Theater Reviews: The Redhead Musical Manifesto, The Belle of Amherst

Also, Once on This Island, True Love, and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics and Steven Leigh Morris Tuesday, Sep 9 2008

AGAMEMNON Stephen Wadsworth stages Robert Fagles’ translation of Aeschylus’ tragedy in the amphitheater at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru Sept. 27. (310) 440-7300. (See Theater feature.)

BEETHOVEN, AS I KNEW HIM Writer-performer Hershey Felder is the Liberace of the 21st century — and a better pianist, too. This is not entirely a compliment, despite Felder’s expert storytelling skills, his pristine instincts for timing and his irrepressible love for the classical composers he impersonates in what’s become a cottage industry of his monodramas with music. Here, he takes on Ludwig van B., through the prism of Beethoven’s last known friend and biographer, Gerhard von Breuning of Vienna. Erik Carstensen’s sound design brings the clean, digital sounds of a full orchestra in support of Felder while he’s seated center stage at the stool of a baby grand, plunking out one of the great piano concertos. There’s a divan stage-left, draped in a twinkling cloth cover, and you think — as Felder rapturously hums from Beethoven’s musical treatment of Schiller’s poem, “Ode to Joy” — gads, this isn’t 19th-century Vienna, this is 21st-century Las Vegas. The show is a compendium of fascinating biographical details, smartly told — homing in on the personal agony of a man whose creation of music is his life’s centerpiece, slowly losing the ability to hear. If you know anything at all about Beethoven’s life, Felder’s show isn’t going to add to your knowledge. In fact, the audience “aahhed” and “oohed” in recognition of facts and melodies that Felder uses to punctuate the biography. There’s more recognition here than surprise, which makes Felder’s homage more comfortable than probing. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood; Tues.-Thurs., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 4 & 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; thru Sept. 28. (310) 208-5454 or www.geffenplayhouse.com. (Steven Leigh Morris)

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R.R.R.E.D. -- The Redhead Musical Manifesto

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Once on This Island

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GO THE BELLE OF AMHERST Few writers embraced as many contradictions as 19th-century New England poet Emily Dickinson. Though a lifelong spinster and recluse from the age of 30, she was a doubter with a longing to believe, a reverent iconoclast, a fiercely romantic virgin and a timid soul who wrote daring verse. (Only seven of her poems were published in her lifetime.) Playwright William Luce captures more of her in this monodrama than one might reasonably expect, weaving her poems into the dialogue so gracefully that one hardly realizes what he’s up to until a rhyme or a familiar phrase rings out. Modern scholars have suggested that this shrinking violet may have concealed a lurking serpent: Luce has her say, “My love frightens people.” And her mentor, the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, admitted to being afraid of her, and thanked his stars that she lived no closer. Under the deft direction of Tony Sears, actor Kate Randolph Burns gives us a rich, multilayered Dickinson, capturing her thorny charm and wicked humor, as well as the pain and fear of a woman who could write, “Will there really be a morning?” and died uncertain if her “letter to the world” would ever be received. The Actors Forum Theatre, 10655 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Oct. 12. (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com. (Neal Weaver)

GO LONG STAY CUT SHORT features gripping stagings of two little-known, heartbreaking Tennessee Williams one-acts. In “The Unsatisfactory Supper,” crass but caring Baby Doll (Jolene Adams) and her irritable husband, Archie Lee (Grady Lee Richmond), finally tell their doting Aunt Rose (Eve Sigall) that, despite having nowhere else to go, she has overstayed her welcome with them. In “Hello From Bertha,” an aging alcoholic — and probably mentally deranged — prostitute (Kara Pulcino) resists being thrown out of her brothel by the sympathetic but practical madame (Josie DiVincenzo). Despite some self-conscious blocking, uncertain pauses and a few distracting improv moments, Jack Heller’s direction elegantly draws into stark relief the frantic and desperate delusions of Williams’ two very different heroines. Each struggles with her own obsolescence and loneliness, one by surrendering herself with open arms to the cold and bitter world, and one by recoiling from it entirely. It’s a nice contrast, and one that illuminates unique complexities in the playwright’s repertoire of tragic women. Actors Art Theater, 6128 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.; Wed., 8 p.m.; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru Sept. 21. (323) 969-4953. (Luis Reyes)

MOLIÈRE PLAYS PARIS Help me out here. Say you’re an artistic director planning your season. You’ve got the entire history of stage literature to choose from. Why, then, do you select a surefire miss like Nagle Jackson’s universally panned 1996 biographical pastiche of early Molière? Hubris? The evening mostly consists of Jackson’s own translations of three (justly) obscure Molière one-acts. Staged as period performances, the playlets are tied together by the thinnest of narrative threads taken from Molière tradition (namely, the old blood libel of his alleged incestuous marriage). As the middle-aged playwright (Edwin Garcia II) frets about his upcoming nuptials to his ensemble’s teenage ingénue (Shaina Vorspan), his company performs “The Love Doctor,” a semicommedia about a miserly father (David Stifel) who refuses to allow his young daughter to marry. A laughless, Frankensteinian affair, it was exhumed by Jackson and cobbled together from the Molière corpus. But neither Christina Howard’s too-strident direction nor the cast’s breathless mugging can generate the comic voltage to jolt this hoary creation to life. Act 2’s “The Forced Marriage” fares better; perhaps because it’s the one untampered-with work by Molière — an entertaining farce about a middle-aged man (Garcia) with doubts about his upcoming marriage to his tempestuous teen fiancée (Vorspan). Standouts include Vorspan, and Stifel as the stubborn father, Alcantor, who refuses to retract his permission for the union. But it’s Adam Chambers, with his hilarious deus ex machina appearance as a ludicrously foppish Louis XIV, who walks off with the show. Knightsbridge Theater, 1944 Riverside Dr., Silver Lake; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m.; thru Oct. 12. (323) 667-0955. (Bill Raden)