If you want to laugh for a good two hours, go see this show. Now.
That, of course, is assuming you enjoy satirical plays that critique everything from governing bodies to princess mentalities. Oh, and if you're familiar with your Disney movies, you'll find it particularly hilarious.
Even Scooter, who doesn't like musicals, loved this show. Why? Because it's a production that uses the tropes of "breaking into song" to create clever meta-theatrical commentaries. And it has stellar performances by each and every single character.
It's also the most elaborate production I've ever seen at Boston Court, with the costuming, set changes, music, lighting changes, and a larger-than-usual cast. Additionally, it's quite a departure from their typical work, which is dark and twisty - just how I like it! This is a satire through and through, and as such, it's incredibly comedic and over the top (as opposed to a dark play with cleverly placed interludes of comic relief). But the writing is just as witty as their darker shows, and it does have a dark ending.
So go watch it now!
We've been wanting to see a Poor Dog Group production for a while, mainly because we love and respect Brad Culver and his work.
The only Poor Dog production we'd seen was Brewsie and Willie - an adaptation of Gertrude Stein's work, which we saw as part of the 2011 RADAR LA Festival. We enjoyed it, and it was a good introduction to Poor Dog. So we were intrigued to see The Murder Ballad, which we saw last week at REDCAT as part of the New Original Works Festival.
I find that it's a difficult piece to critique because I'm not sure I got it. Actually, I'm fairly certain I didn't get it.
I had trouble understanding how the main performer on stage - a beautiful and powerful female dancer - related to the song that was playing in the background, and how she related to a male performer who appeared on stage at times.
So I'm not sure how I feel about it as a whole, but I did like some of its parts.
I was enthralled by Jessica Emmanuel's performance, as she has so much control in her dancing and her movement. She'll go from erratic fits to being completely still in a split second, and she uses her entire body to communicate anger, desperation, agony, and joy.
I also enjoyed how she and Jesse Saler, the male character, would interact - stealing expressions off of one another, dancing at times in completely sync, and coming within an inch of each other, yet never touching.
Another effect of the dance and the song that I particularly liked is how it reminded me of Toni Morrison's novels, featuring strong, loving women who are scorned and turn violent when in agony in order to release a loved one from misery.
The Independent Shakespeare Company (ISC) always puts on an entertaining performance. It's wonderful to go to Griffith Park and watch some Shakespeare while enjoying a picnic with your friends.
I particularly enjoy it when ISC does the comedies. We saw ISC's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Love's Labour's Lost, and Much Ado About Nothing last summer, and they're wonderfully over-the-top and represent exactly what Shakespeare would've wanted back in the day. I have to remind myself of this point because I have a preference for realistic theatre. Don't get me wrong - I love Wicked and plays like that, but as I mentioned in my first post, the plays that really move me are the ones that distrub me and make me think about the human condition and the psychology behind the twisted, illogical, or flat-out idiotic things we do. So when I watch a Shakesperian comedy, I have to remind myself about the original context, the Elizabethan audience, and how ISC aims to preserve that same kind of experience.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite Shakesperian comedy (Richard III is my favorite tragedy). So as is the case with Macbeth and other plays that I've studied deeply and extensively, I have certain expectations that I just can't seem to shed. My favorite performance of Midsummer is, by far, the 1999 Michael Hoffmann movie, so it inevitably serves as my barometer for all Midsummer performances. I love how he dealt with the Demetrius issue (i.e. how can you have a happy ending when he's under a spell?), how he made Bottom a character with depth, and how he had Sam Rockwell give a real performance as Thisby. So every time I see Bottom being a buffoon, and Thisby an exagerrated Juliet, and the issue of Demetrius overlooked, I have to remind myself that that is what the original intent was and learn to enjoy it and see the humor in the overacted performance.
Besides, Midsummer is just so good that I love it every time.
If you've never heard of a Shakespeare play called King Phycus that's because no such play exists ... at least not by The Bard. Tom Willmorth's Shakespeare's King Phycus is based on the premise that a never-before-heard-of Shakespeare play surfaces from the depths of history.
At least that's all I knew before I went to see The Antaeus Company's A2 Ensemble performance.
What I didn't know is that it was going to be a parody of Shakespeare's most well-known tragedies, though it became very evident when the play opens and the actor's mock the brilliant opening of Antaeus's Macbeth. Having seen that play, it took about two seconds into the play for the laughter to begin. Right after, though, when the players began to through food - and the baby - around, I thought this was going to be a funny parody. What I didn't expect was for it be extremely smart and clever.
