Don Grigware - Page 28

World renown British actor/playwright Ray Cooney will be performing the zany farce Cash on Delivery, written by his son Michael Cooney, on the mainstage of the El Portal in Noho December 3-20.  Cooney performed Out of Order at the El Portal in 2001, and was a tremendous hit. In our conversation Cooney, who was bestowed the honor of OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the Queen, and wife Linda talk about the play, and among other topics, theatre and its importance in our world right now. Linda is a landscape painter and former actress, and her work will be exhibited in the El Portal lobby during the run of the play and on to January 1, 2016.

Jazz singer par excellence Lyn Stanley never ceases to amaze. A mere two years ago in 2013 she debuted her very first album Lost in Romance, which became an overnight sensation worldwide. Last year she premiered her second Potions From the 50s and now in 2015 we are more than thrilled to have her third CD Interludes, which I predict will be her biggest hit to date. Over 5,000 customers have already pre-ordered the album, so Stanley is well on her way to becoming a jazz superstar. She is already at the top of the market in Japan. It is no wonder, as not only does she possess a deep and rich velvety smooth voice but the CDs are fabulously produced. She is backed by a magnificent orchestra, sings splendid arrangements and...the CD itself is packaged divinely. There are beautiful black and white photos with just a touch of red showing up here and there. Lyn Stanley and Interludes are a class act.

As art imitates life, dysfunctional family make up the majority of characters onstage nowadays. Life crises consistently prove that no one is perfect. Thank heavens! If they were, there'd be no conflicts, and in the theatre, no drama. In Tom Baum's new world premiere play Front Door Open, the matriarch of the dysfunctional brood (Joanna Miles) is suffering from agoraphobia, The disease strikes 1 in 50 Americans, whereby its victims do not leave the house. Due to deep, inexplicable emotional issues, they lock themselves in. Now at the Greenway Court Theatre in Hollywood, Front Door Open boasts a superb four person cast headed by pros Miles and David Selby and helmed by prolific television director Asaad Kelada. As absorbing as the play may be, it is not without its flaws, however. In many ways, the relationships may remind you of On Golden Pond, but it is not nearly as well-honed or humorous.

Actress Joanna Miles, who won two Emmy Awards in 1973 for playing Laura in TV's The Glass Menagerie, will co-star with David Selby in a world premiere drama Front Door Open at the Greenway Court Theatre in LA opening November 13. In our talk, Miles discusses the play, her costar David Selby as well as highlights from her career.

Ron House's original El Grande de Coca Cola was a huge hit and ran for 3 years off-Broadway. It's about the five-member Hernandez family, an in.your.face incompetent troupe of Mexican cabaret performers who have spent many many years performing in run-down over.the.border clubs. Now House returns with his latest version of the show, an ultra-satirical El Grande Circus de Coca Cola which sold out houses at the Skylight Theatre in Hollywood last summer. It has just reopened at the Colony in Burbank with the same cast headed by Marcelo Tubert as padre Pepe Hernandez. The family may be worthless performers but their Hispanic pride and ambition are unstoppable and drive them across the border into Burbank with the hope of full-out Hollywoodland success. It's lunacy with about a laugh every second, and under Alan Shearman's well-honed direction, the riotous troupe are bound to bring Colony audiences much pre-holiday joy through December 13.

Joseph Kesselring's dark comedy farce Arsenic and Old Lace dates back to 1941 and was made into one hilarious film starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra in 1944. Nevertheless, the comedy is timeless, so it stills holds up quite deliciously in 2015. One never tires of murder especially when it's played out in a spooky old Brooklyn mansion adjacent to a cemetery...and most of the Brewster family who inhabit it are most definitely certifiable. Elderly Abby Brewster (Mannette Antil) and her sister Martha (Sylvia Alloway) dispose of over the hill lodgers all alone in the world - to bring them peace and eternal happiness. They offer homemade Eldeberry wine laced with arsenic and think they're doing the old codgers a favor. It seems perfectly harmless to them. In fact, they already have 11 bodies buried in the cellar and are about to embark on a funeral service for number 12 who is resting comfortably in the windowseat of their living room. It helps when their nephew Teddy (Jim Barkley) - who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt - carries out their orders and buries the bodies, convinced that he's digging locks of the Panama Canal. When brother Mortimer (Jordan Byers) - a drama critic for a local paper - discovers the body by accident, he automatically assumes it's Teddy who has killed the man, never dreaming that his sweet aunts are responsible. The biggest problem for the family arises when Teddy's and Mortimer's brother Jonathan arrives on the scene. Jonathan (Brian Middleton) disappeared years ago, leaving a long trail of crimin

