Don Grigware - Page 71

Not since Broadway vets Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley's Opposite You has there been such a romantically sizzling CD as Gonna Make You Love Me from Broadway babies Matt Cavenaugh and Jenny Powers. Also real-life marrieds, Cavenaugh and Powers have an exciting built-in chemistry that translates so beautifully and dynamically to disc. What makes them different? Offering traditional music that hardly sounds predictable, Gonna Make You Love Me is definitely NOW.

Hardly a heavyweight, fascinatingly exotic drama as was the case with Odalys Nanin's Garbo's Cuban Lover, the one-act Lavendar Love, now on stage @ the Macha Theatre, still has enough Hollywood nostalgia, sensuality and camp going for it to call it enjoyable.

Award winning tenor Dennis McNeil was the 1993 National Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. As a leading tenor at the New York City Opera he was awarded the Richard F. Gold Career Award for his portrayal as ‘Mark' in their New York Stage Premiere of Michael Tippet's A Midsummer Marriage. He also holds first place awards from the Southern California Opera Guild and the Victor Fuchs Memorial Competition and was a recipient of the Emily Baratelli Memorial Award from the New York Opera Index. He is a Sullivan Grant Recipient as well as a recipient of a Rex Foundation Grant from the Grateful Dead. On Sunday May 22 he will completely switch gears and perform a cabaret act @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's.

UK playwright Alan Ayckbourn is revered internationally as a virtuoso at penning highly comedic plays. Ayckbourn, like Neil Simon, writes funny one-liners and creates very humorous characters, but uniquely manages to surprise his fans each and every time with a new and compelling artifice. In his brilliant Absurd Person Singular, for example, three couples spend three different Christmas Eves together over the course of a few years. The Norman Conquests is a trilogy wherein each play has the same time span and series of events, but in each one we see things from a different perspective. Table Manners is in the kitchen, Living Together in the living room and Round and Round the Garden speaks for itself. Now in Life of Riley, receiving its US premiere at the White Theatre of San Diego's Old Globe, the dying man everyone is going out of their way to accommodate is never seen, but his presence is felt throughout. Riley is a dramedy with less physical comedy than other Ayckbourn pieces. Here three couples struggle to find a sense of peace and happiness outside and within the confines of their failing marriages. The action takes place outdoors in four different garden patios. It boasts a splendid cast, with superior direction from Richard Seer, and succeeds quite admirably as engrossing and entertaining fare.

On Sunday, May 15 comic actor Dan Frischman debuted a cabaret act @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's to a very enthusiastic crowd. Distinctly different from the normal fare @ Sterling's, which is usually a program of Broadway pop singing, Frischman's eclectic gig included magic, comedy and playing the trombone backed by a six-piece orchestra. There were two talented guest singers on the bill, Lani Shipman and Mitch Lewis, who served as backup vocalists; Shipman also performed a solo of a tune whose lyrics and music were composed by ... Dan Frischman. This is one very versatile man, this Dan Frischman, known to most from the 80s sitcom Head of the Class, He has a unique style of comedy that is at once charming and captivating. During his opening, for example, he made three different color paper flowers appear in a hand-held vase as he moved, swayed and sang 'All I Wanna Do'. What a character!

Revered as one of the greatest book musicals ever written Gypsy, based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, and with collaborators Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim is rarely performed except on Broadway due to the demands of the role of Mama Rose, which has been played first by Ethel Merman, and also to acclaim by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and most recently Patti Lupone. Films have starred Rosalind Russell and Bette Midler (TV), and there's another theatrical one still in the works for Barbra Streisand. The stage mother to end all stage mothers is a monster role to play. She's on stage 95% of the show and must act, sing and dance 150%; there's no faking this one. In a daring production for Equity Waiver, West Coast Ensemble (WCE) is now presenting Gypsy, half a century after it first opened in New York in 1959. Jan Sheldrick has the role of Rose and she runs with it, acting up a storm, giving it her best shot. Under Richard Israel's skilled direction, the production is somewhat flawed, but overall impressive with its very strong rendering on a smaller stage.

Emmy winning actress/singer Vicki Lawrence hardly needs an introduction. Having co-starred on The Carol Burnett Show for 11 years (1967-1978) and then star of Mama's Family in '83 and then 86-90, she has established herself as one of TV's most endearing comediennes. Lawrence will appear at the Welk Resort in Escondido from May 19-22 in her one-woman - oops! I mean two character - show as herself and of course, Mama. In our chat she talks about her show, Mama, Harvey Korman and lots of other fun legendary memories.

Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is a delightful musical romp that can be seen again and again. It's timeless and an overblown, yet joyous account of two egotistical actors, once married to each other, who adore one another but just cannot be around each other very long without catastrophic, calamitous results. It's also a play within a play, as Lilli Vanessi (Lesli Margherita) and Fred Graham (Tom Hewitt) are on tour essaying Katharine and Petruchio in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Above all, the silly contrived story is overshadowed by Cole Porter's divine score with some of the most glorious tunes ever composed. Kiss Me Kate is a showcase to Porter's genius. Reprise Theatre's current revival is devastatingly hilarious with top-notch direction from Michael Michetti and a magnificent cast.

