A COMEDY OF ERRORS!!

(l-r) Gwenmarie White (Ensemble), Lauren Robyn (Courtesan), Christine Breihan (Ensemble) Photo Credit: Craig Schwartz

Madcap!!!

That’s what my friend, Jeannie, called it: William Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors now playing at A Noise Within. It’s always nice to have company when reviewing a show. Of course, I’d have said zany or outta sight or whacko… and eventually “madcap” would probably have popped up. Heck, it doesn’t take PhD to grab the ideal word right out of the air and have it fit just perfectly. But “Madcap” is just about perfect!

“Burlesque on Brand,” the ANW tribute to Shakespeare’s nutty comedy of mistaken identity, may be a sly tip of the hat to what the City of Glendale is really interested in: The nearby Americana’s glitzy faux-Disney kitch. After a short honky tonk piano serenade by David Bickford on the upright, who also provides sound effects (the “chain” being the most fun!) we literally meet the cast. Director Michael Michetti’s wonderfully mounted burlesque (the show is presented as a play within a play), introduces the actors individually as members of the Burley Q: the cast of the play. Ostrich plume fans deftly wielded by chorine cuties set the scene. Angela Balogh Calin’s costumes rock.

Reading the synopsis of A Comedy of Errors will do its best to just confuse. So, the thing to do is to simply follow the silly romp and once you ‘get it’ that the twins Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus, both and each played effectively by Bruce Turk (sons of Egeon, the well seasoned Michael Stone Forrest) are twins separated shortly after birth as explained in a terrific silent movie. The slaves: Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus are both played by Jerry Kernion, who, for a big guy takes some major pratfalls and takes them beautifully. Egeon, the Antipholuses delinquent father, is sentenced to death by the Duke (Ever eloquent Mr. William Dennis Hunt founder of The Company Theatre of Los Angeles) for crossing the border into Ephesus illegally! Evidently, they were tougher on immigration than even the folks in Arizona are today! Egeon narrates the silent film that explains his journey and desire to find his long lost twins. He has only hours to prove himself to the Duke. The hours are marked on set designer Kurt Boetcher’s cheesey clock that hangs over the doorway of the home of Adriana and Antipholus of Ephesus. A Laugh In window above opens for some additional fun.

You can’t tell the players without a program and even then, you may find yourself referring back time after time to try to figure out who’s who. It really doesn’t matter though because the slapstick routines and The Bard’s couplets (along with a few contemporary references tossed in for good measure) round out the fast paced show. Vampy Adriana (gorgeous Abby Craden), married to the successful Antipholus of Ephesus is jealous and suspicious (rightly so!) of her spouse. Equally beautiful Luciana (Annie Abrams) plays her sister who is vamped by the other Antipholus (her brother-in-law’s twin!) After a dozen mix ups, each one funnier than the last including some missing money, a rope and a golden chain (bling!), the boys of Ephesus are given sanctuary in the Abby of Syracuse and guarded by angelic nuns (made up of some of the ensemble: Andy Stokan, Christine Breihan, Douglas Rory Milliron, Gwenmarie White and Sara-Lucy Hill?). About the middle of the first act I lost track of a couple of the characters. The actors are all are notable and mentioning the great ensemble work of the entire cast is a must. Paul D. Masterson as Balthasar and the 2nd Merchant.. (was he the ventriloquist?); P.J. Ochlan as Angelo/Doctor Pinch; Rene Ruiz as First Merchant and Lauren Robyn doing her best Judy Holliday impression as the Courtesan are all so much fun.

The Duke orders that the Abbess be summoned and the cry “Heyyyyy Abbessssss!” time travels a couple of decades from the twenties to the forties and briefly stops the show with the Abbott and Costello reference. Dragalicious Gibby Brand plays The Abbess as well as the randy Nell whose cap is set for one of the Dromios (oh wherefore art thou, Dromio?)

The eventual problem, of course, is how to present the final scene to reunite the twins of Syracuse and the twins of Ephesus all at the same time. Needless to say that in ANW’s Burlesque on Brand, this is not a problem. Twins are reunited, families reconciled and all’s well that ends well. Applause!

A Noise Within takes the company off to Pasadena in the fall of 2011 (they are still about a million bucks shy of their entire budget, but ground is broken and construction has begun.) A fund raising campaign is on to sign folks up for the “50/50 Coffee Club” ($50 a month for 50 months which will fulfill a matching donation) which will garner each donor free coffee at the theater for life! Coffee anyone?

A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Plays in repertory with Eccentricities of a Nightingale and The Chairs
Wednesdays through Sundays

A Noise Within
234 South Brand Boulevard
Glendale, CA 91204
P: 818.240.0910
F: 818.240.0826
http://anoisewithin.org
$46 Top

'greedy' at The El Centro Theatre

The Red Dog Squadron is a hearty band of serious actors dedicated to profes-
sional theatre.

Playwright, Karl Gajdusek, has crafted an oddly appealing, but somewhat confusing play. Set in the middle of a 144 day deluge, the audience hears the thunder.. or is it a bowling alley above the theater, as we enter past a zombie (of sorts) (Daddy played by Kyle Hamilton) who sports an empty baby carrier.

