When a talented cast and thoroughly professional production team present an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, how can it miss? No, I’m really asking. The neophyte Nola Productions takes on the noble but perhaps quixotic task of staging Adrian Hall’s confusing and unfocused adaptation of All the King’s Men, now at North Hollywood’s El Portal Forum Theatre.

Robert Penn Warren’s monumental 1946 novel, made into an Oscar-winning best picture, tells the epic saga of Willie Stark, a character very closely based on larger-than-life Huey Long, the bayou populist who built a political empire and lasting legacy in Louisiana.

The novel’s elaborate and often byzantine plot lines are not helped by Hall’s adaptation, which includes 19 cast-members assuming the role of 37 separate characters, overwhelming the senses and boggling the mind. Further complicating matters, the story begins in the middle then goes back to the beginning. Keeping the audience apprised of all the minor plot developments is apparently too formidable of a task for poor Jack, the story’s protagonist and primary narrator, who requires assistance from a number of group narration scenes, as well as characters beginning scenes by casually commenting to one another about what has transpired since the last one.

Despite these hackneyed time-saving recaps, the play still runs well over two-and-a-half hours, and the rapid infusion of names and plot lines is at times confusing. There is no rule that a playwright has to include every subplot and minor relationship from the source novel, or that a theater company must be 100% faithful to a published script. A bit of judicious trimming on the part of either party could have made for a more entertaining production while focusing on the novel’s most powerful themes, timeless but especially relevant in today’s political climate and during a particularly contentious election cycle.

The company, staging only its second production overall and first in LA, cannot be truly faulted for anything other than perhaps biting off more than it can chew. Gordon Carmadelle, who also produced, settles nicely into his role as Jack Burden after a shaky beginning. Thomas F. Evans plays the “boss” Willie Stark, navigating well the transition between sheepish ideologue to peevish demagogue with visions of grandeur. The rest of the ensemble cast is equally capable and aided by David Chrzanowski’s direction and wonderful production values. Robert Davis’ lighting, casting a romantic, southern sunset glow on the action, deserves particular mention. The sets (Travis Deck), costumes (Christy Hauptman) and props (Hedy Deck) are equally top-notch.

The results bode well for the fledgling company. It’s just unfortunate their hard work is to some degree lost in the mire of the script, like a Cajun crawfish in the back swamps of Louisiana.

All the King’s Men plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through September 15, 2012

The El Portal Forum Theatre is located at 5269 Lankershim Blvd. Between Magnolia and Chandler in North Hollywood

Ticket prices: $20 (Students/Seniors: $15)

Reservations online at www.nolaprods.com or by phone at (866) 811-4111.

It takes guts to compare your play with Noël Coward and Pirandello as Theatre Unleashed did with the production of the play Modern Drama, now being performed at Studio/Stage. The press release calls Modern Drama, “Private Lives meets Six Characters in Search of an Author“. Writer/director Bill Sterritt has won many awards for his plays, so I had some hope for this. Unfortunately, guts aside, the production doesn’t come close to meeting that high standard.

I have said before that it is sometimes a mistake for a writer to direct his own work. Unless he is as accomplished a director as he is a writer, the tendency is to fall overly in love with the script and distrust both the actors and the audience to “get” it. I fear this is the case here. The script seemed more forced than witty (yes, there were some lines that were amusing, but there were surprisingly few laughs the night I saw it) and the performers seemed to have been directed to telegraph every joke, punch every witticism least we miss it, and pose every moment and emotion into being.

A lot of what makes Noël Coward work, even in lessor productions of his plays, is the “throw away” aspect of some of the best lines. They sneak up on you and you start paying more attention so you don’t miss the next one. Here, nothing snuck, and I felt myself bracing for the next bit rather than anticipating it.

Mr. Sterritt also required of some of his actors a sophisticated poise that they simply didn’t possess and couldn’t conjure. In an early moment, one actor enters and stands upstage center, striking “charming” poses as another actor described him. It was clumsy at best. That kind of poise requires, I think, a studied detachment that was missing, but it also requires an inner calm that would be hard to achieve when you are so intent on getting the wit and humor across.

Also, in a play like Private Lives, the twists and turns in the action and history are part of the delight. There were twists, here, but most were telegraphed (the major twist was telegraphed literally by the very first moment of the play) or were, again, forced. It is possible there is more to this script than I saw (there were, indeed, references to all sorts of thing modern and literary in it) that more restrained direction could bring out.

The story. In Provincetown, MA, Gordon Gordon (Jeff Groff), a director for the local theatre company, descends on the house of Crocker and Hillary Morton (Rick Brunner and Lisa Temple). Crocker had, years ago, written a comedy of manners that took Broadway and, subsequently, regional theatre, by storm. None of his plays since have lasted more than a performance or two, but he has moved to Provincetown, surrounded by lesbian and gay bars, to live a comfortable life on the royalties from that play. Mr. Gordon wants to commission another play from him so he can put the local theatre back on the map, get Hollywood deals, get on Bravo and all sorts of other things. Hard to believe that a single potential production written by a has-been could so turn one’s fortunes around. Also hard to believe he can get any and every Hollywood producer and agent on the phone to do fact checking. Anyone with those kinds of connections doesn’t need a has-been to propel his career, I would think.

(There are other things that simply don’t make sense, but listing them would be pointless.)

