Shari Barrett - Page 28

I have always been a great fan of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, so much so that I have traveled to the French countryside around the city of Arles to visit several locations featured in his paintings. While driving through the fields on a rainy afternoon, it was easy to imagine the famed painter sitting with his easel, frantically painting while the light was still good. While Van Gogh's critics labeled his work madness, it has gone on to become some of the most popular in French Impressionism. But the great artist's story is so much more than that of the misunderstood artist who cut off his own ear.

The World Premiere of ONE WAY TICKET TO OREGON written by BC Caldwell, produced by BC Caldwell and Jeremy Aldridge, and directed by JJ Mayes as an Equity Approved Showcase production at the Promenade Playhouse in Santa Monica, runs November 17 through December 17, 2017 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm, with no performances scheduled over Thanksgiving weekend. Featured in the cast (in alphabetical order) are Cash Beery, BC Caldwell, Cydney Wayne Davis, Dennis Delsing*, Matt McVay, Robert Paterno*, Anderson Piller, Rebecca Radock*, Ruth Silveira*, Bryan Staggers* and Melvin Ward.

No doubt, each of us has those out-of-kilter family members everyone makes fun of for their quirks and strange behaviors when the family gets together for the holidays. After all, don't we all laugh at movies, TV shows and plays designed to make fun of those types of people to make us realize we are not alone in our trying times with our own families? Such is the case in Steve Franco's timely holiday comedy IN-LAWS, OUTLAWS AND OTHER PEOPLE (that Should Be Shot), being presented by Theatre Palisades and brilliantly directed by Ria Parody Erlich so that each bad habit of the strange Douglas family is brought to life thoroughly by her 15 talented actors each and every moment they are onstage, whether speaking or not. Running through December 10, this dysFUNctional family holiday comedy will leave you quite merry with laughter!

When playwright Tania Wisbar was growing up as a girl in America, her mother shared little about her past in wartime Germany, other than Tania came from a very well-placed and highly respected film family. With her parents divorced, there was not much else Tania knew about her family history, at least not until 1999 when a German professor visiting the U.S. brought Wisbar a 60-year-old document he had discovered in a Harvard University archive. In the 86-page manuscript, Wisbar's mother, Eva Kroy Wisbar, who was Jewish, detailed her forbidden marriage to a German film director as the Nazis were coming to power. The manuscript held answers to many of the questions the playwright's mother never answered before her 1984 death. Fifteen years later, that document inspired Wisbar's play, THE RED DRESS, its World Premiere now at the Odyssey Theatre through November 19.

With his unique combination of an Austrian father ( my name ) and Colombian mother ( my hair ) who raised him in Ecuador ( my accent ), as well as his incredibly animated face which he knows how to use to maximum dramatic effect during each and every trick, Siegfried is a true wonder to behold. During the evening, he shares that magic is based on a deception that creates an illusion, which did little to explain his amazing prowess with cards, especially when using one deck in plain sight after several audience members shuffle the deck - or predicting which card would be found in the sealed envelope hanging above his head before we even arrived. His type of magic definitely appeals to the emotions with elements of mystery and surprise thrown in to create gasps of wonder throughout his two-hour show.

ONE WAY TICKET TO OREGON takes place in Alexandria, Louisiana during the very hot and humid summer of 2010. At its core are two life-long friends, June Collins, an older no nonsense African American woman with an intuitive understanding of people, and Leigh Anne Rainey, a fiery and opinionated older southern belle living in an aging house that has been home to her family for over 150 years. When Leigh Anne receives the diagnosis that her cancer has returned and spread to her pancreas, she's forced to confront her mortality and how it will affect her son Bobby, who relies on her stability, his unstable wife Eve, and her young grandson Duke, who has autism. With help from her friend June, Leigh explores her limited options, including the use of medical marijuana to curb her symptoms, and learns about doctors in Oregon who can legally help her to die with dignity,' an emotional struggle taking place all too often around the world today.

NEW YORK WATER, a comedy written by Sam Bobrick and directed by Howard Teichman, is being produced by Bill Froggatt and Howard Teichman for West Coast Jewish Theatre at the Pico Playhouse in West LA through December 17, 2017. The title refers to the quality of New York tap water for drinking: It's usually delicious, if you can get past the fact that rusty pipes sometimes impart to it an odd hue. The same applies to modern romantic involvements which start out great then change as you really get to know one another better or decide to travel in different directions.

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?