His yellow slicker, sunken eyes and depressed demeanor: a mannequin standing sentinel at the entry to the theater. Just before the play begins, Daddy meets Momma (Gemma Levinson) on the stage. They display newspaper headlines to one another that mention a mysterious baby that has been deposited in a local hospital. Another headline mentions 144 days of steady rain.

Kurt Boetcher’s excellent set is a stark contrast of life styles. Stage right is a dingy space with hundreds of books lining the walls, even blocking a door where the father of Louis (Brad Raider), an aspiring inventor and his sister Keira (Maggie Lawson), may still be entombed? We never meet the dad. Kiera is an unwelcome guest in her childhood home. Louis is supported by his butch security guard wife, Janet (the protean Amanda Detmer). Janet tolerates Kiera's visit… barely. Kiera has come up with a scheme to hustle a hundred thousand dollars from an unsuspecting doctor, Paul (Kurt Fuller), using an untraceable email address through a woman she’s met in Russia.

Plot unfolds cinematically with action moving from the dingy home to the crisp modern space where Dr. Paul and his Bosnian wife, Tatiana (Ivana Milicevic) discuss major issues they have. She is determined to have a baby and Paul avoids the issue by saying they just can’t afford to create a family. He’s been suspended from practice because of an unfortunate Good Samaritan move he made some time ago. Kiera's greed and the basic humanity of Paul play out in a scheme that takes some twists and turns that one must pay careful attention to fully appreciate.

An interesting use of a narrow space that divides the book lined walls of Louis and Janet’s home and the doctor’s upscale digs features a rear screen projection that creates interludes that include Paul driving in his car in the rain with a muffled GPS voice instructing him where to turn and other locations where the lives of all five of the main characters meet at one time or another. Momma and Daddy, the zombies in the yellow slickers, function as ghostly parents of the baby who, evidently, dozens of couples want to claim at the hospital where Janet is a security guard. They double as yellow slickered Kabuki koken, efficiently moving props and scenery.

Gajdusek’s script may challenge the audience, but under director James Roday’s mostly steady hand, the actors are all on the same page at the same time. This is a production worth seeing. The influence of the absurdists filters in. Perhaps a bit of Kopit? We never meet the father who has collected Nazi artifacts: his legacy to Louis and Kiera. Over all The Red Dog Squadron deserves an audience up for a challenging evening and ready to confront, perhaps, our own personal issues with greed.

“greedy”
Red Dog Squadron at The El Centro
804 El Centro Avenue
Hollywood, CA
Plays Thursday – Sunday through January 29, 2011
www.Reddogsquadron.com
$20.00

NEIGHBORS: A PLAY WITH CARTOONS!

NEIGHBORS...
at The Matrix on Melrose.. a tight little space with three rows and a broad stage.. The play turns on an upwardly mobile family in a sort of Stepford neighborhood.. Little boxes on a hillside that mirror one another in a perfectly bookmatched patchwork. Stage Right an empty space waiting to be occupied. Stage Left a sort of kitchen where The Pattersons live. John Iacovelli’s set, tinted in Diebenkorn pastels, announces nothing out of the ordinary, fraught with sameness. We are lulled into the notion that it’s safe here. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My lead line for this piece kept changing. “If you think you are Liberal, think again.”

“If you think you are not prejudiced, think again.”

“Led down the Garden Path, then bitchslapped… hard!”

None of these do justice to the brilliant writing the young black playwright, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, brings to the stage. It’s important that we know he’s black because white folk can’t say nigger and get away with it. They can’t portray a bawdy stereotypical Negro family of profane minstrels, ready to rub your face in the stuff of hundreds of years of struggle. But, Jacobs-Jenkins can and does. It’s poetry that ranks with Genet and Beckett.

Richard Patterson, (brilliant Derek Webster) a forty-something black adjunct theatre history professor wants… really needs, to gain a full time teaching position. His beautiful Caucasian wife (remarkable Julia Campbell) and gorgeous fifteen year old daughter (lithe Rachae Thomas) live their lives in a neighborhood where it's taken a year for them to be accepted. And now... BAM!.. the house next door is sold to a troupe of traveling players.. each and all stereotypical black folks.. “Niggers!” exclaims Richard because he’s black and he can use that word...

It’s the Crow Family: Mammy, Zip Coon, Topsy, Sambo and Jim, young Jim Crow! All in minstrel black face, they spout stereotypical black euphemisms. Loud and raucous, every member of the family wears an under taste of anger, except for Jim (talented James Edward Shippy) who, though also in black face, seems less angry and says that he doesn’t want to be just like his Daddy, now departed this fair Earth going on a year. The plan is to make a comeback with their show. It’s been a year since Daddy Crow died.

Mammy (superb Baadja-Lyne) in Aunt Jemima drag, runs the troupe with an iron hand, supplemented broadly by Zip Coon Crow’s (slick Leith Burke) slap stick and Steppin Fetchit moves. Sambo (ghetto tough Keith Arthur Bolden) reeks of rap, attitude and muscles. Naila Alladin Sanders’ costumes are works of art.

