Shari Barrett - Page 28

First produced in the mid-1980s, John Patrick Shanley's THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW holds interest as an early work by the multi-award-winning playwright who went on to win the Pulitzer for DOUBT and an Oscar for MOONSTRUCK. His early play offers musings about life, sex, death and relationships, directed by Mark Blanchard at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre.

TURN ME LOOSE explores the influential life of 1960s comic genius Dick Gregory, the first Black stand-up to make white audiences laugh at the absurdity of bigotry. The play reveals how the power of activism enticed Gregory from one of the most successful show business careers of the postwar era into a life of sacrifice and danger alongside Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and other Civil Rights leaders. And I can tell you, when Joe Morton describes the tragic murder of Evans, his anger and tears seem to flow from his soul.

The plot unfolds during a public presentation during which The Librarian recounts an impressive amount of Lovely Evidences he accumulated during his worldwide search for answers about the person who returned a long-overdue book, truly a most whirlwind journey that occupied his every waking minute. His obsessive search causes the loss of his long-held and beloved employment as he researches for what he considers to be one of the great mysteries of humanity. Director Steven Robman perfectly paces the show to keep you on the edge of your seat as you ponder just what the gathered evidence seems to prove.

Thanks to the magnificent performance of handsome and muscular Adam Hollick, there is an overwhelming Spiritual Presence that shines within Joseph, a power that allows him to overcome every obstacle in his way. He rises above being separated from his loved ones, sold to nomads traveling through the harsh desert, being thrown into a pit, sent to prison, and then elevated by a hard-rocking Elvis-impersonator Pharaoh (Patrick Cassidy living it up to the hilt in blue suede shoes and sequins) to a position of respect and authority after one of his visions proves to save the people of Egypt.

As its first offering of its 2017/2018 season, LA Ballet is treating audiences to a mixed bill Director's Choice program entitled PUSHING DANCE BOUNDARIES, a compilation of four modern dance suites with contemporary choreography. There's no elaborate costumes or sets; just brilliantly talented dancers and choreographers doing what they do best together enchant and entertain their audiences at LAB's home theaters: UCLA's Royce Hall, Glendale's Alex Theatre, Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, and the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

The highly original coming of age story PLEASE EXCUSE MY DEAR AUNT SALLY from emerging playwright Kevin Armento features an unconventional narrator: the cell phone belonging to a 15-year-old Red McCray, a troubled teen enduring the break-up of his parents and moving to a new town. Audience members might recognize the play's title from their high school days a mnemonic, or memory aid, for the order of operations needed to solve an algebraic equation (parentheses, exponents, multiply, divide, add, subtract), which comes into play in Red's algebra class when his clowning antics cause his teacher to take his cell phone away and throw it into her desk drawer.

Raised in an upstate New York blue-collar family, Fred Herko showed much promise as a concert pianist, going on to attend Julliard. But at age 20 after seeing a performance of Giselle, he announced his intention to give up the piano and become a ballet dancer. The resulting severe beating by his father for pursuing a career for gay men, only inspired Herko to follow the type of life he dreamed for himself after being awarded a four-year scholarship to attend the American Ballet Theater School. He moved to Greenwich Village and never looked back during his too short yet wildly successful career.

VINO VERITAS by David MacGregor debuted in Michigan in 2008 and won the state's Purple Rose for Best New Play. The current Theatre 40 production is being presented as the second show of its 2017-2018 season, arriving as a perfect comedy for the Halloween season. Taking its title from a Latin proverb, which literally translates as 'in wine, the truth, the skin of the blue dart tree frog wine consumed on Halloween night by two middle-aged couples as they prepare to attend a friend's annual party causes them to share an unpredictable and hilarious night of unbridled honesty that stretches the bounds of their friendship and their relationships forever.

Master satirist Paul Rudnick blends a deep humanity with a honed sense of hilarity in this powerful and funny play about family and fame, the personal and the political, and the drive to stand up and speak out. But it is also one that promotes a very progressive political stance on human rights, especially within the gay community, with much of the dialogue presented as if they are soapbox speeches meant to sway the listener to take action. But given our current political circumstances, there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to take a stand and speak out to make the world a better and more equal place for everyone.

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE is a hip musical comedy which follows six young people in the throes of puberty, who are overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves, as they learn that winning isn't everything and that losing doesn't necessarily make you a loser. The musical, featuring emotionally revealing musical selections filled with side-splitting lyrics written by William Finn, chronicles the overachievers' angst of six precocious adolescents who turn out to be the unlikeliest of heroes: a quirky yet charming cast of outsiders for whom the Bee is the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time.