Comic actor Dan Frischman, best known to audiences for TV's Head of the Class, is about to open a night club act @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's on Sunday May 15. In our conversation, Frischman talks about what he's accomplished since the TV sitcom and describes in great comic detail, as only Dan Frischman can, what to expect in the cabaret gig.

I saw An Evening with Shirley MacLaine at this venue on May 6, and as much as I adore MacLaine, I couldn't help but realize that the woman could sit and read the phone book and she would have fans hanging on her every word. She looks great at 77, still has a wonderful sense of humor, is as down-to-earth and candid as all get out. Nothing has changed about her. Thank God, for we need intelligent spokespeople like her and Jane Fonda, who are first and foremost accessible to us and then struggle tirelessly to make the world a better place.

Playwright Tom Jacobson has always been fascinated by travel through time and the effect of exotic places on erotic behavior, exhibited in such fine detail in Bunbury and Ouroboros. Now in House of the Rising Son at the Atwater Village Theatre, science and art collide within the lives of three generations, as two gay men explore the destiny of homosexuality in present day Los Angeles and New Orleans. Tinged with touches of gothic mystery and science fiction, it's a complex atmosphere that leaves one perplexed, intrigued and hopelessly enticed.

Antaeus' quest for the ultimate in classic plays has led to a rare production of John Marston's satire The Malcontent, which, despite an intense, almost insurmountable language barrier, offers a timeless and humorous glimpse at the hypocrisy of mankind, especially as it applies to the manipulation of the political machine. It is 1603 but it might as well be 2011 as adultery and greed for money and power remain man's top priorities. This is a production that is first and foremost stunning to look at but it does have its drawbacks. The flow of Act I is slowed by a barrage of unfamiliar dialectal terms, but if you're willing to hang in there, Act II pays off big time with an elegant sense of fun.

Broadway star Tom Hewitt will costar with Lesli Margherita in Reprise's final show of this season Kiss Me Kate from May 10-22 @ the Freud Playhouse, UCLA. Best known for his award-winning role in the revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hewitt has played Count Dracula in Frank Wildhorn's musical production of Dracula, and costarred in a myriad of other hits like the tour of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and on Broadway as Billy Flynn in Chicago. In our conversation, he talks about Margherita, ...Kate and the numerous joys - some surprising - that he has encountered in his work, all the while displaying a wry humor.

On Sunday May 1, Carrie Hart presented the music of Rodgers and Hart in a program entitled Spring Is Here @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's. This businesswoman's in depth involvement in music and the human spirit led her to develop a one-woman show The Courage of the Creative Spirit, in which she tells the inspiring stories of the composers of the golden age of Broadway and then sings their timeless music. Spring Is Here devoted to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart is the first in a series of individual evenings, and accompanied by the Leslie Sharp Trio, Hart performed most admirably to a warm, intimate audience.

World class magician, comedian and illusionist Ivan Amodei is settling into an extended engagement at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel with his hit show The Magic of Ivan Amodei, Intimate Illusions. Accompanied by virtuoso cellist Irina Chirkova, who musically underscores everything Amodei says and the appropriate mood it implies with hilarious single chords, Amodei dazzles his 60 member audience with his original sleight of hand. It's all conveyed with a great down-to-earth, in-your-face sense of humor and dynamic one-of-a-kind showmanship.

One thing certain about writer David Ives is his ability to compose short plays with an unparalleled quirky style that is at once entertaining and reflective. All in the Timing, now onstage @ Crown City Theatre in NoHo, is composed of six one-acts, the first three light and frivolously frothy, the second three of a more artful and philosophical nature. As the title implies, each playlet requires expert concentration and delivery on the part of the actors. The cast is most decidedly up to it, and direction from both William A. Reilly and Ben Rovner is top of the hill, making the evening a definite crowd pleaser.

Although an avid fan of dancing, I have never considered myself an expert. Hardly. But...I know when I am moved, moved to the brink...and Jason Gilkison's dance spectacular Burn the Floor, now on tour and at the Pantages until Sunday May 8 only, has enough vitality and style to keep audiences jumping for joy. Yes, there are many similar dance shows, but this one's definitive!

Not since Bent has there been so much media attention and interest in a play about homosexuality than currently exists with regard to Jon Marans' The Temperamentals. Still running off-Broadway the play is now onstage at The Blank Theatre Company with an appealing cast, direction and certainly intriguing and controversial subject matter that will keep audiences coming to see it. Done in a rather fast paced docudrama style, The Temperamentals, as gays were called in the early 50s, long before Stonewall in 1969 enticed them out of the closet, the play, despite being a curiosity piece of fine intellectual proportions, never maintains a high enough emotional involvement, at least in this production.

On the heels of his 1970 hit film The Out of Towners Neil Simon crafted The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1971, which had a more than a healthy run on Broadway and filmed in 1975 with Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft. Towners has always been my favorite as it depicts how bright and enthusiastic small town people visit and view the living conditions of New York City as less than desirable. Anything that can go wrong does and the pair cannot wait to make a fast exit. In Avenue, it's a perspective from within as New York apartment dwellers Mel (Jason Alexander) and Edna (Gina Hecht) Edison must cope with high rent, noisy neighbors, unemployment, robbery, garbage strikes, the exorbitant cost of living and trying to keep one's sanity in the process. In this new production at the El Portal, Glenn Casale's fantastic pacing as director and a superb ensemble make The Prisoner of Second Avenue more topical than ever.