2002, it may be the biggest local theatrical event since Val Kilmer parted the Red Sea at the Kodak Theatre in 2006. A cast of 200, including local gospel choirs and dancers, and a bevy of cherubic kids playing the animals (in Ann Closs-Farley’s wonderful costumes) provide backup for the story of some family stuck on their roof during a flood in the middle of the country. Schoolteacher Norman (the appealing Philip Casnoff) — in a red cardigan, of course — knows his Shakespeare but fumbles any practical task, which earns him the derision of his two sons (B.J. Wallace and Noah Galvin, in fine performances) and the sympathy of his very young daughter, Jenny (Tiffany Espensen). One of the boys has a good line about not wanting to be negative, and therefore describing the house as being “half full.” Norman’s wife, Alice (Karole Forman, great voice), is black, Norman and their sons are white, and the daughter is Asian. All (or much) of humanity is on this roof, you see. On reading the program note that “we have been inspired ... to encourage our audience to take the message of Hope, Love & Survival,” I felt my intestines start to tangle into extremely small, tight knots, causing painful contractions accompanied by layers of perspiration. God (Dawnn Lewis) makes an appearance in a white robe. She sings very well indeed, and expresses annoyance at what we’re doing to her planet. Tiffany asks why, as a child, she should be punished for that, and God winks something about mysterious ways. Norman’s contribution to the crisis consists of retelling the transporting legend of Noah’s Ark (accompanied by amazing lighting effects). For no reason whatsoever, the family come to respect Norman within his fiction, until they’re rescued. (That must be the “Hope, Love & Survival” part.) Quite often, though, we’re not rescued. That’s also a valuable lesson for children, which can be taught without provoking paranoia. Despite its noble gathering of community participants, who perform with talent and open hearts, the project itself fails to draw a crucial distinction between compassion and delusion. John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., E. Hlywd.; Tues.-Sun., 8:30 p.m.; thru June 8. (323) 461-3673 or www.fordamphitheater.org. (Steven Leigh Morris)

TOMAHAWK The titular tomahawk is brandished by a naked man (Lewis Brians, only nominally naked) in a Native America getup, who recklessly roams the neighborhood in this musical play by writer-director James Domine, based on his novel The Naked Man and featuring songs by the garage band the Screaming Clams. Program notes inform us that the play is a quest for truth, but the search proves futile. The shallow, cartoonish characters include a pair of gleefully corrupt cops (Rob Martinez and Christopher Jones) and a couple of boorish slackers, C.J. and Dogue (Chris Benton and Michael Fox), who devote themselves to bonking any woman in sight, smoking grass, arguing about the existence of God and extraterrestrials and cadging beer from their disreputable landlord, Hal (Brians). Barfly Mama Cass (Debbie Stavitsky) quite accurately informs us, at the end of Act 1, that “none of this means a damned thing.” The actors and the band give it their all, but this script is dead in the water. Actors Forum Theatre, 10655 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hlywd; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., thru June 15. (818) 347-4807. (Neal Weaver)