That one successful play by Mr. Morton, it turns out, was inspired by what happened when he and Mrs. Morton were in London years earlier. She had a dalliance with the gardener that he walked in on. In retribution, he had a dalliance with the maid and made sure she found out about it. It ended the intimacy of their marriage (she has been bedding young men ever since, we don’t quite know what he has been doing), but it also created four Dopplegangers, the characters from his play, who hang around, not saying anything, but imposing themselves on everything Mr. Morton does. They aren’t so much in search of an author as they are insistent he never leave them out of whatever he does.

The best acting in the piece are by two of the Dopplegangers, Jason Paul Evans and Sarah Ann Vail as Mr. and Mrs. Rosdale, who never say anything but have a wonderful presence and comic timing.

The set, by Geronimo Guzman, was actually quite good, the Provincetown living room and surrounding boardwalk. The built-in cyclorama at the Studio/Stage worked perfectly to suggest the seaside town. One side of the stage, however, was the proscenium arch and curtain of the local theatre. It was interesting, but was mostly just used for entrances and exits. The program art was also reproduced on both sides of the stage, a depiction of all of the characters, both real and Dopplegangers, hovering around the table where Mr. Morton writes. I think it was meant to echo Al Hirschfeld, but having two of it so large was distracting. On the program would have sufficed.

Another “interesting choice” was that they filled the tiny theatre with plastic sea-side deck chairs rather than the customary folding chairs. As interesting as it was, the effect was that the small area afforded the audience was made even more crowded.

The lights, by Ana Serrano, and costumes, by Irwin of Irwindale, were also quite good, as was the sound design by Joe Louis Cedillo.

Modern Drama is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 5 pm through July 1, 2012.

Studio/Stage is located at 520 N. La Brea in Hollywood, 90004, just south of Melrose

Tickets: $10 general admission

Reservations by phone at (323) 463-3900 or online at http://www.studio-stage.com/

Mental Creatures, finishing up its world premiere at the Lounge Theatre this weekend, is a flawed but at times riveting portrayal of the most foundational and raw human emotions. Randy Brenner directed and Jay Jacobson wrote and stars in this one-man show exploring human experience through the life crises of three separate individuals.

Jesse, an aspiring painter working at a framing store to pay his bills, is struggling through an extended “blue” period, reexamining with each artistic disappointment the pestering question of how much more time to devote to his art before surrendering to the world of nine-to-five drudgery simply framing the work of others.

On the opposite side of the coin is Sylvia, a mature divorcee, who struggles with her decision years ago to give up dancing in order to marry her late husband, wondering what might have been and whether it can ever be again.

And further down the life cycle spectrum, Frank struggles to maintain some remnants from his life, the best of which, he realizes, is far behind him, as he is forced to move into what is deceptively called a “home,” but he knows will be where he will most likely die.

The thoughts and feelings that haunt these three individuals have been shared by everyone who has ever stepped foot on this planet: Am I too old for happiness? For love? Did I give up on my dreams? Am I holding on to a pipe dream? Am I good enough? It’s hard not to identify with what they are going through, precisely because the themes are so universal, yet rarely expressed in public.

Jacobsen does a good job — both as a playwright and performer — changing between the characters, adapting the manner of speech and thought to the person. Sylvia is, by far, the most fleshed out and easily identifiable of the three. Her personality is the most engaging and her scenes of pain and disappointment pull at the heartstrings, where, by contrast, those of the other two at times can drag.

Also, the original songs which Jacobson wrote and performs throughout the performance, like Jerry Springer’s “final thoughts,” are for the most part superfluous but do help frame the action, giving us some idea what message we, the audience, are supposed to be deriving from the anguish we are observing. As implied by the title of the play, this message is: humans obsess too much. Or, in the words of the final song, we “think our lives away.” These negative thoughts don’t benefit anyone and only serve to distract us from the present. Only by letting go of the past and focusing on the present does the future open up. Each of the three characters realizes this in the end, in their own ways.

Mental Creatures plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through August 18, 2012

The Lounge Theatre is located at 6201 Santa Monica Blvd. (one block east of Vine) in Hollywood

Ticket prices: $20.00

Reservations online at www.Plays411.com/mantalcreatures, or by calling (323) 960-7738

This is a tough play. Its language is gorgeous, much taken right from the pen of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet and this play’s protagonist and muse. But its structure is sometimes infuriating, as Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz decides that the best way to pay his hero homage is with a fragmented tour of the poet’s life, delivered by workers in Lorca’s own private room in purgatory. The effect is attention-grabbing at first, as we are re-played the man’s death over and over and begin to understand the rules of the room. As the play progresses, though, it becomes evident that the drama of Lorca’s afterlife pales in comparison to the drama of his life as a liberal homosexual intellectual in Fascist Spain. With such a rich narrative provided, the existential dreamlike quality of Lorca in a Green Dress is interesting in its own right but only scratches the surface of the story it tells.

The story goes roughly thus: after death, important people have 40 days in their own private purgatories to make peace with their lives and move on. After death, Lorca finds himself in such a purgatory room, draped in white. The room comes complete with ‘actors’, other dead people who take on aspects of the Lorca’s personality and act out scenes from his life to review. The choice, we discover, is whether to make peace with life and go forward into death or whether to return to the world and wander, invisible and forlorn, as a ghost. Lorca in a Green Dress hinges on this choice, sadly skipping over much of Lorca’s complex relationship with Salvador Dali and controversial politics to focus on his relationship with the anonymous dead playing versions of himself in the afterlife. While there is something to be said for the playwright’s hero worship, which tries to break the poet down into his component parts, the ‘meta’ nature of the purgatory’s ‘play within a play’ and the lack of any other real characters with a bond to the protagonist weaken the emotional resonance of the piece.