On December 12 singer Frank Sinatra Jr. will perform a 100th Birthday Celebration of his father Frank Sinatra's music at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills at 9 pm. In our talk he describes the concert in detail. He also talks about his mentors and what music he prefers to listen to nowadays. When and how did this celebration concert come about? When Frank Sinatra died back in 1998 I engineered a celebrational show which I intended to run for eighteen months to two years, to celebrate his life and his career. The show at that time was called Sinatra Sings Sinatra. As it turned out, the audiences and the people who hired our program wanted very much to keep Sinatra Sings Sinatra going long after two years had passed. By now we were getting close to going into the 21st century, and it has been so ever since. Now we come to December the 12th forthcoming here which will have been his 100th birthday. OK! Two years ago I discussed with my family and the people that we work with the importance of organizing a special series of events to commemorate his 100th year. I was wondering whether or not  this was a little bit of overkill at the time, but I have been told such things happen for people like Duke Wayne, Bing Crosby and people of that situation that they have these big festivals, recapitulations, tributes, you name it. In 2013 I started writing a show for the end of 2015. That show debuted in May this year.

On Friday October 23 at the E-Spot Lounge upstairs at Vitello's, jazz, soul, R&B singer Aaron Akins delivered his striking Into the Cole show in honor of the music of legendary Nat King Cole. It is so rich to hear someone that can replicate with such class the smooth, distinctive, unforgettable sound of Nat King Cole. I came early and was seated during sound check. Akins was so nice, asking if we could hear everything OK. This is a performer who cares about his audience. Like Cole himself, he is there to sing for you. Even during the actual set, he asked the sound/light man several times to dim the lights onstage so he could see beyond the footlights. 'I like to see my audience!' A really warm, engaging performer!

Called by many the perfect musical, My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion has perhaps the wittiest and showiest debate between the sexes. Shaw despised marriage and loved to magnify human frailty, both female and male. And with Lerner and Loewe to create the book, music and lyrics, the result is a creation with music and story that flow together in ideal harmony. Even when it's at its abrasive best, it's funny; even when Professor Henry Higgins (Martin Kildare) is obnoxious, selfish and self-centered to the hilt, we cannot help but laugh with him...and love him. Despite what a man says about a woman, he cannot live without her, and vice versa. We were born to live in  a love/hate relationship, to be at each other's throats and in the next second, rolling around in the hay. It's all a part of life and Shaw, and Lerner and Loewe displayed the ups and downs of romantic living better than anyone else...period. Now in an absolutely loverly production at MTW, Long Beach, the show plays through November 8 only.

Ask musical actors/actresses for their choice of favorite Broadway musical of all time and they most often concur, West Side Story. Why? It has phenomenal music by Leonard Bernstein, with concise poetic lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a tight and gripping book by Arthur Laurents, and brilliant choreography established in 1957 by Jerome Robbins. It is one of the most powerful love stories ever, next to Romeo and Juliet. With all these elements complementing one another, from the first downbeat of the orchestra and the appearance of the Jets creeping in one by one on a half-lit stage, the show pulls you in and doesn't let go of you for its two and a half hours ... and its message and images of love linger long after.

Come an hour early to the El Portal Theatre and take a peak inside the lovely small Marilyn Monroe Theatre lobby, adjacent to the Mainstage and peruse the myriad of photos adorning the walls. They represent a delicious collection of candids of the iconic star. Then proceed on in to the Mainstage playing area for the 8 o'clock show ... you will gasp when Sunny Thompson comes on stage in character as MM. You first see her naked on a bed wrapped in silk sheets ...in live photographic implosions as the camera clicks away. The likeness will astound you.  

