Overheard (and Mostly Confirmed)

John C. Reilly as Stanley in Streetcar? He seems tailor-made for Mitch, in which role I had the great good fortune to see him at Steppenwolf in 1997, opposite Gary Sinise's Stanley and Laila Robins' Blanche (a performance, Reilly later told me, was among the best he'd ever had the opportunity to work off of--although, keep in mind, this was before he appeared in Anger Management). On the other hand, he was plenty virile and threatening in True West on Broadway in 2000--at least the night I saw it, he played Lee, opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman's Austin (they traded roles willy-nilly on different night, the showoffs). Anyhoo--the Roundabout has announced a production in April at New York's Studio 54 in which Reilly will play Stanley opposite Natasha Richardson's Blanche. That sounds pretty hot, actually...

John Landis to direct a film of Bat Boy? Yessiree, and I must say there's a kind of perfection in the match. The musical needs a broad touch to come off, and Landis is nothing if not large-scale in his ambitions--but there's not a trace of art-house pretense in him. He'll likely make a bloody, stupid, hilarious movie, in other words. As he told Variety: "It's an opportunity to do something insane." I'll drink blood to that...

Megan Mullally, invited to speak at an upcoming $100-a-plate roast for outgoing CTG artistic director Gordon Davidson, isn't quite sure what to say, since she's never worked with him. Wait, actually, yes she did--when Davidson made a stunt cameo on Will & Grace last year. His performance, she volunteered in a recent barside chat at the Evidence Room, "was definitely created in the editing." That sounds like a good start, Megan.

The Curse of Gordon

I'd like to write a serious and sober post about the extraordinary 37-year legacy of Taper and Center Theatre Group founding artistic director Gordon Davidson, whose contributions to the cultural life of not only Los Angeles but the nation are inestimable.

That post will have to wait while I add one footnote to his illustrious career. To wit: Davidson's last season has been plagued by glitches that have literally stopped the show in each venue he oversees--including his new baby, Culver City's Kirk Douglas Theatre. Two of these I witnessed, because they occured on the opening/press nights: An early scene in Intimate Apparel at the Taper had to be stopped when a bed got stuck in the trap and wouldn't go back down into position. Gordon himself came onstage and introduced an "understudy" bed, which was manually schlepped on and off by stagehands. And at one point near the end of Act One of Little Shop of Horrors, the curtain closed, lights swirled, dramatic music played--and then nothing. A voice came on the PA to tell us there were technical difficulties, and we patiently waited for the show to start up again. (I wish I could say this heightened the drama of that piffling show.)

I wouldn't be posting about my suspicions of a "last season" curse at all if a theatregoer hadn't just filled me in on a rather scary recent evening at the Kirk Douglas Theatre: During the mud-fight that climaxed Act One of A Perfect Wedding, actor Mark Capri started to clutch his chest and announced that he was having chest pains. Given the wild, jarring juxtatpositions playwright Chuck Mee is known for, the audience apparently thought this was part of the show; Capri's castmates knew better, and had to turn to the audience to confirm that this was most definitely not a scripted moment.

Paramedics were called, Capri was given an EKG and a clean bill of health--no heart attack after all--and the show went on.

I've heard about the theatre superstition that a bad dress rehearsal means a killer opening night. But what does this trifecta of show-stoppers say about Gordon Davidson's career? Are the poltergeists giving the old maestro a last farewell? Are the gods of the theatre trying to invite us to pause and reflect on Gordon's legacy?

At the very least, they add a bit of spice to Davidson's exit--and a salient reminder that his career has been devoted to a living, breathing art form in which anything can happen in the moment.

I look forward to next week's School for Scandal opening. If all those wigs stay perfectly in place I'll be so disappointed.

Roht Reaction

I think I just heard a woman speaking in tongues... in Spanish. As I walked up Roselake Ave. to my car after the dizzying, piled-high wedding cake of a confection that is the Evidence Room's Peace Squad Goes 99, I passed a nondescript building from which emanated the strident, hysterical voice of a woman leading a Pentecostal worship. It's a cold night, so the windows weren't open--I couldn't hear details but I could see her congregants gathered, rapt, in the fluorescent-lit second-story room.

Somehow this seemed a fitting nightcap after the heady Shirley Temple cocktail irrepressible dance/theatre impresario Ken Roht has whipped up. There's really too much to talk about with this piece, except to say: Miss it at your own peril. But I must note that I was blown away by the titular "Peace Squad"'s Korean boy-band numbers, which layered on top of the '70s-disco-peacenik-comic-book cheesiness of the squad in such a rich and explosively entertaining way, in the midst of a controlled frenzy of fairy-tale camp and color and booty-shaking whimsy.

