Don Grigware - Page 63

Needless to say, Joanna McClelland Glass' If We Are Women is a stodgy, heady piece of theatre in which very little if anything happens dramatically. It is the type of play that is better to read than watch. Every kind of woman is represented: the prairie woman, with little or no education, the intellectual and the wanna-be intellectual. There are three generations: two grandmothers, a divorced mother and her teenage daughter, all of whom, as different as they are, have in common a batch of insecurities... and they all want what is better for their lives and the lives of those they love. Now onstage at Group rep, Sherry Netherland has directed four actresses, all of whom give excellent performances, but, in spite of the fine work, something is missing.

As many times as I have seen Man of La Mancha, I relish the music and high dramatic moments of this classic piece of theatre... being, naturally, that the production of it is top notch, with the right actors and skilled direction! MTW's current revival is top of the line, creme de la creme.

On Sunday February 12 LA's Next Great Stage Star brought its annual six-week singing competition to a rivetingly pulsating conclusion @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's. Twenty contestants who began on Sunday January 8 performed, and 14 judges then narrowed the group to five finalists. Not an easy task, as this year's contestants were all immensely talented vocalists who gave their all to every single performance! Once the five finalists were announced, each performed one more time in order for the judges to pick a winner. Lovely Chelsea Emma Franko from Apple Valley took the top prize. In second place is Carrie St. Louis. Tyson Pyles and David Michael Laffey tied for third place, and in fourth, sweet, petite Justine Huxley. Audience had assigned points to the contestants for the first five weeks and the judges weighted these results as part of the final voting.

Singer/dancer/showgirl Josephine Baker (born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1906) tintillated audiences worldwide with her banana dance and became the sensation of Paris, France, her permanent home once she renounced her American citizenship in 1937. Her life in the US was hardly an easy one, victimized by racial injustice since childhood. Despite her fame, she had even been thrown out of the prestigious Stork Club in New York, due to color constraints. Now in a two-act solo show that includes song, dance and anecdotes, classy Sloan Robinson portrays the uniquely sensual Baker with unmistakable style.

Joe Orton's insanely insane world is no better displayed than in his What the Butler Saw now onstage at the Odyssey Theatre. A terrifically energized cast make the play soar under the astute guidance of director Alan Patrick Kenny through March 11.

On February 15 at the historic Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills for one night only renowned Musical Theatre of Los Angeles will present a benefit Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: In Concert! Starring as Joseph will be Broadway's David Burnham, who appeared in the national tour as Joseph, and special guest TV and film star Lorenzo Lamas will make a rare stage appearance as Pharoah. They will be backed by a full-size Broadway orchestra and a 60 member youth choir. Joseph will be directed by Mark Rozzano with musical direction by Greg Haake, choreography and musical staging by Jim Borstelmann and Colette Brandenburg. James Lent serves as assistant musical director and Jonas Sills as youth vocal director and associate producer.

It's the year of The Artist and a return to the era of silent film in all its glamor, glory and art. Yes indeed, it's fun to look back and appreciate the way things were. Now onstage at the Macha Theatre in WeHo Sharon Michaels' Whodonit Sidetracked takes us back to the early 50s and the Golden Era of movies when train travel still held appeal and excitement, and people were genuinely intrigued by movie stars and show biz. Set at Union Station in Los Angeles, Sidetracked pokes fun at those looking to stay forever young, at second-rate PIs, who became more popular than the intriguing clients they served and at Hollywood in general. With a fine cast, Sidetracked is a cleverly written and amusing entertainment.

On Sunday evening February 5 Kritzerland celebrated their 18th. show and second at Sterling's Upstairs at Vitello's in Studio City with a family evening of great tunes from live action films entitled Reel Imagination saluting Michelle NiCastro, a magnificent singer who passed away last year. Five remarkable female singers Alet Taylor, Juliana Hansen, Melody Hollis, Lauren Rubin and Jane Noseworthy (left to right in photo above) joined music director extraordinaire Shelly Markham at the piano and Bruce Kimmel who introduced the songs in his own inimitable style with delightful anecdotes about the composers and his association with them through Kritzerland. Composer Richard M. Sherman, of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame, made a special guest appearance singing and playing the kazoo on 'The Chimpanzoo' cut from Mary Poppins (photo above).

As I watched Yasmina Reza's fine play Art for the fourth time, now in an excellent production at the Pasadena Playhouse directed by David Lee, I realized that seeds for her God of Carnage were firmly planted in Art. The male friends mention the term deconstruction several times, referring to the changes in modern art, but what we witness is a deconstruction of their friendship to the very core, as they leash out at each other in a primal beastly nature as do the two couples in the laterCarnage. Reza was definitely thinking with more civility when she wroteArt, nevertheless, as the trio of friends make a supreme effort to forgive and get back to the comaraderie they once experienced. Forgiveness/togetherness in Art; savage isolation in Carnage. At present, relationships, depending on their urgency, still very much count in our daily lives, so we strive to keep them alive; others we dismiss for lack of importance or maybe because we simply do not like to be in the company of these other people, but, in spite of polite gestures, it cannot be denied that society, sadly, is little by little most assuredly approaching the state of negativity/nihilism expressed inCarnage. Reza's brilliant observations keep coming full speed as the prolific playwright shows every sign of accumulating a body of work that delves right into the depths of the human condition.

British actor Emrhys Cooper is riding high after a guest appearance on ABC TV's Desperate Housewives and after winning BWW's Person to Watch for 2012 based on his electrifying performance onstage inEntertaining Mr. Sloane. I had to call out a few tricks just to keep up with his amazing energy, but over our lunch he pretty much crystallized his philosophy of acting that will assuredly engulf him in success over the next several years, here ...and internationally.