Director Jennifer Sage Holmes stages the production well, with touches of dance and whimsy and a strong ensemble feel that mostly clarifies, rather than obfuscates, the text. Adrian Gonzales is a strong Lorca, understated and sympathetic throughout, while the five actors playing the various aspects of his personality bring out the edgier aspects of his character. Of these the sensual side (the eponymous Lorca in a Green Dress, played alternatingly by Alex Polcyn and Edward Padilla) and the childlike side (Josh Domingo) are the only two who are really explored and develop relationships with the title character, while the rest fade into a more background ensemble role. The show also has a strong musical presence, with a guitar player (Gerardo Morales) onstage at all times playing original music by Christopher Davis and accompanied by a floor-stomping flamenco dancer (Alejandra Flores).

In the new Casa 0101 space, it seems impossible to have a play with bad lighting, and Willy Donica’s design does not disappoint. I was, however, less impressed by the set, which consisted of a few platforms and white curtains that felt more like sparse rehearsal furniture than a fully realized set. I’m all for minimalism, but this needed something more—a motif, even just a unified color scheme, to make it feel more like an empty room and less like an empty stage.

Casa 0101′s tradition of presenting a free art exhibition with the play was upheld here, with stunning local works of surrealism playing with the boundaries between life and death, human and animal, and male and female. The gallery set the mood nicely for the play. The ‘local’ touch is also present, with cheap tickets for Boyle Heights residents and, surprisingly, information about which neighbourhoods in LA each of the performers represent. Lorca in a Green Dress was not my favorite thing ever, but it provided an evening of beautiful language and thought-provoking abstraction.

Lorca in a Green Dress is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 5pm, July 20-August 26, 2012.

The New Casa 0101 Theater is located at 2102 E. First Street, Boyle Heights, CA 90033.

Ticket price: $20 general admission, $17 students, seniors & groups (10+), $15 Boyle Heights residents with identification.

Reservations by phone at 323-263-7684, by e-mail at tickets@casa0101.org, or online at www.casa0101.org.

by Tracey Paleo~

Sitting down at the local Starbucks over coffee and one acts during an intimate interview with local theatre owner, producer, director and new kid on the block, John Coppola of Studio C Artists, we got right to the heart of how large a vision is being housed in one of the smaller spaces on Theatre Row.

“What we do here at Studio C, our philosophy with the company is that we break you (actors) down archetypaly. For instance, Dorothy would be a great example. She’s perfectly broken down with her archetypes that surround her. Toto means soul and she follows her spirit (Toto) out of Oz when the Wizard leaves her unable to take her himself,” Coppola explained.

Having reviewed My Brooklyn Hamlet with Brenda Adelman at the space in April and the festival production of, I Get Knocked Down with Evan McNamara, both collaboratively arranged and orchestrated by Coppola, Studio C’s one man/woman “vérité” style of theatre has become strongly evident. It’s goal and trajectory, even more intriguing.

Coppola is meaning to shine a new light on Santa Monica Blvd. with the determined vision of taking theatre to the silver screen.

It’s a bit of an old Hollywood idea, one that harkens back to the early days of black and white film when movies were far less action and much more literary in story-telling style. But it seems to be a concept that can work.

With recently acquired funding, backed by a solid business plan, Studio C Artists is looking at the big picture of how theatre in Hollywood can stay alive and thrive adding to the arsenal of tactics in play on Theatre Row by all of the houses that are currently showcasing LA’s smaller productions, including the brilliant evolution of the Hollywood Fringe Festival which just ended its 3rd successful season in June 2012.

LATR: John, let’s talk about the currently slated works … If Later Were Now, Face Cream, I Get Knocked Down.

Coppola: Studio C shot 14 pages per day at a new production studio downtown. The name of the “play to film” is If Later Were Now. It is based on a true story which was about human trafficking. The lead female character is a ballroom dancer and it involves Tango in a sort of dreamscape.

I Get Knocked Down is a one-man show, typically characteristic of a Studio C production and just finished its second run at the Fringe. Evan is one of the best actors of the company. In his real life he was married for almost 4 years, having had two children right away. The play deals with his marriage in archetypes and also with taking responsibility for the situation.

There are also four one-man shows which all have movie potential including two full length plays, one called Face Cream, opening on July 12th, which is already in production for a low budget feature. It’s a romantic-comedy about a married couple, Christina & Michael. While getting ready for their daughter’s wedding Christina reveals to Michael that she spent $1200 on a single face cream. She’s afraid of growing old and being unattractive.

Face Cream is a great little “found” story that I actually got from my hairdresser. Based on a real life circumstance, it’s a comical commentary on glamour. Christina is a beautiful woman who for all of her life was used to getting a “symphony of whistles” as she would walk down the street. But now no one pays attention. It’s depressing. It’s unfair. It’s sad. You could say, it’s a bit Hollywood.

LATR: What are the kinds of productions do you want to showcase here?

Coppola: The coolest thing at Studio C is the aspect of dealing with true stories that “talk” to audiences. With I Get Knocked Down, for instance, we were getting men coming to the show who had the same story and saying things like, “I don’t feel like a victim anymore.” We are a unique theatre to the community. Our idea is to take theatre out to the public in order to bring audiences back in. We’re a little bit like the Bronx Tale in a church basement, creating all of our works in house. Other productions can come into the space but they have to be the right fit.