Topsy (an amazing Danielle Watts) enters, Buckwheat hair in raggity bows, dumping her box full of white baby dolls, (which may be Jacobs-Jenkins’ prediction for the future?) mooning and charming the audience with anything but innocent burlesque.

Jean looks out her suburban window and relishes the diversity that is coming, while Richard feels threatened, perhaps having overcome his blackness. With years of effort, his perfect speech and specialty in ancient Greek drama must place him on a higher social level that those people.

The plot: surreal… the issues: real and damning; profane and pornographic bracketed by frightening truths about our own prejudices and the 'race situation' in this country, sounds a wake-up call for not only our society, but for the world. As fear and antipathy insidiously provoke confrontations not only between the races, but religions; the people and the government, the military, law enforcement, the truth is that we must find a way to harmony in this current ever divisive atmosphere.

Jacobs-Jenkins’ lesson arrives on many levels. Shock for the sake of shock, not mildly profane, but deliberately pornographic becomes only slightly balanced as Topsy breaks the fourth wall to address the audience and in Josephine Baker bananas, steps into an interpretive dance that lets us know there’s more to her than silliness and mooning.

Nataki Garrett’s unobtrusive direction keeps the action moving until the final scene, the ultimate moment, that at once pits the mirror images of Zip and Richard, the nigger and the colored man, against the final tableau: the confrontation of the Crows.

Not for the faint of heart.

Publish Post

NEIGHBORS (A Play with Cartoons)
The Matrix Theatre
7657 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
Thursday through Saturday at 7:30PM
Sundays at 2:30PM
Through October 24, 2010
Tickets: $25.00
323 960 7774
www.plays411.com/neighbors

Yellow at the Coast

L to R David Cowgill, Kristen McCullough, Evie Louise Thompson and Luke McClure


Del Shores has been writing plays for a long time. In 1983 "Daddy's Dyin' and Who's Got the Will?" opened to stunning reviews at Jeff Murray’s Theatre/Theater in Hollywood. Del has been prolific on the theatre scene as well as having produced and directed at least one film and worked on high stakes television shows. His ability to round out a character and at once make an audience think, laugh and weep continues to develop with time.

YELLOW, written and directed by Shores at The Coast Playhouse, examines a modern southern family, the Westmorelands, of Vicksburg, Mississippi: the father Bobby (David Cowgill), Katie, his wife (excellent Kristen McCullough), football hero Dayne (Luke McClure), and his frantic sister, Gracie (enthusiastic Evie Louise Thompson). As Dayne enters his senior year of high school, Bobby, a former NFL football player turned PE Teacher/Football coach, has high hopes for his son. The kid is a natural and both are dedicated to a great final season.

Gracie is a fifteen year old “actress” whose histrionics as a fanatical high school drama student burst like IEDs in an attempt to get her parents’ attention. Hormones raging, her sibling rivalry with big brother Dayne reaches fever pitch causing their parents to sigh and shake their heads. It’s a phase.

As the Westmorelands celebrate their wedding anniversary, a brief feeling of situation comedy permeates early in the play. We then meet Kendall (tres gai Matthew Scott Montgomery), Gracie’s gay guy pal. Kendall is an aspiring musical comedy star who can quote the plot line of any Broadway show and sing a number to document his love of the genre. Gay through and through, Kendall facilitates one issue through which Shores develops a theme of tolerance evolving into a strong polemic.

The play takes a sharp turn to the right as Kendall’s mother, Sister Timothea Parker (the evangelical Susan Leslie) appears. Sister Timothea is a fervent fundamentalist Christian Woman who can quote both Testaments to prove any point. There’s a fine line between parody and a sincere portrayal of this type of character. Leslie treads this line with frightening perfection.

Shores’ ability to direct his own work, simply, works. From time to time his actors deliver lines directly upstage and some other choices either by the direction or that the actors have made are slightly distracting, but the play works. The message works. The actors are all on the same page at the same time.

Robert Steinberg’s contemporary set is perfect, capturing the middle class status of the Westmorelands. Kathi O’Donohue’s always excellent lighting design accentuates and isolates individual scenes flawlessly.

That YELLOW has been extended for six weeks and had a full house for a Sunday matinee speaks to the fact that good press and word of mouth have done their job. The sensitivity with which Shores intertwines familiar themes of his past work: fidelity, homosexuality and fundamentalist religion, continues to leave audiences laughing and emotionally involved. Themes in this play don’t hit us over the head, but lead us to come to our own conclusions. Redemption and forgiveness are only available when even our deepest feelings are given an opportunity to find their way to new understandings.

YELLOW written and directed by Del Shores
Coast Playhouse
8325 Santa Monica Boulevard
West Hollywood

Fridays and Saturdays at 8PM
Sundays at 2PM and 7PM
Extended through Sunday September 5, 2010
Tickets: www.yellowbydelshores.com / www.tix.com or by calling 800 595 4849
$34.99 Top