What do you call it when all your theatregoing faculties are engaged (hmm, I'm seeing a little Wizard of Oz here, hearing a little Fiddler on the Roof there, and--oh, wait, now I'm grooving to some N'Sync moves flavored with a kind of live-action animé) by an entertainment that's not out to confuse or even necessarily edify us, instead simply to delight us, to turn us on? I feel like all my antennae were up and they got a great tickle--the kind that makes you double over in ecstasy and wake up flushed, thinking, What was that? That was something.

Forget A Perfect Wedding: This is the show that should have opened the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

A girl can dream, can't she?

UPDATE: Yes, Virginia, there is 99-cent wine. I would advise sticking with the alternatives.

From "Soup" to "Paint"

Is CATERPILLAR SOUP at the Ruskin Group Theatre a cathartically graphic examination of a former dancer’s confinement to a wheelchair, or an indulgent wallow in disability stories? Back Stage West’s Dany Margolies, a dancer herself, seemed aglow with appreciation for Lyena Strelkoff’s “straightforward, pragmatic, cautionary tale,” which she found “as fluid as any other well-constructed piece” (or is that intended to be faint praise?). The Weekly’s Deborah Klugman acknowledged that “one can’t help but empathize with this beautiful, graceful woman,” but found that her “conversational tone and penchant for confiding numerous sexually intimate particulars cross the line between confidence-sharing and self-absorption." Famed solo showster Paul Linke directs.

Those movement/language/style provocateurs Kronis and Alger are at it again, and if the critics are to be believed, they’re at the top of their indefinable form. DRY CLEANING at the 24th Street Theatre, an espionage-styled retelling of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth, had the Times’ David C. Nichols’ name-checking its references, “from Alphaville to Abbott and Costello” and lauding the “aperture-minded” design (shades of the current Machinal?), stopping short to note that “the muted emotional tone softens the visceral impact” but concluding that the show’s “angular elegance is altogether arresting.” Back Stage West’s Dink O’Neal had no qualifiers in his review of what he called “one of the most fascinating productions in recent memory… jaw-dropping performance art at its finest.” He did have one warning: “Take a few extra moments to bone up on the source material,” lest you emerge at the other end “mentally fogged.”

The Times’ Nichols was quite taken with a new revival of Larry Shue’s THE FOREIGNER (though I’ve already noted one of his review’s seeming overstatements). He seemed quite willing to forgive director Steve Albrezzi’s “spotty pace,” particularly since “the tickling JD Cullum” is playing the title character. The Weekly’s Neal Weaver also lauded Cullum for “wholeheartedly embracing the role’s myriad contradictions,” and for his part found that Albrezzi “keeps the pot boiling so briskly” that “charm prevails” over the script’s inconsistencies.

I’ve already cited the Times’ Mark Swed in his supernatural praise of MACBETH (A MODERN ECSTASY) at REDCAT; bottom line, he found that by paring the Bard’s tragedy to one performer, director Travis Preston and performer Stephen Dillane discover “even greater extravaganzas of emotion.” The Weekly’s Steven Leigh Morris seemed impressed by the effort but ambivalent about the effect, calling the evening “a visceral, cool-headed, even cavalier meditation on the essences and consequences of vaulting ambition.” Director and star come off as “the project’s primary beneficiaries," he wrote, but wondered "whether or not Shakespeare’s play is similarly served.”

Does Paint Your Wagon deserve its relative obscurity? I’ll never forget the way an instructor in a musical theatre workshop I attended used Lerner & Leowe’s misbegotten Gold Rush musical as a negative example—a model of how skilled craftsmen managed to get every single thing wrong with the script, despite managing to pen some fine songs. So it’s not too surprising that even with a rewrite by David Rambo, a new revival of PAINT YOUR WAGON by the Geffen Playhouse at the Brentwood Theatre is getting mixed notices for its book. The Times’ Daryl H. Miller praises just about everything about the production—set, orchestrations, the “rousing men’s chorus number”—but draws a thick line, writing that all this “good work is most decisively undone, however, by the script,” which he slams for some unintentionally funny “howlers” (“at one point, the gold resides in the only rock on the bare stage floor”) and some “hollow” contemporary references to Bush and Janet Jackson. While Miller seems to think there’s still “a rich vein” in the material, the Daily News’ Evan Henerson thinks that perhaps “this Wagon doesn't just need a new coat of paint but a complete overhaul. Or, better yet, concertized stagings.” He enjoyed the “still hummable” score, the “solid performances,” and the “warm and lush” designs of Daniel Ionazzi. but wrote that the “50-minute second act is god awful.”