Carrie the Killer Musical Experience/book by Lawrence D. Cohen/based on the novel by Stephen King/music by Michael Gore & lyrics by Dean Pitchford/directed by Brady Schwind/choreographed by Lee Martino/Los Angeles Theatre/through November

On Monday October 5, zany comedienne/singer Diane Vincent brought her act: Diane and Lucy & Betty: A One Woman Show to an SRO room at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal. The best way to describe Vincent is off.the.wall, wound up tightly like a coil that will spring loose at any second. Watch out! She has a nonstop patter that is infectious, that keeps her fans rolling in the aisles and begging for more. In this show she also showed a lovely way with a ballad, proving that she can bring the volume down several decibels when she should...to great effect.

Transgender actress/singer Alexandra Billings has done quite remarkable work on LA stages over the last decade, as well as being one of the stars of the current amazon TV hit Transparent. She holds nothing back; her acting style is brutally honest. Now through next Sunday only October 11, you can see her new autobiographical cabaret play entitled S/he & Me: A Theatrical Cabaret.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a young, upcoming playwright whose Neighbors back in 2010 was an alluring eye-opener about racism and the human condition. It declared that race is just an illusion, so the outrageous display of some black characters wearing black face and other blacks sublimating their heritage as white wannabes was in the end a painful reminder that a black man is still a black man; he is first and foremost a man who will help to shape a shared human experience.

birthday. He is dying of cancer but is told that he is suffering from a spastic colon. Mendacity. Margaret (Madeline Fair) denies gossip that she and husband Brick (Daniel Kaemon) are sleeping apart. The denial is a lie. Gooper (Todd Andrew Ball) and wife Mae (Kyra Schwartz) swear to have Big Daddy's back. More mendacity. Brick denies unspeakable devotion to football pal Skipper. Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity. The plantation reeks of it. The only truth that exists is that Big Daddy does hate his relationship with Big Mama (Diane Frank) and is not afraid to tell it to the world.The Pollitt family give new meaning to the word dysfunction. Who would want to celebrate anything with them? But somehow Tennessee Williams manages to get us to care for Maggie, Brick, Big Daddy and Big Mama. Gooper, Mae and their no.neck monster children... we can definitely live without. Now in an appealing production at Group rep directed meticulously by L. Flint Esquerra and with an outstanding cast, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof still manages to grab hold and move us.

Perhaps the best known musical of all time Rodgers' and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music has remained a family favorite since the 50s. Number one, the score is to die for; secondly, the book is dramatically fulfilling with a real life family being torn asunder by the ravages of fascism. Touches of real intertwined humor add to the appeal. Under the skillful eye and wisdom of director Jack O'Brien, the new North American touring production is now at the Ahmanson through October and proves thoroughly winning. I wouldn't say there's a totally fresh perspective, but somehow touches of real humanity and love stand out, and the entire ensemble is perfectly cast.

On Sunday September 27 at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal, dancer Mark C. Reis debuted his brand new cabaret show I'd Enjoy Being a Girl...on Broadway. Reis had tremendous success in 2012 with his first show at Sterling's called Diapers, Dishes and Dreams...Stories of a Dancer about his gay married life, which has included raising a small child. It is always a big risk, a bold endeavor to return with a new show, particularly if you veer 360 degrees in another direction. Reis has a great fan following. Since his audience for the most part truly love him, even if he falls on his face, as does a child learning how to walk, they will pick him up and encourage him to try again, to move on. The new show has much promise, but does need further work-shopping and retooling.

Broadway and TV actress/singer Megan Hilty performed a splashy show at Valley Performing Arts Center at CSUN, Northridge on Thursday, September 24 at 8 pm to a packed audience of her fans. Hilty is best remembered for playing Glinda in Wicked for four and a half years - she replaced Kristin Chenoweth on Broadway - and also for premiering the role of Doralee Rhodes, played in the film by Dolly Parton, in  the musical of 9 to 5 at the Ahmanson and on Broadway. She also starred in NBC's musical Smash as actress Ivy Lynn, who creates a Marilyn Monroe character for a fictional musical Bombshell, for two seasons on NBC to great acclaim.