LATR: What has been Studio C’s evolution so far?

Coppola: This year is the Studio’s 2 year anniversary. I wasn’t looking into buying a studio necessarily. I had been working for film companies. But working budgets that could cut days to cut expenses by fully developing a piece in a black box theater suddenly made sense. So the idea of theatre to film was born. It was the best way to go. It’s the priority of the plan.

LATR: What was here before?

John: Believe it or not it was a dress shop.

LATR: Was I Get Knocked Down your debut into the (2012) Fringe Festival? I don’t remember seeing you last year.

John: No. But the first Fringe festival was kind of a bust for us. My dad suddenly became dangerously ill with cancer. And I was not in attack mode. I ended up having to fly back East to deal with that.

When people see the truth, there is oneness and inspiration.

Coppola, a former commercials actor ‘king’, ultimately considers himself a ‘Storyteller’ as evidenced by the tattoo on his right arm. ” I didn’t necessarily see myself as a theatre director, but it’s all working in that direction. I’m here to tell stories. I just happened to be blessed with incredible support. Right from the week we moved in, the other theatres on the boulevard sent over well wishes and even donated lighting and equipment to get us up and running. We also have an incredible team of artists including my producing partner (casting director) Michael Sonntag, (Madonna’s) costume designer Rob Sanduski and set designer Bret Mason. They’ve really given so much work and time. ”

Coppola’s next play to film in development is Detour, a special piece. The scariest part is that this one is John’s own story and it’s deep. It’s about the day he told his girlfriend, who he had known since he was 14, that he was gay. Sexuality is as individual as a thumbprint but not a box. It’s a little bit like Wicked where the wizard is afraid of the people being unified. Roles and identities are played out here. The archetypes are the magician, the con man , storyteller thief.

Face Cream is currently running its West Coast premiere at Studio C Artists. Directed by John Coppola Written by Maggie Bofill and starring Rhonda Lord and Patrick Muñoz. It is produced by Michael Sonntag and runs from July 12 – August 25, 2012

Studio C Artists is located at 6448 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90038

Tickets: $22.50

Reservations through Eventbrite or Plays411.

Are news and entertainment interchangeable?

In the West Coast premiere of Our House, currently being presented by Wasatch Theatrical Ventures at The Lounge Theatre, playwright Theresa Rebeck gives us a brilliant, gripping and darkly comic look at America’s obsession with reality television. The play shoots straight to the heart of the conflict between news and entertainment, the blurring of the lines that has occurred, and how in the zeitgeist of media we, the guinea pig audiences and it, the provocateur of ambiguity and distortion, boils down to a big hunk of nothing. Media means nothing. Has turned us into nothing. We mean nothing. We are nothing. And yet, the moronic, hyper-reality is seductive enough to keep us hooked because even the most sobering crisis can be turned into sexy entertainment.

In Our House, an arrogant, powerful network executive, faced with dwindling ratings, installs America’s favorite news anchor as host of a popular reality show. Meanwhile, in Middle America, a houseful of roommates bickers over high-stakes real- world conflicts: Merv doesn’t clean the bathroom. Someone ate Alice’s yogurt. And the rent is long past due. When reality collides with reality TV, we find ourselves front and center in a drama that holds the nation riveted with fatal consequences and a complete evisceration of accountability.

At the onset of the show before the lights even come up we are immersed into the headspace of lead character Merv. As he watches the TV screen below in his living room, playing overhead is an additional screen with a montage of overlapping, non-stop commercials for feel good products like Coca Cola, medicinals like Bayer Aspirin, assassinations, game shows, night time dramas like Dallas, hard news casters such as Mike Wallace, sports icons, images of the Justice Thomas and Anita Hill trial, and cartoons. It is a juxtaposition of truth and history versus ‘real’ fiction. And although there are visibly two screens there is no psychological separation between Merv and the audience. As old jingles play and lines spout like, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” made famous by Alka-Seltzer, it becomes evident that, yes, we did. We gluttonously ate the whole, sugary, fattening pie. We bought this delusion hook, line and sinker. The incessant images and messages that fade into one another without a break make no sense. We are left in a sort of barren wasteland of white noise, to figure out, almost impossibly, what is important and what to discard. But in the end are we discarding what is important for oblivion and desensitization?

In a note, Director Kiff Scholl states, “I don’t watch ‘reality television’. I’ve always felt the bread and circuses approach to entertainment leads to a numbing and dumming down of America. We all need to escape from the daily grind of our 9-5′s, but do we really need so much of it?”

Our House brings each character to his and her breaking point as we watch on three different platforms, often simultaneously, the reality of scum bag casting couch interludes where high stakes sexual favors are procured behind the scenes of America’s media decision makers, boxing us in to the depression inducing highs and lows of the illegitimate, theatrical farces we know are horribly stupid, but for which we can find no fulfilling alternative. And for TV audiences everywhere a delicious and theatrical violence gets played out in the real lives of the characters on stage. All for the simple reason that profitably in America is not optional and so therefore hyper-reality is not free.

Intriguing and poignantly written, Our House thoroughly and intelligently tackles the profundity of the issues presented. Excellent ensemble work by all of the cast who include Mark Benick as Wes the subtly ruthless TV exec; Ajarae Coleman as willing to do ‘whatever it takes’ in any situation, newscaster, Jennifer; Rachel Germaine as the simply looking for human connection, and conflicted roommate Alice; Patrick Hancock who is the definitive barometer of sense and truth in a darkening horizon of TV fog; Jennifer Kenyon as Grigsby the insightful roommate willing to draw the line; JB Waterman the peacemaker roommate and Kyle Ingleman as Merv who turns this story on its axis with a quite surprising and sagacious insight, well representing the distorted values and intelligence of addicted TV audiences, and who manages to hurt all and win all never-the-less in the process.

