[Editors Note: This review contains a rather extreme spoiler. Because it enhances the conversation about theatre, one of our main commitments, we are keeping the paragraph in. However, if you have not yet seen this play, you may consider skipping past that paragraph. It is clearly marked.]

Dutchman is something different and thought provoking. I want to acknowledge and laud that before anything else. In under an hour, it made me think more than any other entertainment I’ve seen recently. It’s not a play to hand you easy answers.

Yes, it’s one of those plays. You know the type. Beat poems disguised as drama, wordy melodies shot through with philosophy and just a hint of plot lingering on the fringes to give it shape. There is a black man. A white woman. A subway car, warped open to embrace the audience. It’s about men and women, or it’s about being black in America, or it’s about violence and desire, or it’s not about anything, just words that come from feelings and have no deeper agenda. The program explains that playwright Amari Baraka wrote the play while going through a breakup with his wife and embracing black nationalism, and that shows. Whether that makes the play a whine or a heartfelt wretch I can’t say.

Director April Daisy White orchestrates the short play with extreme attention to detail in movement and in voice that pays off. The whole play is set in a subway car (designed by Burris Jackes), but through excellent use of sound and lighting (designers David Marling and Kathi O’Donohue are to be commended), we firmly believe that the stage is in motion the entire time, stopping routinely and starting up again in a huge overarching metaphor. The illusion is added to by the way the actors physically perseverate, as if riding a bumpy train, through the play, with meticulously planned rough patches and turns that throw them into one another. The greatest success of this staging is the way it brings the subway car to life, and how that in turn brings the action to life.

Actors Iva Stelmak and DeForrest Taylor both gave strong performances, bringing a strength of body and voice that turned their characters into fantastic presences. Ms. Stelmak turns a particularly fantastic performance. She has more to do than Mr. Taylor—more dialogue and action—and so somewhat overshadows him through the first half, but Mr. Taylor’s character rallies and comes into his own late in the play. My critique of their characters really lies in the writing, as Ms. Stelmak’s character is so obviously batshit insane that we are never sure what Mr. Taylor’s character is thinking that makes him stay in the car with her and return her flirtations. Similarly, when Ms. Stelmak’s white character starts spouting overt racism and dropping N-bombs, Mr. Taylor has no reaction. Why?

However, for all that the specificity of movement is good, the naturalistic way the actors carry out what isn’t really a conversation but a poem seems somewhat at odds with the writing. The line isn’t drawn between conversation and poetry, which leads to confusion rather than synthesis, and the actors don’t seem entirely certain why certain actions match certain words. This issue will be fixed in part, I’m sure, as the run progresses. Equally harmful to the production is the token audience interaction, which consists just in directing passages meant for other subway riders in the car to the audience. This might have been effective had it not waited to happen until halfway through the show and had it not just consisted of shouting at other riders. Further, had the bulk of the audience been sitting onstage with the action and felt like they were in the subway car interaction might have seemed like a logical choice. Instead, the audience seating simply suggested a normal theatre, and the interaction actually broke the otherwise masterfully created world of the subway when the actors looked beyond it.

[SPOILER ALERT] Finally, I’m not sure how I feel about the entire premise of the show. A woman, a stranger on the subway, sexually harasses and kills a black man. I understand that this is a reversal of stereotype, but with the naturalistic staging and poetic dialogue it just seems unreal, and while it may be a valid critique of black male existence in America, what the hell does it say about women? This play closes with a blatant nod at the recent Trayvon Martin case—again an interesting statement that ties the play’s themes into the modern day, but one that has no precedent in the action before it and completely breaks the dreamlike, timeless quality the piece has built up in favor of modern political relevance. [END SPOLIERS]

All in all, Dutchman did some things very well and made a lot of interesting choices, but I wish it had chosen a firm direction to travel in. Right now, this train all over the map.

Dutchman is performed Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm, and runs through May 26.

Art/Works Theatre is located at 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038.

Ticket prices: $25 general admission, $15 for students and seniors.

Reservations online at www.dutchmantheplay.com or by phone at (323) 929-2699

Emilia Richeson and Brad Harris

It’s hard, as a reviewer, to talk about a catastrophic play without a hint of glee. I apologize in advance.

For this assignment, I asked my editor to ‘find me the weird stuff’ in LA theatre. The Hundredth Monkey Effect seemed to fit that perfectly, billing itself as a sci-fi stoner comedy, complete with singing and interactive elements. I love interactive and experimental theatre for its potential. But to be truly ‘experimental’ and not simply ‘unconventional’, a show has to conduct an experiment—to do something novel for the sheer joy of discovering how the audience will react. I am also entranced by science theatre, in which characters and narratives let even the most woefully unscientific among us grasp difficult concepts and real-world experiments. Unfortunately this show is neither mad nor science-y enough to fill its own shoes, and seems almost apologetic about its own shortcomings.

There is a host, although there doesn’t appear to be any room for a host in the action of the play or even the remote need for one. On the night I saw the show it was Alicyn Packard, a voice actress, who sang some unrelated songs with her ukulele before the show started and read some bits of texts in funny voices between scenes. Her presence and function were never explained. Equally unexplained and confusing was a man who sat in the front row in drag from the waist down and passed out shots to the audience between scenes for a drinking game. This the audience was practically begged to indulge in until the play forgot about it halfway through and stopped giving us cues to drink.

