Theater Reviews: From Hoboken to Hollywood: A Journey Through the Great American Songbook

Also, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, When Garbo Talks!, Wicked Lit and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Thursday, Oct 28 2010

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TALES FROM HOLLYWOOD A 1982 Taper commission, playwright Christopher Hampton's quasi–Stoppard-esque marriage of literary history and City of Nets–like biographical melodrama is at best a shotgun wedding. Hampton's subject is Hollywood during the Nazi era, when Hitler's rise to power in Germany doused the fecund cultural cauldron of the Weimar Republic and sent its greatest creative minds running for cover to the West's dwindling, fascist-free zones — including the place least equipped to comprehend the prize catch of refugee riches suddenly residing in its precincts. The play's most brittle conceit is its resurrection of playwright-novelist Ödön von Horvàth (Gregory Gifford Giles) from his real-life freak death in Paris in 1938. The Hungarian-born, German-language writer serves as a kitsch-loving ironic lens through which Hampton observes the tragic absurdity of such eminent artists as Bertolt Brecht (Daniel Zacapa) and Heinrich Mann (Walter Beery) eking out an existence in the B-movie script mills of the lowest of the lowbrow studio establishment. But the device also creates the dramatic bind of having the wraithlike protagonist always hovering but never quite meshing with the piece's most poignant material — namely, the difficult relationship between the principled but impoverished Mann, his mentally unstable wife, Nelly (Ursula Brooks), and Mann's rich and famous, albeit less deserving, novelist brother, Thomas Mann (Kent Minault). Despite director Michael Peretzian's sleek production — which includes Tom Buderwitz's handsome swimming pool set, Elizabeth Harper's fine lights and incisive performances by Beery and Minault — Hampton's postmodernist stab at an L.A. Travesties never quite gels. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., W.L.A.; Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru Nov. 10. (310) 477-2055 or odysseytheatre.com. (Bill Raden)

TEA AT FIVE In Matthew Lombardo's one-woman play, directed by Jenny Sullivan, Stephanie Zimbalist dons the mannish slacks of legendary actress Katharine Hepburn and shares a few stories from her life and career. In Act 1, the actress is 31 and suffering a career slump. Several movie flops in a row have earned her the deadly moniker "Box Office Poison." We hear her haranguing her agent via telephone to get her cast as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind and fending off lavish attention from suitor Howard Hughes. Her monologues are nicely broken up by telephone calls and unseen visitors at the door of her father's well-appointed Connecticut cottage (set design by Neil Prince). For Act 2, Zimbalist reemerges as an aging Hepburn, clearly suffering the onset of "essential tremor," which plagued her final years. Mercifully, Zimbalist never overplays the distinctive vocal mannerisms Hepburn was known for. Eventually a portrait emerges of a gutsy, scrappy, single-minded and indefatigable woman who fought at every turn to preserve her independence within a spirit-crushing studio system. Flashes of self-deprecating humor and moments of vulnerability just endear us further to this cinematic icon. For almost the entire play, any mention of her clandestine 27-year love affair with Spencer Tracy is conspicuously absent. It's only within the last 15 minutes of this short play (two 45-minute acts) that the romance with her frequent leading man is briefly and almost begrudgingly discussed. Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank; Wed.-Sat., 8pm, Sun., 4pm.; thru Nov. 14. (818) 955-8101. (Pauline Adamek)

PHOTO BY JAMES W. THOMPSON

Hoboken To Hollywood

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WHEN GARBO TALKS! Many would say that by ending her career in her prime and going into seclusion, Greta Garbo wasted both her talent and the opportunities that lay before her. The same could be said of this musical about the famously misanthropic star, crafted by veterans of popular music: Buddy Kaye (book and lyrics) and Mort Garson (music). In it, we are introduced to Garbo (Jessica Burrows) as an ingénue in Sweden, auditioning for renowned director Mauritz Stiller (Michael Stone Forrest). From these early days we are transported vigorously through her career, including her move to Hollywood, her battles with studio head Louis B. Mayer (Matthew Henderson) and her romance with screen idol John Gilbert (Christopher Carothers). Garson's music along the way is sweet, but in the grocery store–brand-vanilla–ice cream kind of way. The late Kaye's lyrical talent is evident, too, but his book (and son Richard D. Kaye's additions to it) is filled with dialogue so on-the-nose that it makes soap operas seem subtle. Director Jules Aaron keeps the pace brisk yet fails to tap less obvious but more interesting sources of conflict buried in the text, such as Stiller's coldness to Garbo's romantic advances because of his homosexuality, or Garbo's own bisexuality. Instead, wince-inducing lines such as, "How can you avoid big battles when you have big dreams?" sneak through, and Mayer twirls his mustache one more time before tying Garbo to the railroad tracks. Perhaps like the real-life recluse, this musical might have opted for the subtle clarity of silence more often. International City Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Nov. 7. (562) 436-4610. InternationalCityTheatre.com (Mayank Keshaviah)

WICKED LIT Live from Altadena's Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery come three classic tales reworked for their settings — a graveyard, a chapel and a catacomb — made creepy with mood lighting. H.P. Lovecraft's "The Unnamable," adapted and directed by Jeff G. Rack, has the audience literally chasing after Michael Prichard and John T. Cogan as they flee from a black-magic beast and the toothless ghost of Prichard's grandmother. Sound effects from speakers hidden in the trees and Prichard's and Cogan's hoary performances are a nifty jolt. Charles Dickens' "The Chimes," condensed by Jonathan Josephson, is a capitalist spook story in which two goblins (Eric Harris and LizAnne Keigley) warn a churchkeeper (Richard Large) not to estrange his daughter (Katie Pelensky) for marrying a poor philosopher (Michael Perl). The story is a lightweight A Christmas Carol redo, but director Paul Millet adds tension by plunging the audience into darkness and making his goblins truly ghoulish. Millet and Josephson trade duties for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," but though its underground halls of the mausoleum are the best location of the night (and the guide wickedly enjoys leading the guests down dead ends), stiff performances make it feel DOA. An added plot twist that gives Montresor (Brian David Pope) a reason for bricking up his friend Fortunato (William Joseph Hill) in the tombs strips Poe's yarn of its most chilling raison d'être: that people do unjustifiably bad things, and we have the pleasure of bearing witness. Mountain View Mausoleum, 2300 N. Marengo Ave., Altadena; Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m.; thru Oct. 30. (818) 242-7910, wickedlit.org. (Amy Nicholson)