Excellent set design is by Dan Mailley, lighting design by Matt Richter, costume design by Sharell Martin, and sound and video design by Corwin Evans.

Our House is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sunday at 7pm, through August 5, 2012

The Lounge Theatre is located at 6201 Santa Monica Boulevard (just east of Vine, at El Centro), in Hollywood.

Tickets:$25

Reservations online at http://www.plays411.com/ourhouse or by phone (323) 960-7773.

Trio Los Machos is one of those tricky plays that straddles the line between community and professional theatre and so winds up with the strengths and shortcomings of both. On one hand, the mixed veteran and amateur Latino cast give a heartfelt account of a community’s under-told story with great humor and compassion. But, though Casa 0101′s new space is as beautiful as the best small theatres in LA, the acting in this production often veers toward soap opera and the singing is not consistent.

At the end of the day, the play is saved not by what it achieves theatrically but by what it represents: what it is for. It is for exposing the hidden history of the Bracero Program, in which Mexican immigrants were asked to come to the US to work and then cheated at every turn, for spreading the romantic music of ‘boleros’, for openly discussing and challenging machismo in Latino culture, for the transformative, humanizing power of music and art, and for nurturing that very art within its own underserved community. Trio Los Machos may not be as ‘world-class’ as I would like, but you’d be hard pressed to find a production that is more ‘Los Angeles’.

Written by Josephina López (famous for writing Real Women Have Curves, a fact you will be reminded of at least three times before the show), Trio Los Machos follows the exploits of its titular bolero-singing trio, who are loosely based on the historical Los Panchos. When we meet Paco, Lalo, and Nacho, (Henry Madrid, Miguel Santana, and Roberto Garza) they are old and falling apart, vocally, physically and as a group. Through the course of the show we are shown in flashback their younger selves (Adrian Quiñonez, Gilbert Rodriguez, and Josh Duron) meeting and coming together as new immigrants in the Bracero Program, but the focus always remains on their friendship and the music, letting the politics simmer just beneath the surface of their everyday lives. This device is particularly effective as it prevents the play from ever preaching and simply provides its devastating images without comment. The scene in which the young Braceros are stripped down and ‘decontaminated’ is particularly effective, recalling the horror of Auschwitz showers while projected historical photos assure us that, no, this is not a metaphor, this is the actual experience of hundreds of young Mexicans who were invited to the US to work.

Act I is very filmic, told mostly in short English scenes at different locations punctuated by music to show transition. However, a good half of Act II is entirely sung in Spanish, with the characters actions following the mood and words of popular boleros. The lines between past and present blur as the music infuses itself into both worlds. I can’t actually complain about the drastic stylistic change in the writing from film-play to musical because it works very effectively, even though it shouldn’t, as the end of the play draws everything that’s come before into a surprising catharsis.

I also can’t just say that some of the acting is overdone and leave it at that, though I’d like to. There are the occasional cringe moments in which characters say exactly what they’re feeling or, worse, who they are and what they’re doing, but the play has enough references to soap operas (telenovelas) that I’m tempted to forgive a great deal of it as irony. Equally, actors who spend one scene just shouting then have a habit of making everyone laugh before getting back to turning nuanced performances. The singing is sometimes good and sometimes bad, with Rocio Mendoza, the inevitable girl-who-makes-the-band-fight, always as a standout. The guitar parts always sound great to me, though I’m no music critic. The only thing I can unhesitantly pan are the fight scenes, which are dreadful, truly awful, and happen a lot as the characters try to out-macho one another. The lesson to be learned here is, however playful your show’s fights may be, always get a choreographer.

The bilingual nature of the show mostly works well, as Spanish subtitles are projected above the stage, though monolingual English speakers will lose tidbits of dialogue and all of the largely un-subtitled songs. Though a rough translation of most of the songs might be, “Oh baby, I love you, I love you so much, Oooh,” so that’s not an unforgivable loss. I brought a guest who didn’t speak Spanish and she was never confused.

Outside the action of the play itself, the accompanying gallery entitled “Recollections From Yesterday and Today of Ex-Braceros” and the discount tickets for Boyle Heights residents solidify Trio Los Macho’s commitment and service to its community, which I applaud. Don’t go to Trio Los Machos expecting brilliant theatre. But do go, because this is a story that needs to be told, a story you should hear, and one that you won’t find anywhere outside of LA.

Trio Los Machos is performed June 8-July 8, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 5pm.

The New Casa 0101 Theater is located at 2102 E. First Street, Boyle Heights, CA 90033.

Ticket price: $20 general admission, $17 students, seniors & groups (10+), $15 Boyle Heights residents with identification.

Reservations by phone at 323-263-7684, by e-mail at tickets@casa0101.org, or online at www.casa0101.org.

Kristina Wong is a natural performer, and though her show doesn’t entirely escape the stereotypes of a one-woman show, it mostly puts them aside to focus on her hilarious and often ill-fated adventures attempting to live a more eco-friendly life. Ms. Wong’s comedian persona has the charm and crass humor of a Sarah Silverman, balancing scenes filled with dry-humping plastic bags and re-usable feminine hygiene products with an indomitable ‘cute-ness’ and a sprinkling of statistics. Her show escapes the meandering self-indulgence of most one-person shows by sticking tightly to its theme and escapes the preaching of environmentalists by sticking tightly to Ms. Wong’s keen sense of absurdity. The combination works.