Our host introduced the actors, Brad Harris and Emilia Richeson, and said that they too would be our hosts. At this point there was generally far too much hosting and far too little action for my comfort. Our new hosts explained more rules to us before launching into what was either a lecture or a scene, they didn’t seem sure which, on pseudo-scientific experiments. The experiments they explained were great, real-world debunked science that made me think. But it was entirely unclear who we, as an audience, were in the context of this performance. The actors were speaking right to us but even they seemed unsure as to why. The only thing I knew was that, for the first five minutes, every ten seconds I was being harassed to take a shot. As was the practicing Muslim friend I had brought with me, perhaps a poor choice.

In terms of plot, I can’t say much. There seemed to be an underlying vague notion that the actors were meant to switch bodies. This would make a great play, but in the one I watched it was only brought up three times, and then almost in passing, as a last-minute attempt by playwright Christina Cigala at dramatic structure. Instead, the actors devolved into tangents (including a bit of casual racism against Asians in the first scene that implied that they were responsible for women’s inequality, for some reason) and side-stories that were carried too far or forgotten.

Neither actor seemed to particularly believe their reality, acting with a sort of hipster self-awareness. And if the actors won’t suspend their own disbelief for a second, the audience doesn’t have a prayer. It’s a shame, because some of the characters and stories had intriguing potential: a Russian cosmonaut still floating out in space after his mission was a failure and the government wiped him and it from the record, a gay priest obsessed with killing gays to gather data on the weight of the soul, and a woman with alien hand syndrome, who couldn’t control what her right hand was doing.

There were songs. Not for any particular reason, but there were. They were well sung and adequately performed.

Halfway through the play the actors began to speak to the audience again and wanted interaction. This was funny (instructions on how to shout at a potato) and well done, but felt like the warm-up act to a truly interactive piece done as an afterthought, and I didn’t feel the audience had been prepared for it at all. We didn’t know the ground rules and so were hesitant to engage. But it didn’t matter, as this conceit too was dropped after five minutes and never resurfaced.

The finale tried to build up steam with the body-swapping idea, but its action happened mostly offstage. The host came on and left again. There was a completely unintelligible scene. And then the actors placed the final nail in the coffin of the play, forcing two (but only two!) audience members onstage to dance. As the audience members, unguided, found their ways back to their seats, the actors stepped off the stage to bow, and so bowed to us in the dark.

If the play had mustered up a couple more scenes about body swapping and forged a narrative arc, it would have worked. Each of the vignettes had an interesting hook, as did the central conceit, but none of them progressed. Had the play abandoned narrative and focused on the idea of mad scientists playing games with the audience, really exploring that dynamic relationship, it would have worked. But of the three interactions (drinking games, potato shouting, and awkward dancing) only the middle interaction worked or had any narrative tie-in, and none of them was novel or particularly well done. The Hundredth Monkey Effect had the effect on me of a school play, leaving me without enough substance to even be confused and just enough interaction to feel harassed.

I’m not sure whether to blame writer Christina Cigala or director/producer Samantha Shada for the squandered potential of this show, and feel awful saying anything bad about either of them as they were both incredibly personable and nice. With a great deal of tightening, refocusing, and discussion of what the play is actually about, The Hundredth Monkey Effect has the premise and the cojones to go far. It fills a gap in theatre—intelligent, interactive performance appealing to both the scientist and the waster in all of us. But as of this production, both the script and the staging are in need of a massive overhaul.

Sandy Fury designed the lighting, which was appropriate and contributed to the staging, except when the actors made their forays into the audience. Ashley Cole designed the set which, with its haphazard desk, giant pad of paper, and boxes labelled ‘SCIENCE!’, may well have been the most intriguing and humorous thing in the show.

The Hundredth Monkey Effect is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30pm, and runs through May 5^th, 2012.

The Attic Theatre is located at 5429 W. Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016.

Ticket prices: $20 general admission.

Reservations online at www.attictheatre.org or by phone at (424) 258-5752.

I have always had a problem with the play Romeo and Juliet, probably the most performed of all of Shakespeare’s plays. I always felt that the story of the “star-cross’d lovers” seemed a bit rash. After all, Romeo and Juliet meet one evening, express their undying love for each other that night, are married the next day and are both dead by mid-week.  The deep-seated passion with which the play is usually presented never quite felt right. I didn’t much speak of this because the play is considered the greatest love story ever told and I didn’t want to seem unromantic.

With the new production of Romeo and Juliet by the Coeurage Theatre Company, currently playing at the Actors Circle Theatre, it finally all makes sense. This play is not so much a love story as it is a clear examination of youthful folly and the destructive power of wanton enmity, enmity between families, of course, that, in a greater sense, could be thought of as enmity between societies and nations.

Romeo is a fickle, flighty young man, “in love with love” to borrow a phrase from another of Shakespeare’s plays; he is deep in the throws of a passion for Rosaline, ready to die of it, until he lays eyes on young Juliet at a party. He just exchanges one “sun” in the east for another. Had he lived, how soon would the next beauty invaded his “undying passion”? Juliet is not quite 14 and is a willful child. She is almost silly, in the way that a young woman can be silly, even one who will mature into a woman of great stature, wit and substance. Both seem at an age where they are being run by their loins and hormones more than their hearts. The danger of their being from two warring families adds to the romantic ideal of their union and further fans their hormonal flames. Had the doddering old Friar not agreed to marry them, had Juliet’s father not been such tyrant, their union would have blazed for a night or two then faded as they grew tired of each other and found new distractions.