Some great things are already happening at the very beginning of 2012. Peter Mac now has his very own showroom inside the French Market Place on Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of WeHo called the French Quarter Restaurant Showroom. The room seats 65 and has the warm atmosphere of a small Vegas-like show palace but with a definitely distinctive Hollywood air, as portraits of the greatest Hollywood stars surround you. Opening night was Friday, January 27; the show was simply amazing, and the room was SRO. It was very exciting with Mac in top form, giving it his all, as the crowd hung on every word/note. I am so pleased that this terrific tribute artist is finally starting to get the attention he so richly deserves. Winning two Eddon Awards for Best Cabaret Artist-Male and Star Making Performer, Mac should be ranked among the best in his field, which includes the likes of Charles Pierce, Jim Bailey, Jimmy James and Steven Brinberg. He has a great singing instrument, is very funny and charismatic - and what amazing acting chops! Just when your sides are splitting as Judy Garland tells a riproaringly riotous anecdote about Noel Coward, you suddenly find yourself moved to tears, when Garland talks about the price a celebrity pays, her insecurities, but always triumphing over them and coming back a winner. This a great opening show with the promise of a sensational year ahead for Mac and his new venue.

Tanya Saracho's El Nogalar means The Pecan Orchard in English, so its similarity to Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard rings a bell even before one sees the play. There are differences between the two, of course. Saracho has taken out most of Chekhov's male characters and leaves but one: Lopez (Justin Huen) - Lopakhin in Cherry Orchard - the grandson of servants who has risen to sudden power and wealth through Mexico's drug cartel. It's not the Russian aristocratic middle class who have lost out to the rising lower class as in Chekhov, where the bank forecloses on the Ranevsky estate, but the Mexican drug dynasty that has contaminated all Mexican citizens, allowing the poor to usurp control and money - Saracho calls it new money, Facebook money. Now in a splendidly directed and acted production at the Fountain Theatre, this West Coast premiere sizzles with earthy passion and sensuality.

Bruce Norris deservedly won the 2011 Pulitzer for his brilliant study of human nature Clybourne Park, which picks up where Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun leaves off. Now at the Mark Taper Forum, Park's director Pam McKinnon holds tight reins over an outstanding ensemble, all of whom play two roles as the play shifts in two acts from 1959 to 2009.

The King of Pop is getting a dazzling tribute in one of the most atypical Cirque du Soleil shows. Atypical, because there's less aerials and acrobatics and a lot more dancing, which makes sense if you're going to do right by Michael Jackson. With multi- rear projection screens, a live band and backup singers to enhance Jackson's own prerecorded sounds, and pyrotechnics galore, Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson The Immortal, especially for Jackson fans, comes ecstatically alive.

Playwright Joan Beber's concept of Roy Cohn in her intriguingly nightmarish Hunger: In Bed with Roy Cohn, now onstage at the Odyssey Theatre, comes off a self-indulgent, spoiled, gluttonous, untrusting child monster, which certainly does not add up to a positive view of his humanity. In Angels in America, as I was too young to know the real Cohn in the McCarthy era, I saw Al Pacino's hard-edged, evil-to-the-core interpretation of the man. Barry Pearl's in Hunger, yes is more childlike, whimpering, whining, but if Beber truly wants us to witness a good side to bad, she has not succeeded. I despise the lying, bigoted, hateful man just as much as I did before, reality or fantasy. On the positive side, director Jules Aaron has ingeniously staged the over-the-top entertainment with a marvelous cast. Hunger will run through March 11.

Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town has been a part of my American cultural mindset since high school, practically all my life. And, of course, being a New Englander, it is not very hard to put myself into Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, even though the time period for the play 1901-1913 is about 30 + years before my existence. People are people and daily life was pretty much the same; things - except cars replacing horse and buggy - didn't really start changing until the middle of the 20th century. Now in this spaced out, high tech, faster-than-the-speed-of-light world we live in, it's nice to look back and see how it once was and reflect on what it maybe should be. On the Broad stage through February 12 only, David Cromer's fascinating staging puts his audience smack dab in the middle of the town and makes us believe we have time-traveled back to this simpler but just as psychologically complicated era. How inexpensive things cost, how people trusted one another, and how they amused themselves by reading, attending choir practice or actually conversing with one another instead of being glued to the TV set or sidetracked by other low quality, insignificant perversions! But there were some who just could not cope, like Mr. Stimson, the alcoholic choir director, who ended up committing suicide. We've all known people like him. So, the play is timeless. And somehow contemporary dress for the actors is not a hindrance to our accepting who and where they are, as it makes them like us, as we all fit together into one big macrocosm.

When you look at the photo of Johnny O'Callaghan on the poster ofWho's Your Daddy? and repeat the title aloud to yourself, all sorts of filthy images come to mind. Is this the tasteless untold story left out of Priscilla Queen of the Desert? Thank heavens, no, and the play does not live down to any negative imagery. This is, in fact, a true story, presented via a rare feat of storytelling that is at once enlightening, thoroughly enjoyable and clean...well ... almost, for a reformed gigolo.

Red Hot Patriot written by Margaret Engel & Allison Engel directed by David Esbjornson @ the Geffen Playhouse through February 12

Fruit Fly written by & starring Leslie Jordan directed by David Galligan @ the Celebration Theatre through February 18

On Sunday January 15 producers Michael Sterling and Tony Monsour presented the second week of the annual six-week competition LA's Next Great Stage Star 2012, now in its sixth knockout year. Twenty very talented contestants are competing for the title which will be announced at the end of the finale on Sunday February 12.