The show begins anti-climactically, with Ms. Wong introducing herself and starting a slide-show presentation about a car she used to have, a hot pink dinosaur converted to run on vegetable oil that racked up twice its worth in repair bills before bursting into flame. While not terribly theatrical, the presentation is engaging as it shows Ms. Wong’s meticulously chronicled life in photos, posing next to her car in its sickness and health. We are struck by an eerie sense throughout that she knows that each moment in her life is a photo op for a future one-woman show. Which is probably true.

Thanks to the inclusion of a gruff, male Mother Earth character who gives instructions from on high, we transition seamlessly back in time to the beginning of Ms. Wong’s quest ‘to save the planet’. We watch her middle and high school selves come to terms with environmental issues through awkward school PSAs and performances, including a rap. The school bits provide a fun play-within-a-play and allow Ms. Wong to show off her range of characters. The rap is very bad, but that’s the point, so…eh. That’s about as much as we get in terms of narrative structure, moving back to the present for an elongated “so sexy!” talk on re-usable feminine hygiene products and my personal highlight of the show, a very technical, factual explanation of public transit in LA which is easily the most absurd moment in Going Green the Wong Way.

The show raises a few questions for me, but they center mostly around its subject matter rather than presentation. Theatrically the performance is great, and, with the exception of some hokey audience participation that feels tacked on, it keeps its focus and its humor throughout. The ‘going green’ part seems a bit more dubious to me, focusing largely on getting rid of a car and the humor of that decision’s impracticality in Los Angeles. The angle is one of personal obligation—Ms. Wong’s environmentalism seems to be more out of an engrained moral sense that recycling is good and driving is bad than out of a studied sense of what ‘going green’ entails. For instance, Ms. Wong mentions the fact that she is a vegetarian in passing, which ecologically and politically in the US is a big deal, but then hightails it back to more sensationalist subjects. Equally, the whole ‘washable pads’ section lost its shock-and-education value after the first few minutes but kept going. I suppose I wanted more science, but I always want more science and I suspect I am in the minority. Going Green the Wong Way is headed to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August after its LA run, and it will be interesting to see how the show translates to a walkable European city with great public transit.

All this said, what’s interesting about this show thematically is how natural and unforced the lines of green thought feel, in that causal LA ‘but is it organic?’ way. Ms. Wong makes only joking references to being an ecological warrior—she is a comedian and an artist first, and it seems ‘going green’ is just something she does because it’s right, not as a radical alternative lifestyle choice. The comedy in the show is how, in LA, that becomes a radical lifestyle choice because of how far it is from the norm. And this struggle is the heart Going Green the Wong Way‘s serious provocation of thought too. ‘Going green’ for Ms. Wong is done with great difficulty and in such a way that it inevitably becomes a performance piece. Without the comedian ever mentioning it, this speaks volumes to the chances of a real green transition without policy change, and to the performative motivations of Prius drivers and the like everywhere.

It’s worth noting that the uncredited set design and Paul Tei’s direction are right on the money. Going Green the Wong Way also apparently has one, if not more, corporate sponsorships from green business, which on the night I saw the show framed the performance with outside presentations and sign-ups and free soap. I’m uncertain about how to feel about this. On the one hand, surely corporate sponsorship is evil and nasty and certainly must bias the show. On the other, it’s nice to see green businesses taking community and social change seriously and investing in the arts, particularly in an economic climate when few others are.

Going Green the Wong Way may not change your car dependence or even your mind, but it offers up a good night’s laughs and, if you’re willing to delve further, some interesting and problematic thoughts as well.

Going Green The Wong Way is performed Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 3pm June 28-July 22, 2012,

The Bootleg Theater is located at2220 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90057.

Ticket price: $15.

Reservations at www.bootlegtheater.org.

Before the Red Trees Come

~by Brian Sonia-Wallace

Before the Red Trees Come is a fairly straightforward silent clowning/vaudeville piece that follows a character in broad strokes through the three stages of life—childhood, adulthood, and old age. The play mostly revolves around a repeated scene on a bench in a park, in which three of the four actors trade the roles associated with the three life stages. The actors are all great physical performers and the gags had the audience laughing all the way through.

Of course I have gripes. The ‘child’ character consistently annoyed me, whoever played him, as his childishness was merely caricaturized rather than realized with any of the depth actual children have. And I think this problem extended to the whole show, and maybe even the entire genre of clowning: for a show about life, life itself, I didn’t feel like I learned anything. I watched some very funny jokes about eating and money and even finding God, but there was none of the mystery or ambiguity that life itself has. Before the Red Trees Come was wonderfully crafted and skilfully executed, but I didn’t feel the mystery or heart that it title promises.

~~~

Diary of a Sociopathic Freakazoid

by Tracey Paleo~

Diary of a Sociopathic Freakazoid as written and directed by Richard Crawford is supposed to be a relentless exploration of the mind of a sociopath and the consequences of his freakish actions over the course of a week in his Manhattan apartment. As for myself, I would more likely describe it as the heinous and pathetic behavior of the most selfish, self-serving, self-centered person anyone could ever imagine.

There is absolutely nothing likable about the main character played by Mr. Crawford himself. Childish, envious and resentful of anyone else’s joy, or sanity for that matter, there are no bounds to how he wrecks the lives of others. As a sociopath, he absolutely lives up to the dictionary definition which reads: a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

But there are other factors that wreak havoc in this play. Unintelligible dialog from other cast members, actors that were largely off the mark inside a story that often made no sense to the audience, a set that looked like a typical classroom rag pile, and the irritating, melodramatic music that continuously attempted to lead the audience to one emotion or another – unsuccessfully. In fact, although I often naggingly thought it was a comedy, I was pretty sure that I was supposed to take this all seriously. And that was difficult to do.

The one absolute save for this entire production was the thankfully lovely performance by Ruthie Stephens who plays the sister to the head case, reeling the production in and giving it a center as was true to her actual character, until, of course, her own brother screws her in the worst way.

Definitely a theatre production more on the experimental side. Self-described as “relentless” basically captures the essence of this show.