The tragedy is not of star-crossed lovers. It is the tragedy of hot heads. Tybalt, of course, is the most obvious, and it brings about his death. Once he is dead, he is talked about almost as if he were a saint but every move he makes from the first time we seem him spells his doom. Mercutio is also a hot head, although one of quite a different stripe; he is what now might be called a party boy, full of sexual innuendo and bravado. Capulet and Montague are both, obviously, hot heads, as is Lady Capulet. And it is tragic: The needless death of four young people, all, ultimately, in the name of family honor. I want to slap both Capulet and Montague with their “too little too late” declarations of brotherly love at the end and wish the Prince had done at least that.

The Coeurage Theatre production, directed by Jeremy Lelliott, is simple and lively. He set out to give us an authentic presentation that honored the “two hours’ traffic of our stage” spoken of in the prologue, and he succeeded. He is also to be commended for his courage in presenting the play in what seems a brand new, but also seems much more accurate, way.

The Coeurage Theatre Company is full of very talented actors. The depth and breadth of their portrayals are consistently good. Sammi Smith, a Ceourage regular, is Juliet and is absolutely a young woman in the throws of experiencing the new sensations of what happens to a woman’s body at that age. She is delightfully confused, witty, silly, smart, passionate. In short, a teenager. Quite an accomplishment for an actress who is past this tumultuous time in her own life. Jonas Barranca is also quite good as Romeo. He is just finding his manhood, the overpowering sexual urges, the clumsy but determined display of masculinity in the face of the judgement of his peers. He would rather be a poet than a fighter. “I do protest, I never injured thee, /But love thee better than thou canst devise, /Till thou shalt know the reason of my love: /And so, good Capulet,–which name I tender /As dearly as my own,–be satisfied.”

Mary Jo Kirwan is Lady Capulet and is a truly wonderful actor. She brings a truth to the bitterness, the love, the protection of her family, the understanding of her husband’s folly that is almost breathtaking. Lynn Ann Leveridge was as near a perfect Nurse as I have ever seen, and I have seen many productions of this play.

Noah Gillett brings his usual light touch to Friar Laurence, although it was a bit startling to hear him constantly referring to how old he is. Gedally Guberek is delightful as the dry comic relief, the servant, Peter. Deven Simonson is Mercutio and plays him with an almost overpowering lustfulness. He is a fine actor, but this time seems more intent on pushing the boundaries than living a life on stage.

There were three understudies the night I saw the play: Bill Doyle played Capulet, Perry Jackson was Paris, and Willie Fortes was Abram. All were good, especially Mr. Doyle who was appropriately blustery in the challenging roll. The rest of the large cast included Kristopher Lee Bicknell, Joe Desoto, Aimee Karlin, Graham Kurtz, TJ Marchbank, Jeffrey Masters, Ryan Miller and Lawrence Peters.

Michelle Stann designed the simple lighting. The authentic Renaissance costumes were designed by Karen Fix Curry.

Romeo and Juliet is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7 pm through May 20th, 2012.

The Actors Circle Theatre is located at 7313 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, 90046, four blocks west of La Brea.

Tickets: Pay What You Can

Reservations online at http://www.coeurage.org/plays/2012-season/romeo-and-juliet

Sometimes the actors just have too much to do. There’s too much going on and it’s hard to follow as is the case with the west coast premiere of Early and Often, written by Barbara Wallace and Thomas R. Wolfe, currently playing at the Open Fist Theatre.

It’s Chicago, 1960.  The election of JFK hangs in the balance and there’s a lot more at stake for Democratic Precinct Captain Art Ruck.  He has a cushy job with the Park District and plenty of girlfriends, but when Ward Boss John Flannery announces a vacancy in the state assembly, Art will stop at nothing to get the seat, including hiding out a dead body and betraying the Democratic Party that fostered his career. It is a time when there is a code of honor in politics, meaning there are good guys and bad guys, though the good guys do bad things to prevent the bad guys from having their share of the goods…or something like that.

It’s a difficult job living up to this intricate and stylized, period, screwball comedy.  There are flavors of Dick Tracy meets the Daily Planet and The Man Who Came To Dinner.  Throw in some Three Stooges along with The Producers and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  You’ve got a show.  It’s a bit mushed.  In fact, it was even hard to tell that it was a comedy right up to almost the very end of the first act.

The gags are heavy, often played so straight or on the other hand overplayed for the laughs, that it takes a while for this show to “warm up”.  The dialog is ‘yelled’ throughout mostly by the girls as if they wouldn’t be heard – which is definitely what is happening story-wise.  It is the 1960s after all and liberation or any potent voice for women is hard to come by even for powerhouse actress Amanda Weier whose dead pan complaints about not getting respect or reward never ceases to punch up this piece several notches, every time she enters the stage.  The guys are tough but the women of Chicago are tougher!

Mr. Wolfe, a brilliant and prolific writer has penned more than a few recognizable episodes of the hilarious hit TV shows Murphy Brown and The Faculty.  But somehow this production has difficulty ‘finding its way.’  It seems a problem with the direction of the play which squarely falls upon director Ron West who regularly stages elsewhere, Second City This Week at The Second City Hollywood.  Sure actors can develop a character from outside in starting with appropriate costumes, of which all of these characters are endowed thanks to spot on costume designer Kellsy MacKilligan, but add the difficultly of the the actual body language of the era and along with the tough Chicago-ease language, it can fall down quickly.  And it does.