Apparently, King Phycus is actually a longer play with an intermission, but A2 cut it down to 70 minutes. I'm not sure if they did what the movie industry does with trailers, where you pick the absolute best bits and cram them into a couple of minutes, but the resulting 70 minutes left my jaw muscles aching. I couldn't stop laughing and smiling the entire time. There were moments when the lines were just so witty and so perfectly delivered that I couldn't even laugh because I was just basking in awe of what had happened before me. Of course, it has extremely silly moments, too, but it's just so darn clever!
If you're familiar with Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, and Richard III, you'll love this play.
We're gonna go see it again next week :)
If there's anything you need to take away from this post it's this: Donnie Smith is awesome.
I was first introduced to his work through RMT's Small Engine Repair, produced by Corryn Cummins - an amazing actress and one of the people who introduced us to RMT to begin with. Small Engine Repair was so good, that it went on to win a plethora of awards, and Donnie's portrayal of Swaino was so good in it, that I've called him "Donnie Swaino" in my head for a long time. I still expect him to whip out some vanilla-scented moisturizer to rub it on his scalp.
Since, though, I hadn't seen Donnie in anything else. Instead, I've had fantastic conversations with him in his smoking spot right outside RMT's Theatre Theater, next to the homeless guy who struts and frets in a soliloquy for himself. I've learned about Donnie's interests, his career, and we've engaged in conversations about theatre marketing, promotion, and fundraising.
So HOUSE, brought to you by RMT's Off the Clock late night series, is the second time I've actually seen Donnie on the stage, and he is brilliant, playing a disturbed, conflicted man. This one-man, one-act show is a confession of sorts, in which Victor gets to tell us (literally, because he knows we're there; there is no fourth wall) what he thinks of his therapy group, his wife, his coworkers, his boss, his family, and even himself. He renders the performance with so much energy, anger, strength, aggression, and desperation tjat you'd imagine Victor to be a strong, confident man, when he is really a meak man, who's fallen prey to his destiny. A man who wants to break from the shadows, but is invisible and allows everyone in his life to walk all over him as he struggles to find the balance between fantasty and reality.
Victor is a shaken bottle, ready to pop the cork.
Wow, was I surprised with Antaeus's Macbeth! Jessica Kubzansky, who I know as Boston Court's Co-Artistic Director, really hit it out of the park.
I've seen Kubzansky's work before, not just at Boston Court (where I saw her plays, The Children, Futura and Camino Real), but also at other theatres (like when we saw her rendition of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale in Ojai). But this is my favorite of hers.
When you go see a classic such as "The Scottish Play" (*insert eye roll at ridiculous superstition*), there's a lot of baggage and expectation that goes with it - especially when you pride yourself as a Shakespeare scholar and have read, seen, and analyzed the play and its various movie or live performances. If you've formulated a POV on certain things, like the play's mysteries or controversies, you inevitably want to see how the play will tackle those challenges and what risks the director will take.
And I was pleasantly surprised.
If there's anything in this performance that I wasn't a fan of, it was the extra long procession at the beginning - but only because it was a little too long. What procession? you might ask, if you're familiar with the play. The play begins with the Three Witches. Kubzansky, in what I think is a bold move, opens the play with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth mourning the death of their baby.
Kubzansky tackles one of the play's greatest mysteries head on. Macbeth and his never talk about children - living or dead - except for Lady Macbeth's line in act I, scene vii, when she says to Macbeth, "I have given suck, and
know/How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me" (I, vii, ll.54-55). Not knowing what to do with this line, other directors just plainly overlook this matter, but Kubzansky gives this weight, opening with the baby's funeral. Throughout the rest of the play, Macbeth and his wife keep harkening back to the baby's death, and it adds so much more weight and depth to the killer couple's motivations and lunacy.
And it only goes uphill from there with masterful performances. Wonderful. Just wonderful.
Don Smith said it best: RMT's Where the Great Ones Run is like a country song.
It actually does contain a country song, which is sweet and perfectly timed, but the whole play feels like a country song: substance abuse, struggling with inner demons, abandoned or neglected families, women who love men that don't deserve it, and men who are begrudgingly beguiling.
Add in the Bible Belt mindset of smalltown folk, and you've got yourself a delightful portrayal of reality. So real that you feel you're in the diner where it takes place, sitting at a faraway table.
The story is predictable - which is actually fitting because that's part of the point. It not really about the plot, but about everyday interactions and relationships and finding the blissful moments within family dysfunction.
Save for one actress's performance, the acting is wonderful and believable, with the right amount of comic relief moments. The acting in general is so good that you don't realize how many people are in the cast until the final bow. Why do I say that? Because we're in smalltown Americana, and the performances of most of the cast - the diner's patrons - have to be equally small, mundane, simple. It's difficult to believe that Jeff Kober is not actually Sonny Burl because the part fits him like a glove.