~~~

Lolpera

by Brian Sonia-Wallace~

We all knew this piece was coming—how could it not? Lolpera marries the highbrow classical culture of Opera with the internet meme of lolcats (pictures of cats with funny misspelled captions). It’s a fantastic idea, so ridiculous that it just might work, as the show crafts a narrative using only the words strangers have photoshopped onto cats on the internet. The captioned pictures are projected alongside the songs like surtitles in an Opera would be, and the story moves between several cases of frustrated love and the epic showdown between good and evil. And for the first thirty minutes or so it’s uproarious and exciting, but then it goes on…and on…

This piece would be brilliant as a student one-act showcasing a novel idea, but it ends up being overambitious. The writers feel the need to cram every story trope possible into the two-hour run time, leaving the audience with a jumbled mess of characters and subplots. The actors are in it wholeheartedly, but none of them can really sing or dance, which starts to be a problem as the hours drag on and the laughter at the wonderful ridiculousness of the whole affair starts to die down. Lolpera starts as a good joke, but is ruined as it drags on to the point where it’s just beating a dead lolcat.

~~~

Making Love Over There

by Brian Sonia-Wallace~

YES! This is what I’m talking about. This is Fringe. Finally. The play I’ve been waiting for, the one with the scene entirely in Russian and the unexpected dance break and the ending where the stage is a mess and everything is soaked in water. Making Love Over There is honest-to-goodness experimental theatre, shrugging off narrative to play with pace and tempo and theme, leading the audience on an rollercoaster ride in which expectations are built and shattered again and again. The performers put everything on the table, and the two actors are running, physically running, through almost the entire high-octane hour.

This is also intelligent theatre, that feels no obligation to make things clear for the audience but never forgets us, instead inviting us to figure it all out for ourselves. The theme is love, but the experience isn’t that of watching a love story but of being in love—all noise and confusion and tenderness and desperate awkwardness. If you want to know why Fringe Festivals exist, it’s to incubate projects like this, projects that you won’t see on big stages but that represent what is exciting and alive in theatre today.

~~~

The Last Five Years

by Brian Sonia-Wallace~

The Last Five Years is something of a Fringe ritual—every major Fringe festival has a production or two of this beautiful musical. And for good reason. The music is gorgeous, the cast is only two people, and the story is universal and told in a novel way. It plays with time, following a relationship from start to finish from the man’s point of view and backward, from the breakup to first meeting, from the woman’s perspective. Those who do not know this show, even those who don’t usually like musicals, would do well to watch it.

This production is fair but not stellar. The staging is effective, but uses stage blocks that make the piece feel like a rehearsal. The lead actress carries her songs and earns some great unexpected laughs. The male actor’s voice is not quite right for the part, and he needs to put his damn cell phone down. He never quite reached the level of charisma to make us fall in love with his character despite his flaws. And if the audience can’t love a character, how can we believe that another character will?

~~~

Leprechauns and Lies

by Brian Sonia-Wallace~

I’m not a big fan of solo performance, but I thought I’d give this one a shot. Chad Kukahiko is an charismatic guy, and the show does best when he just lets himself be conversational, from sitting in the audience to asking us to write the biggest lie we’d ever heard and give them to him. I wish he’d played more with this, as there was a lot of humanity and connection in the interaction. Equally a talented musician, Mr. Kukahiko’s songwriting and Stomp! chops were on display several times, as were his advanced nerd credentials. It’s not too often when a music lesson turns into a lesson on the laws of thermodynamics turns into a dynamic rhythm performance.

The heart of Leprechauns and Lies, though, is the performer’s family and own life crises. While stories about these are told engagingly enough, they seemed a little stereotypical for a play like this, and the piece dragged when the light-hearted and almost philosophical conversation with the audience turned into a dramatic monologue about existential crisis. Leprechauns and Lies is at its best before it starts to take itself seriously, when it’s just a very intelligent actor taking an audience on a journey of what excites him, even sometimes infuriates or scares him, in life.

~~~

The Collector

by Brian Sonia-Wallace~

Running at a lightning fast 30 minutes, The Collector is by far too short a time to spend in the meticulously crafted world Animal Cracker Conspiracy have created. And create they do! It’s the most complex Fringe show I saw, with five plus sets, projection (live and recorded) and a motley cast of characters ranging from a monkey to a bird woman, all expertly puppeteer by two players on three large tables. The players never speak, and the entire story is told through the action of the puppets and a musical score that slices through the piece like a cold wind. The story is a Kafka-esque fable about a debt collector’s journey.