The hilarity is at times lost as is the overall chemistry with the ensemble who more than once during this production feel disconnected from each other on the stage.  Except for the bright and shiny penny of a campaigner Marty Collins jovially played  by Mat Lageman who opens pre-show with making calls on the pay telephone, shaking hands, cracking jokes, entertaining the audience and wildly giggling as he hands out business cards attempting to win over potential voters for the upcoming election.  Heck he probably would have even kissed a few babies had any been in the theatre.  It’s a great act.  Hands down one of the best interactive openers an unsuspecting audience could experience and the strongest character in the production, albeit short-lived.

The play does finally pull together in the second act recognizably as a funny bone and stops feeling like a board game of CLUE.   But there is a bit more work to be done here.  Open Fists’s, Early and Often has enormous potential to be a far greater show than it is currently.

One thing this show does have is the right amount of hard core energy to make this play go, go, go, keeping the momentum at a clip.   Some well-played characters were the priest.  Although the writing was predictable and not completely new, Conor Lane was blessedly funny with every exasperated confession and outcome he is doomed to withstand from the church confessional box.  Also Bryan Bertone seems to embody the character of Art Ruck with finesse and style.

Early And Often is preformed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through May 26th, 2012

The Open Fist Theatre is located at 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038 just east of Vine Street

Tickets: $25.00

Reservations online at http://www.openfist.org

It has been said that an artist should not be held accountable for his early work. Anton Chekhov was already established as an innovative short story writer when he was commissioned to write a full length play. (He had also written several comedic shorts for the stage.) In his prose, he strove to avoid anything overly dramatic or cliched, but his first full length play was filled with both. (The “shocking” moment that ends act two is almost unforgivably hackneyed and the cruel reveal at the end of act three is worthy of a daily afternoon television drama.)

Chekhov’s stated aim was in part to present life on stage as it actually is in life, but many of the characters in Ivanov are thinly drawn with only one color. He had not yet figured out how to write the deep, subtle, living characters of his later work.

The play has been called a comedy, a comedy-drama and a melodrama by various critics and there is certainly much that is funny in it, and a whole lot that is melodramatic. The story is of Nikolai Ivanov, a landowner suffering from depression, who is married to a woman who converted from Judaism (and was disowned by her wealthy family because of it) to marry him. She has contracted consumption. Her doctor, who is probably in love with her and is definitely an insufferable moralist that starts practically every sentence with “I am an honest man, therefore …”, wants her to be taken to the Crimea for her health. Nicolai not only can’t afford that, he also simply doesn’t want to.

In his house is his buffoonish uncle, Count Shabelsky, and his cousin/estate manager, the drunken Misha, who spends most of his time figuring out shady get-rich-quick schemes. Ivanov spends most evenings with the Levedevs, a wealthy family that he owes a lot of money to, at the expense of spending time with is sick and lonely wife. The Lebedev’s young daughter is infatuated with Ivanov and wants to rescue him from his troubles, which, we all know, is never a good idea. There is a wealthy widow who desperately wants to be a countess, a neighbor who only talks about his latest card game, an old, deaf servant and others. By the end, they have all collided in ways that cause great suffering.

There is also social satire about the upper-classes, prejudice, social interaction, relationships with money, the young, the old, the married and the widowed.

The production of Ivanov at the Odyssey Theatre, in co-production with the Evidence Room, is directed by Bart DeLorenzo with a decided emphases on the comedic aspects of the play. Some of it is extremely funny (four people at a wedding in the final act, one-by-one dissolving into tears, is hysterical.) However, we all know Chekhov’s quote that, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there,” so we know something tragic will happen eventually. (There are actually two guns in the first act, but only one of them goes off during the play.) The decision by the director and sound designer John Zalewski to end each act with a startling, thunderous bang further enhances that foreshadowing.

The pre-curtain and pre-act music is a familiar musical theme (from Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. It took me forever to place it, I’m ashamed to say) that is played in an endless loop, meant, I imagine, to symbolize the endless loop that most of the characters have found themselves in. It is a jaunty, happy bit of music with an almost “Can-Can” feel, but the constant repetition makes it ominous.

The set design by Frederica Nascimento, is clever. It is purposefully non-specific in terms of period, as are the costumes by Raquel Barreto, but some of it is quite odd. Two floor fans in the back yard of Ivanov’s house representing … what? Wind? And the plastic wrap on all the furniture at the Lebedev’s would have made sense if it were the type of plastic wrap some people really put over expensive furniture to protect it, but it looked like nothing but paint tarps draped loosely over everything in a way no house-proud woman would ever let neighbors see, much less sit on during a party.

The second act is a party at the house of Lebedev. It is a decidedly boring party and the director made the common mistake of having the boring party portrayed by a boring scene. It could have been quite interesting and funny to watch these people desperately trying to make something of the evening, but becomes almost painful until the entrance of Lebedev himself, when things come alive and start to move forward. After that, the absurdity of the situation is obvious, fascinating and often quite funny.

The acting is uneven and runs from brilliant to simply flat. Dorrie Barton is quite good as Anna, Ivanov’s wife. We feel for her for her illness and we ache for her for her loneliness. Barry Del Sharman is probably a very good actor, but plays Ivanov’s depression so utterly that he is barely able to summon the will to move out of a chair or react to anything happening around him, which makes it difficult to sympathize with the character, no matter how much people misunderstand him.