Oops, look at the time—I must be off to a late-night performance of Ken Roht’s latest “99-cent necromancy,” as David C. Nichols called it in his colorful Times review.

Peace out!

Starting With a Spread

As the year rushes to a close, the openings of shows are dwindling, just as the opening of packages awaits. This past weekend was among the last big pushes, or at least the weekend that the papers tried to catch up with everything that was still up and running before year's end.

So there's a lot this week, and I'll try to pace myself.

Critics couldn't resist the food-related jokes with BUTTER at Hollywood's [Inside] the Ford. I got it right out of the way in the lead of my Times review: “Light, slight and more touching than uproarious, Elizabeth Logun's Butter is a low-impact British farce about coupling and decoupling that goes down as smoothly as, well, butter.” Back Stage West's Les Spindle, who liked the show considerably less than I, calling it “more noise and frantic activity than rhyme or reason,” saved his big guns for the closer: “Logun's synthetic concoction goes down as smoothly as a slab of chemical-loaded Parkay. One can believe it's not 'buttah.' ” The Weekly's Steven Mikulan showed admirable restraint on this front, though he wasn't a big fan of the show, either, calling it “little more than a writing exercise” and opining that “director Dave P. Moore gets consistently over-the-top performances from his cast, but doesn't orchestrate a steady level of quality for this production.” Getting endearingly specific, Mikulan dings the show for some “inexplicable slips,” such as confusing a “jumper” with a cardigan and chicken with bologna. I guess he did get around to food, after all.

How Swed It Is

Is the LA Times’ Mark Swed having an identity crisis? I can only conclude as much from following his writing in recent months. I’m not talking about the fact that he’s the paper’s classical music critic of record but covers a fair amount of major theatre, as well, or that he was sent to cover performances around and about the Republican Convention that purportedly reflected the zeitgeist or some such thing.

I’m talking about his tendency to make being and becoming the theme of his theatrical criticism. To wit, there was this baffling statement in his mixed review of The Ten Commandments:

Indeed, "The Ten Commandments" is such effective theater that, after 2 1/2 hours of cheesy stagecraft and innocuous, blaring upbeat music, we don't just understand [Moses], don't just aspire to be Moses, we actually become Moses. That is to say, "The Ten Commandments" has the power to leave a epiphany-seeking theatergoer speechless.

Right. I honestly can’t tell if that’s praise or simply throw-up-his-hands bewilderment—if it’s shock or awe, or both. Then there’s today’s review of Macbeth ( A Modern Ecstasy) at REDCAT, in which English actor Stephen Dillane performs the entire play solo, with light jazz accompaniment. Given Swed’s Mosaic transubstantation, this graph stuck out:

"Macbeth" at REDCAT is only Macbeth. And even that isn't quite true. "Macbeth (A Modern Ecstasy)" at REDCAT is the embodiment of Macbeth, the spirit of Shakespeare made flesh. It is the performance of a single actor, Stephen Dillane, and it is a performance — prodigious, incandescent, incantatory — that defies belief.

And this graph even more so:

As if possessed, Shakespeare pours out of him [is something dangling here? Who’s possessed, Dillane or Shakespeare?—Ed.] in unstoppable flood. He channels Macbeth and he channels "Macbeth." That is to say, he is Macbeth, he is all characters in the play, and he is none.

That is to say something—and nothing—all at once. The coda to this Swed swirl is the short blurb that’s been running in the theatre listings, summing up The Ten Commandments. Apparently Swed regained his consciousness after his out-of-body Kodak moment:

Thou shalt not cast Val Kilmer as Moses. Nor shalt thou waste huge sums of money making a cheesy musical out of the Bible that looks, sounds and is quite stupid, and serves as a vanity show for a fashion designer whose clothes just happen to be on sale in the same shopping mall as the theater.

Mark Swed: trenchant critic or spiritual seeker at the footlights’ edge? You decide, dear reader.

They Sell Wine, Too?

I didn't know there were alcoholic libations available at 99¢ Only Stores, but this intriguing possibility is raised by Heseon Park's Times feature on the newest installment in Ken Roht's annual discount-store holiday extravaganza. And I thought Charles Shaw had cornered the market on what the English endearingly call "plonk."

The piece's money quote, though, comes--not surprisingly--from an always quotable trouper:

"You just have no idea how wet underclothes can get until you have done back-to-back perfs of a 99¢ show," said Colleen Wainwright, who plays a stilt-walking mom in the village.

Well, I guess now we do.