This is certainly not a kid’s puppet show, though there is nothing children could not see. As much a living art installation as a theatrical experience, I was happy that the performers invited the audience onstage afterward to take an up-close look at the tiny sets and puppets. Everything was so intricate that even in the small house I found I missed bits during the show, despite live projection of the puppet action to make it more visible. The Collector didn’t particularly move me, but it was successful in creating an immersive and beautiful world.

~~~

[Editor's Note: this is an extra review of Cycles, a show which we have already covered.]

Cycles

by Tracey Paleo~

They didn’t know they had a girl in the front row of the stage who was actually from the North End of Boston, born on Harris Street, raised on Henchmen and who had played for many years at the actual doorstep of 37 Clark Street where the backstory of this play, whose actual history is quite different from the presented theatrical scenario, takes place. According to the writer, I was the best audience to experience this play. But in my opinion, probably the toughest.

Suffice it to say, I giggled a lot at the beginning listening to the actors work through the difficult and very non-typical accent that is absolutely distinguished from the nuances of other Bostonians. We don’t “paak the ca” in the same way as they do in Southie or anywhere else not directly connected to the downtown area. The speed in our dialogs is because we are actually speaking Italian or Siclian, but in English. And there is an unmistakeable brutal rawness in the people mixed with urban intelligence and often emotional stupidity.

However, once past the holes of hearing (the brilliant) Alan Rosenberg’s at first more New York sounding accent and Dominic Rains’s warm up in getting into his tough guy, what resounded in Cycles was an authenticity that, knowing first-hand, is usually difficult to come by. Mr. Rains looks like a genuine North End guy in so many ways which, when he finally stepped fully into the body language of his character, packed a whallop much heavier than the fist he so effortlessly uses on the wall instead of his adversary’s face. Mr. Rains is an undeniable talent whose dedication to this role in particular is enriched with bona fide skill in its portrayal.

The writing, directing and efforts by all are a resounding, “excellent.”

]]> http://www.latheatrereview.com/2012/06/25/2012-fringe-final-reviews-part-2/feed/ 2 http://www.latheatrereview.com/2012/06/25/2012-fringe-final-reviews-part-2/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LaTheatreReview/~3/lPYivxk8m6E/ http://www.latheatrereview.com/2012/06/25/2012-fringe-final-reviews-part-1/#comments Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:30:17 +0000 Geoff Hoff http://www.latheatrereview.com/?p=3159 The Fringe Festival ended yesterday. Here are three more reviews. We will post more as the final reviews are turned in. In this post: Sister Cities, The Black Glass and I Do Card Tricks and I’m Funny

Sister Cities at The Underground Theater

by Tony Bartolone~

STAGES Theatre brings us a psychological deconstruction of four sisters and their bond to their recently deceased mother. Sister Cities is a brave exploration of the relationships of a unique family dynamic.

Playwright Colette Freedman draws incredibly detailed characters and spins a caustic web of titillating dialogue. Each sister is impressively well defined, which makes it a pleasure to watch the four girls interact under intense circumstances. They are all named after the city in which they were born (hence the title), which demonstrates the tendency of siblings to have wildly different personalities, as well as reflecting their respective individuality.

Themes of control, manipulation, death, family, success and failure run through this play like blood pulsating through interconnected veins. The play is dense and layered with intricate ideas and emotions played out through an absorbing story. How much control do we have of our own lives? How far would you go to take control? And how much influence do other people have on our lives? Underneath all the manipulation, quiet failures and abrasive arguments, there is a true love these sisters have for one another. No matter how hard you try, you cannot escape your family.

~~~

The Black Glassat The Open Fist Theatre

by Marcus Kaye ~

It’s a single image, more than it’s a narrative: Two men standing at an office window in downtown Los Angeles. It’s how Guy Zimmerman’s original play, The Black Glass, begins and ends.

John Lacy plays Donald Bentham, a business tycoon whose power and greed are jeopardizing his daughter’s future. In his office- or perhaps just his mind- are three figures dressed in black and red: Thomas, Dawn and Adana. While he stands at the window, Donald’s guests help him to work out the issues going on in his mind. They speak in nonsensical riddles and relay stage directions out loud, stopping only once in a while to grope one another- because in Zimmerman’s world, that’s what the subconscious of a perverted business man would do.

Zimmerman’s message about capitalism is lost in his writing; it’s overwrought and self important and any chance of a solid performance is clouded by the pretentious manner in which The Black Glass is presented.

The Black Glass played on June 17^th, 19^th, and 24^th at The Open Fist Theatre.

~~~

I Do Card Tricks and I’m Funny at Theatre of NOTE

by Tony Bartolone~

Jon Armstrong wows the crowd with a large variety of card tricks and witty discourse in the aptly named, I Do Card Tricks and I’m Funny. This show is an intimate, entertaining demonstration of Armstrong’s tricky skills, which achieve the feeling of watching street magic.

The show easily sustains itself through the tight hour running time and maintains its charm throughout. One thing appreciable about magic shows is that magicians are entertainers in the classical sense. They are there to wow you, make you laugh, give you something you don’t see everyday. They make an effort to not just do magic tricks, but give you a genuinely exciting experience. It’s not enough to do card tricks; they have to be funny too.

Jon Armstrong has a real command of the show. I suppose magicians have to control of all factors on order to pull off their illusions. On top of being an accomplished sleight-of-hand performer, Jon Armstrong is now the co-creator of Smoke and Mirrors, a magic themed comic book. Whether it’s his comic books or his live show, you should definitely check out Jon Armstrong.