Christian Leffler is delightful, if a bit one-note, as the ne’er-do-well Misha. Tom Fitzpatrick plays the buffoonish Count with an inappropriate laugh that grates very quickly. He also lacks any depth, needed to make the desperation he finds himself in at the end work. Instead, it rings quite false.

From the moment John-David Keller (Lebedev) enters the party, he is a breath of fresh air. He plays the man with such reality, such resignation, such humor that you can’t take your eyes off him. The character is an empty, silly man who has basically given up, but Mr. Keller gives him such humanity that you know exactly how he came to be who he is and why he has chosen this particular reaction to the particular life-loop he has found himself in. Brittany Slattery is also quite good as Shasha, his young daughter, both charming and a little conniving, as is Eileen T’Kaye as Zinaida, his wife, who wants to be respected as the businesswoman she is.

Daniel Bess seems a bit out of place as Dr. Lvov who seems to display whiney-ness rather than righteous (albeit misplaced) indignation. The rest of the cast includes Lauren Campedelli, Jay Harik, Danielle Kennedy, Eric Rittier, Alec Tomkiw, Beth Mack and Jason Liska.

Ivanov is performed Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through June 3, 2012

(Sunday April 15 at 5 pm, and April 29 at 7 pm. Wednesdays on May 9, 16 and 23 only. Thursdays, April 19, 26, May 3 and 31 only. No Friday performance on May 11.)

The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd, LA 90025, just north of Olympic Blvd.

Tickets: Wed through Fri: $25 – Sat and Sunday: $30 – Students and Seniors: $5 off with ID. Union with ID $15 on Fridays. Pay-what-you-can (minimum $10) on April 19, 20, 29 and May 9

Reservations by phone (310) 477-2055 or online at http://www.Odysseytheatre.com

A solid production that tells a simple human love story with tenderness and skill. Not life changing, but certainly life-affirming.

Raleigh (Frank Krueger) has been discharged from the army for medical reasons and is heading to New York to become a writer, separated by his illness from the men of his generation fighting in the Second World War. On the train he meets May (Rebecca Lane), a small-town girl with a religious streak and dreams of making more of herself. Arlene Hutton’s 1999 play unfolds over three scenes that see the characters reunited through the years and creates a portrait of the times, helped along by sound designer Timothy Sprague’s effective use of war-era songs and ambient sounds. From Ken Patton’s costumes to the impressive Kentucky drawls, Last Train to Nibroc creates an immersive world. Even the way the characters change onstage behind screens in the scene changes creates an air of anticipation and—dare I say it?—veiled eroticism that is in keeping with the era. The world isn’t just a backdrop for the characters; they truly seem to be of it. The story doesn’t try too hard to be universal, and its painstaking specificity is its great strength. The play draws us in and reminds us that all good theater needs to do is honestly tell a human story and let the audience will find meaning in it themselves.

Mr. Krueger and Ms. Lane carry the show with subtle, pitch-perfect performances. Mr. Kreuger’s Raleigh is charismatic above all, flitting back and forth between flirtation, shame, and simple salt-of-the-earth stubbornness with an agility that make him a joy to watch. Ms. Lane’s May is equally enthralling. Though quieter, she manages to make dower look charming as her suspiciousness melts into bouts of mirth. The characters metamorphose between each scene, shedding some dreams and finding others, but persisting so strongly in their own way that we can’t help but root for them. The play is Americana through-and-through, and it centers on two people with dreams pursued, deferred, and lost. It addresses the types of bravery it takes to face each of these fates, and the drama comes from how changing goals serve as catalysts or roadblocks for sincere human interaction. And what is striking about both actors’ performances is their sincerity.

Last Train to Nibroc faces some missteps along the way, but they never derail the show. The projections that accompany the opening sixty seconds are superfluous and misplaced, a warning that the growing trend of ‘multimedia’ isn’t appropriate for every show. Ryan Siebrasse’s set is simple and elegantly transforms between the play’s three locales, but somehow always seems too big for the two actors inhabiting it, who only venture into its corners for scene changes. And, while the first two scenes are fully fleshed out and disconcertingly real, the third scene and resolution don’t quite match up with what’s come before. While this final portion is the most poetic and opens up a lot of the themes previously explored, it leaves us with the somewhat unsatisfactory final message that love conquers all because it just does. Granted, if the writing hadn’t sparkled with such great dirty-fingernails realism throughout, this wouldn’t have been an issue.

Director Kerr Seth Lordygan’s staging is highly competent, naturally showcasing the actors and advancing the action. The pacing delivers an engaging balance of laughs and high drama, lagging only in the drawn-out scene changes. Both characters in the story start out on the train from Los Angeles, but for the most part the play speaks to Southern small-town fears and aspirations and to America in the 1940s. My personal bias makes me want to ask the creative team behind Last Train to Nibroc, “Why this play? Why now? Why here?” But I suspect the play itself answers that: Because a human story, honestly told, finds relevance in any time and anywhere.

Last Train to Nibrocis performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 7:00 pm, and runs through May 20^th, 2012. Also Thursday, April 19 at 8pm, dark on April 28.

The Eclectic Company Theatre is located at 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd. (between Chandler and Magnolia), Valley Village, CA 91607

Ticket prices: $18.00 general admission, $15 students and seniors. Pay what you can April 19 and 29.