For those of us who have lived through the passing of a loved one from cancer, it may seem an impossibility to create humor out of that heartbreaking situation. But the West Coast Premiere of Halley Feiffer's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, she shares the entertaining tale of two adult children, sitting bedside with their mothers, with enough funny one-liners to generate laughs galore.

Just as so many retired Americans over the age of 55 are choosing to sell their homes and take to the roads crisscrossing our nation in motor homes or campers for extended periods of time, a growing number of Australian retirees, called Grey Nomads, are choosing to continuously circumnavigate the world's largest island the same way. The world premiere comedy GREY NOMAD by Australian playwright Dan Lee, directed by Iain Sinclair as a guest production at the Skylight Theatre, captures these travelers' unique spirit and sense of camaraderie, with tons of laughter thrown in along the way.

Performed in both English and Spanish to appeal to a broader Los Angeles fan base, the family friendly musical fantasy Disney's Aladdin, Dual Language Edition is set in the fictional Middle Eastern city of Agrabah, where a beloved Disney princess named Jazm n decides to rebel against her father the Sultan's wishes to marry one of three princes he has selected for her. Of course, she dislikes them all and decides to escape before the deadline to marry occurs. On her escape route, she meets a street rat named Aladdin, but how can this chance meeting lead to ever-lasting love for the two from such different backgrounds?

There are many reasons why THE FANTASTICKS original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest-running musical which continues to enchant audiences around the world. Aside from it being a 'Romeo and Juliet' type story we can all relate to, but with a much happier ending, its most well-known song, 'Try to Remember,' speaks to everyone wanting to go back to a time in our lives when all things were much more simple, romantic, and totally carefree.

The small dining room at a local studio was an excellent choice to showcase a classic dysfunctional family living an upper-class life as they descended into chaos over the course of one year. With each of the family members in this dark comedy only really thinking of themselves and their own needs, or living their lives to be sure none of their friends can find fault with anything they do, PTERODACTYLS suggests that our extinction is beginning not with an asteroid or an ice age but rather with a severed connection to the ones closest to us.

Kira Turnage aka Lola Boutee, the CEO, Director and 2008 Founder of The Dollface Dames promises her troupe of Burlesque entertainers is the best L.A. has to offer with their high-class, show-stopping live entertainment for any occasion, whether you're looking for the best burlesque shows in town or to book choreographed full stage shows, cabaret dancers, burlesque soloists, singers, aerialists, fire performers, hoop artists, contortionists, variety acts, or magicians. My curiosity got the best of me, so I sat down to chat with her about her career and how she decided to get into the world of burlesque.

As a lifelong fan of David Bowie and human rights equality, when I heard The Los Angeles LGBT Center was hosting a return performance of the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles (TCLA) to its Renberg Theatre the weekend of August 26-27, 2017 to perform planet Earth's first staged concert production of Bowie's full The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album, I rushed to get my tickets! And thanks to TCLA's artistic director, Lindsey Deaton, and the talented artistic singers of the group, I can tell you the evening was one of the most inspirational of my life.

When I found out John Mayall "The Godfather of British Blues" was going to be at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica on Friday, August 25, I rushed to get tickets to be in the presence of the man who directly influenced generations of the greatest musicians of all time during his impressive musical career spanning more than 50 years. What a treat it was to listen as Mayall, along with Jay Davenport on drums and Greg Rzab on bass, delivered a career retrospective with new slants and sounds to showcase his monumental life as a master of blues music.

TROUBLE IN MIND, the scathingly funny and thought-provoking backstage drama about interracial politics by pioneering African American playwright Alice Childress, is currently enjoying a brilliant revival at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum in Malibu thanks to director Ellen Geer's vision of the groundbreaking 1955 satire in which an integrated theater company in rehearsal for a “progressive” anti-lynching drama marks the first opportunity for gifted African American actress Willetta Mayer (portrayed by multiple NAACP Award-winner Earnestine Phillips who commands the stage) to play a leading lady on Broadway. This could be her dream come true, but what compromises must she make to succeed?

The glamorous passenger train Twentieth Century Limited, which ran between New York and Chicago between 1902 and 1967, is the main setting for the musical screwball comedy ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY now playing through August 27 at the Pan-Andreas Theatre, 5119 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Based partly on the 1930s film and play of the same name, the musical, with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman, is part operetta, part farce, and part screwball comedy telling the story of the behind-the-scenes relationship between Lily, a temperamental actress and Oscar, a bankrupt theatre producer. The duo, played with great skill and comedic timing by Alena Bernardi and Wade Kelley, recount the tale of their adventure traveling from Chicago to New York in the 1930s as Oscar tries to cajole the glamorous Hollywood star into playing the lead in his new, but not-yet-written drama, and perhaps to rekindle their romance.