Reservations online at www.eclecticcompanytheatre.org or by phone at (818) 508-3003.

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO REALITY. IT’S FINE WITH ME. ~ Pre-Show Music, Billy Joel, New York State of Mind

How do you deal with your father murdering your mother, then marrying your mother’s sister – your aunt – and discover without warning that you are no longer daddy’s little girl. Shakespeare of course!

In a shabby room housed in green carpeting, old, slightly worn furniture, Elizabethan stained-glass windows, a painting or photograph of each of her parents and a whole lot of outrageous memories, playwright and star performer Brenda Adelman, along with director John Coppola, both New York natives, present an almost unbelievable, insanely twisted one-woman, modern ‘Bronx Tale’ filled with happy memories and tragic outcomes in My Brooklyn Hamlet, now playing at Studio C Artists on Theatre Row in Hollywood, CA.

Part family comedy, part Greek tragedy, My Brooklyn Hamlet is Brenda’s very true story about loyalty, sex, obsession, love, betrayal, murder and most of all, the awesome power of forgiveness.

Accompanied by the portentous, mood-setting music of Carmina Burana playing as she enters the stage wearing a symbolically blood-red, farthingaled gown. Corseted, ruffed, purled & partletted, jeweled and filled with the power of words, Ms. Adelman breaks her tale in the bard’s iambic pentameter, which is fully a direct parallel to the doomed Prince of Denmark. It is everything dramatic. She is numbed and scarred. Having been torn and caught in the confusing line of fire throughout her entire life, even sometimes a continent away, between two manipulators who emotionally push her to one extreme level of guilt to another. She must decide in the end how she will find the strength to no longer stay silent, and either act upon her desire for revenge and throw herself fully onto a path that will surely lead to a Hamlet-like destruction or to find compassion and become the heroine of her own life with love and exculpation.

One can only begin at the beginning with this tale and Ms. Adelman takes us, squarely and in typical ‘shoot from the hip’ East Coast style, through the sometimes absurd, sometimes traumatizing events of the comical tragedy, that only a nice Jewish princess growing up in the endowed fortune of her father’s lucrative Brooklyn car business, could relate. She recounts the special and important moments spent with and witness to her mother, a world traveling, obsessive fulfillment seeking, bohemian photo artist (al la Diane Arbus with more of a penchant for S&M – “I wouldn’t be an artist if I didn’t piss off somebody”) and her father, a simple, chain cigar smoking, somewhat cruder, self-made auto industry ‘savant’ with an insatiable need for deception and attention from other women.

Although often shocking, much of it is quite funny actually filled with the characterizations and mimes of her parents’ posturing, tantrums and general milieu of melodrama that envelopes her. Ms. Adelman keeps the dialog raw and surprisingly on the lighter side, given the heaviness of the subject matter which she has actually lived through. It is not a heart-wrenching autobiography but rather an expressive and fascinating recitation. There are a few not-quite-so-well crafted transitions during this performance and a moment or two feel a bit skipped over. However, Ms. Adelman’s style is so refreshingly natural and forthright as a story teller that the chronicle is well paced and moves quickly without any truly awkward pauses.

Profound in it’s outcome. Brenda Adelman is able to wield the mighty power of grace and bestow a kind of clemency that allows her to get past the ugliness and pain of tragedy to a love of herself and most of all both her mother and her father. As in the words her mother would say every evening at her bedtime goodnight, “To Thine Own Self Be True,” Ms. Adelman, finds a way to do what is right for everyone.

My Brooklyn Hamlet is a creatively candid, self-realized composition. It was written by and starring Brenda Adelman, directed by John Coppola and Produced by Michael Sonntag.

My Brooklyn Hamlet, A real-life Shakespearean tragedy in modern day Brooklyn is performed Thursday & Saturday at 8:00 pm through April 28th, 2012

Studio C Artists is located at 6448 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038, just west of Cahuenga Blvd.

Tickets – General Admission: $22.50

Reservations online at http://mybrooklynhamlet.eventbrite.com/ or http://www.plays411.com/brooklynhamlet

Let me be blunt: I liked this play. You should go see this play. It is very good.

I didn’t think I would like it. I admit that from the advertising I was prepared to spend two hours grinding my teeth—and it is a play with purple posters about romance novels, mother-daughter relationships, and love in the modern world. The potential for mush is there, but the play acknowledges it, plays with and against it, and then soars above it. Light’s Off, Eyes Closed is an uproarious comedy that has no problem subverting everything it’s about in one moment, only to have you realize in the next that through the act of subversion it has reaffirmed and transcended each of its themes. By playing with the absurdity of romance as a fantasy genre it shows how very essential fantasy, and maybe even romance, are to deal with the absurdity of life.

Watch out for Sky Pilot Theatre resident playwright Liz Shannon Miller. Her writing is beautifully paced, building a thoroughly believable world in the first act and raising the stakes at a mile a minute in the second act. She keeps the play’s scope small but fleshes out the world so completely that two hours go by in a snap. This is what theater should be—modern, relevant, local, and above all, fun. Hollywood could learn a thing or two about both the heart and the brain of a story from Ms. Miller.

The play’s conceit is simple: when a mother (hilarious yet elegantly dry Mary Burkin) dies, she leaves her only daughter, Jane (a superbly nuanced Joanna Kalafatis), with the task of finishing her final romance novel. Jane is skeptical of the genre (she prefers Star Trek), disillusioned with life, and thoroughly inexperienced with love. Her pep-tastic roommate (Samantha Carro) and her studlier-than-thou high school crush (Jason Kobielus) are canoodling, and her mother’s agent (Chera Holland) is breathing down her neck. On top of that, she doesn’t know how she feels about her new maybe-boyfriend (JR Esposito), and all the while her mother’s ghost is heckling and advising from the side-lines.

The play begins as the mother starts to write her novel and ends the second the daughter finishes it. But a simple plot summary does no justice to the hilarity or touches of deep thought present in every scene. From the opening announcements that read as a romance novel (‘they held hands in the dark…they muted their cell phones…’) to the final note (No spoilers, but I think the cast would agree it ends pretty ‘happily muthaf*cking after’) Light’s Off, Eyes Closed comes at you a laugh-a-minute and leaves each scene with cliffhangers that keep you wanting more.

The stage is effectively divided into a raised level juxtaposed with a lower stage. The raised level is where we see the fantasy scenes of the mother’s ghost and the romance’s characters (Carro and Kobielus again, delightfully playing off their range and *ahem* passion). On the lower stage, the complications of real life make things, well, complicated. As the play goes on, the audience sees Jane’s journey from resisting the fantasy world to embracing it as a playground to figure things out in her own life. She is cynical enough for the most skeptical audience member to relate to, and her change of heart isn’t about loving romance, it’s about needing a narrative to connect this big shapeless thing called life. The need for this fantasy world, explored in a touching mother-daughter scene, is the real heart of this play. It doesn’t matter what fantasy we indulge in, it seems to say, so long as we have something that lets us escape from the real world and find meaning in it at the same time.

Director Meredith Berg is to be commended for keeping the action tight and making sure the actors hit every note spot-on. She does a lot with a minimalistic set and lighting, which give the play a slightly unpolished and ‘small theater’ feel that only makes the quality of the script and acting more outstanding. My only criticism was that the audience was often left sitting in the dark for what seemed like ages during scene changes—hopefully this will get cleaner as the production goes on.

It’s rare to find a play with the irreverent humor, nuanced characters, wicked pacing, and deep heart of Lights Off, Eyes Closed. Thank you, Sky Pilot Theatre.

Lights Off, Eyes Closed is performed Saturdays at 8:00 pm, Sundays at 7:00 pm, and runs through April 29^th, 2012.

T.U. Studios is located at 10943 Camarillo St. North Hollywood CA 91602

Ticket prices: $20.00 general admission, group rates available for 10 or more.

Reservations online at www.SKYPILOTTHEATRE.com or by phone at (800) 838-3006

The Spidey Project: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility was originally conceived as a reaction to the behemoth Broadway production of Spiderman, which had huge cost overruns, cast injuries, delays, more cost overruns, law suits, departing artists, bad blood and scathing reviews. That production was the most expensive Broadway production in history, with the longest “preview” period ever. Justin Moran was appalled at the $65 million spent on the show and wanted to prove that you didn’t need $65 million to create good theatre. He had a budget of zero and wrote, cast, rehearsed and opened in just over 30 days, and it, unlike its big brother, was a hit.

Theatre Unleashed has brought the show to Los Angeles with an actual budget and a respectable run. The show itself is froth, but it is very entertaining froth. The music was actually wonderful, especially given that it was written in so little time. The script is peppered liberally with kitchy humor and I found myself laughing almost from the first moment right up through the end.

The story is familiar to anyone who knows anything about Spiderman: Young Peter Parker, a sort of high school dweeb, gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gains super powers. His uncle, not knowing what has happened to him, tells him, “With great power comes great responsibility,” but Parker just uses his power to show off until his uncle is murdered during a robbery gone wrong. Parker realizes (too late!) that his uncle was right and dedicates himself to fighting crime.

Moran and co-writer Jon Roufaeal put some delicious spins on all that and keep it rolling right up to the end, where it kind of peters out a bit. Besides Parker coming to terms with what has happened to him, there’s no real compelling through line, so it doesn’t really much end. A small fault since what leads up to that non-end is so delightful. The show is called a parody, partly, I imagine, so they can argue “fair use” of the copyright and trademark issues in case anyone notices, but, although it does make some very fun twists on the Spiderman legend, the parody is more toward big budget Broadway than Spiderman itself.

The TU production is very simple but effective. Studio Stage has a natural cyclorama back wall and they use that to good advantage. The sets are suggested by a couple of rolling flats with pictures hung on them. The “Special Effects” are wonderfully simple and clever, and include Spidey climbing up the side of a building and flying through the air of the city, attaching his web to swing from building top to building top. With one or two minor exceptions the cast all had wonderful voices. Most of the acting was over-the-top, which was exactly what was required. They also had a band with a keyboard, guitar, bass, drums and huge sound. I’m still amazed that they were able to fit it in that small space.

Ryan J. Hill was charming as Peter Parker. Kyle Cooper was very funny as Flash Thompson, his arrogant high school rival. Ben Atkinson, as the blowhard newspaperman J. Jonah Jameson, had some of the most outrageous moments and he made the absolute most of them. (“Do you think I’m sexist? Damn right I am. But in a good way!”) The rest of the cast includes Lauren Turner, very funny as secretary Betty Brant, Krista Taylor as Gwen Stacy, Justin Baker as the TV reporter Kent Hollbrook, Darren T. Mangler as Uncle Ben, Melissa Jobe as Aunt May, Jude Evans as Arnold Winter and Heather Lake as Sarah Hill.

It was directed by David Chrzanowsky, musical direction by Jordan Ostrowski, choreography by Joanna Hernandez. The sets and costumes were by Katie Sikkema, with the cartoon art by Sebastian Kadlecik.

The Spidey Project is performed Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7:30 pm through April 14^th, 2012.

Studio Stage is located at 520 N. Western, Los Angeles 90004, between Beverly and Melrose.

Tickets: $20 general admission at the door, $16 if ordered online. (They also have a “pay what you can” if you bring a new book to donate to the Literally Healing program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles)

Reservations by phone at (818) 849-4039 or online at http://theatreunleashed.com

Sometimes, the course of true love  just isn’t smooth.  “Sweet love don’t do nothin’ but give you the blues.”  And, in a raw, gritty, Mississippi shanty town, Hoodoo Love is no less than a recipe for disaster.

Set in 1930′s Memphis, Tennessee it is a time travel to the past in the Black American south, where the characters jump from being “smooth one way and rough the next” presenting a very adult show with full nudity, open talk and lot of singing from the soul.

In Hoodoo Love, Toulou (Andrea Meshel – Look What the Cat Dragged In, Zoo Man and the Sign), a young Black woman, has fled the cotton fields with dreams of becoming a renowned blues singer on the famous Beale Street.  She quickly falls hard for a blues man, the harmonica-playing, guitar-strumming, itinerant musician, Ace Of Spades (Elijah Rock – Ragtime, THREE BLIND SAINTS, Burned), who comes and goes without remorse or guilt, openly admitting to having lovers in every town where he plays.  In Toulou, he finds a comfort of sorts and a bit of musical inspiration.

Wanting to know what it feels like to have a man stick around for her for once in her life, Toulou seeks the aid of her next-door neighbor, Candylady (Karen McClain – Dreamgirls, South Pacific, Smoky Joe’s Cafe), who is adept at hoodoo (i.e. voodoo). Toulou literally wants to cast a spell on her man to bind him to her so that she can have a piece of Ace forever.  Meanwhile, Toulou’s brother Jib (Rickie Peete – Fences, Porgy & Bess, The Exonerated, Obamanologues, Journey to the White House) shows up.  Pronouncing himself as a traveling preacher who purportedly wants to start a church, he stays a lot longer than he is welcome as a self-righteous sponging, gambling, drinking, womanizing moocher.  He very quickly discerns the special relationship between Toulou and Ace and by the end of the first act, jealously goes to shocking lengths to come between the two lovers, setting them all up for the hardest and most irreversible lessons in love.

The Ruby Theatre at The Complex is currently turning in a power-house of a show written by (Olivier Award winning) Katori Hall and directed most brilliantly by Richard Lyons.  Now in its second extension, Hoodoo Love is a story too large for this tiny black box stage. It is crafty, fun, magical, and often very dark; a robust embodiment of the smokey, sweaty, lusty times and the earthy music that evolved from the old Cotton Belt during the early days of juke joint blues .The revolving set, creatively designed by Kenneth Olefien with its bare wood and scarce personal accoutrements (by costume designer Ariel Moore) belonging to the chief characters, nicely establishes the tone of the ramshackle poverty offering just enough ‘atmosphere’ without hindering the stage, the performance or the believability for the audience, as does the noticeable dramatic lighting design by Christopher Cross.

From the beginning the clues are all apparent.  The young single hopeful girl who falls for a singin’ man and is willing to dishonestly claim him.  The brother who is looking for a free ride, a little bit of cash in his pocket and has more than just a brotherly interest in his sister.  The light-hearted, wild-spirited Ace who is “searchin’ for that one song that’ll have everyone knowin my name.”  Candylady, the old witchy woman who casts love spells to satisfy her memories of love and lust of lost youth, lost children, lost husbands and lost dreams, having lived as a slave in her early life in the South and determined that Toulou should not lose, but get a man to make her dreams come true.  Everyone wants something that seems just beyond their reach.  And everyone is more than tempted, in fact, determined, to act on his or her own selfish desires at the expense of each other.  The intensity of all of their desires are brewing and the results are about to scald.

Throughout this play the music comes alive from original songs also written by the playwright Ms. Hall, and smack in the middle Candylady and Ace throw down a mid-first act musical show stopper so grand that the theater simply cannot hold it, making the audience come alive, reveling, clapping and interactive.  It is the ‘Shuga Woman Blues’ belted right through the walls of the playhouse!  The audience is fed treat after treat with live guitar by musical director/composer and Blues & Jazz impresario, Haskel Joseph, who does his best to “keep things dirty.”

Hoodoo Love is a boisterous, unapologetic, almost mythical tale that, and although a bit predictable, stays potent to the end.  The story flows like the Mississippi, speaks as melodically as the music and whispers in the night like Candylady’s Hoodoo cantations until it lulls the audience to a soothing, satisfying end.

Hoodoo Love has been extended through April 1st, 2012 and plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm  and Sundays at 4 pm

Ruby Theatre at the Comples is located at 6476 Santa Monica Blvd. (at Wilcox), Hollywood, CA 90038

Tickets: $20.  Members of the performing arts unions: $15

Reservations by phone at  (323) 642-7358 or online at  hoodoolove.eventbrite.com