Criticopia

It’s nice to see the lovely actress Karen Allen alive and cookin’ on the stage. Too bad it’s in a muddled, pretentious turkey, A Summer Day, by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, whom they claim is an award winner.

A man (McCaleb Burnett) left on his boat and didn’t return. His woman (Allen) stands at the window waiting, looking for him. For years. Godot never comes. She’s grown much older as she waits. The situation? He must be on the water; she can’t be on the water. Over and over and over. Two immovable objects who don’t honor each others needs.

It's like listening to radio in the dark. You sit in blackness at the Odyssey Theater while various short plays take place on an equally unlit stage. Sound is the sense that takes over; the actors are onstage but unseen as they move about and speak their lines. Music and sound effects are heard from time to time. It's all very spooky, experimental and heartfelt (the actors worked for months on Theater in the Dark, and even created some of the stygian skits.

A.R. Gurney’s Heresy, at the Flea Theater, gives us community-theater acting in an amateurishly written attempt at a contemporary depiction of Jesus’ parents. Director Jim Simpson has these poor people shouting and indicating rather than being actual people. Mary says, “It’s like a high-school reunion,” and she’s right.

The formerly bright, insightful Gurney seems to have lost it in this silly, annoying play -- a lame attempt at humor. Despite the rare joke that works, for not a moment is an actual human being on the stage — it’s all representations of people.

Seminaris a cartoon of a play about an obnoxious writing instructor, Leonard (Jeff Goldblum), and his four equally unpleasant students, each of whom is shelling out five thousand bucks to have his work critiqued by the foul-mouthed, self-styled master.

Playwright Theresa Rebeck strains credulity in making the point that only tough love can turn backbiting wanna-be writers into professionals, but she is such a skilled and funny writer that she can make you forget your misgivings.

The first act of Daisy Foote’s Himis rather confusing. There are three siblings: a mean and very cranky sister (the always vivid Hallie Foote), a gay brother (the often mono-tonal Tim Hopper) and the severely retarded brother (Adam LeFevre, in a nuanced, believable performance). Also, there is a dying father upstairs. All play out their lives, part of it restraining LeFever, and then, suddenly, at several spots, each actor assumes the identity of a narrator in a spotlight, including LeFevre who is suddenly not retarded, and then we go back to the characters and the interplay.

The Best of Everythingis based on the more-than-50-year-old book by Rona Jaffe, adapted and directed by Julie Kramer and developed with Amy Wilson, who is very effective in a tightly-wound role in the show as the highest woman in the office. The play is an engaging throwback to an era, 1952, shortly after World War II, which had very different moral and social views and values from today. I, as an artist/bohemian at the time, was an outsider, but as an observer – the piece rings true.

Thanks to a compelling cast at the Cort Theater, Craig Wright’s thoughtful play, Grace,takes a touchy subject, the existence of God, on a comically dark cyclone ride with spurts of humor and moments of horror, including a murder/suicide finale. This finale is also at the beginning, which can present a problem. If these characters, whom you don’t know, are all dead before the play even starts, why should you even care? Still, with Wright’s flashbacks, highlighted with symbolism, the tale unravels with a certain fascination. Is there a God? Does grace exist in organized religion?

Deanna Jent’s Falling is a strange play-- acting out the actualities of a family with a 300 pound, 18-year-old son with an IQ of about 9, and the behavior and seeming mind of an angry three year old (Daniel Everidge in a powerful performance), and his effect on his parents (Julia Murney and Daniel Pearce) and sister (Jacey Powers). There is a false premise to the play: that any sane person would have a physically dangerous monster (he physically attacks his mother, and later his elderly grandmother (Celia Howard)) living at home.

In Surviving Mama, playwright Sonia Levitin has dramatized her mother's story and put it on stage at the Edgemar Center. Levitin’s mother is called Marlena and is played by Arva Rose, a replacement for Lainie Kazan who unexpectedly left the production to take a role in a feature film. Rose, despite being too young by some twenty years to play a 70-year-old woman, does a capable job in the lead and manages to keep a somewhat shaky production together.

Next Act has always prided itself on being close to the cutting edge; a “thinking-person’s theater,” as some have called it. Well, audiences at Microcrisiswill certainly leave with a lot to think about. In fact, they may leave with their heads spinning. This satire on America’s corporate system and the global economy pulls no punches.

Just in time for Election Day, Center Theater Group has mounted David Mamet's wicked political satire, November. First produced in 2008, just before Barack Obama was voted into office, the play gleefully pokes fun at a fictional president of the United States, Charles Smith (Ed Begley, Jr.). Smith, we learn quickly, has been a bust as president, a do-nothing dimwit who has only one goal in life: to be re-elected for another four years.

In a rare visit to L.A., Studium Teatrine, the Warsaw-based theater company, has brought its Holocaust drama, The King of Hearts is off Again, to the Odyssey Theater Ensemble for a two-week run.

The first time I saw Sweet Bird of Youthwas up-close in Chicago’s rather small Studebaker Theater. The opening scene in a cramped bedroom dominated the entire drama, with the feeling of characters hemmed in by their pasts and just as trapped by their hopes (that I didn’t feel they’d realize) for the future.

Milwaukee Chamber Theater presents the world premiere of Wisconsin playwright Kurt McGinnis Brown’s Broken and Entered. The show is staged in a small, black box-type theatre. “Black” is the operative word here: a few of the play’s scenes are conducted entirely in the dark, with only two flashlights providing illumination. The play itself can also be pegged as a dark comedy, as it involves a massive number of residential break-ins, all conducted by a pair of adult brothers searching to erase their past.

Hollywood's condescending and racist attitude toward black performers gets a comical pie in the face from Lynn Nottage, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winner for Ruined. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, opens in 1933, when "America's Little Sweetie Pie," Gloria Mitchell (the captivating Amanda Detmar), a blonde, ditzy Southern belle, is getting ready to star in a sudsy tale set on a Louisiana plantation in slavery times.

There are actors who, though every bit as good as any others, do not want to travel away from their home life and employment. So we see them in regional theaters or on film and television made in their home areas.

Once again Jonathan Bank’s Mint Theater Company has found an interesting antique play. This one, beautifully produced and tastefully directed by Bank, is the hundred year old Mary Broomeby Allan Monkhouse.

The central character is a good-looking upper crust rake (Roderick Hill). He’s a charming bounder, who, raised without ambition to achieve anything, is now unfit for work of any kind and gets along as a high-class schnorrer (moocher). He has seduced Mary, the maid (Janie Brookshire), and she’s pregnant. That’s the setup.

Anyone who has sat through a nightmarish dinner party can relate to the circumstances portrayed in Life X 3by noted playwright Yasmina Reza. In this case, the dinner party guests are not even old friends but an arrogant boss and his wife (Hubert and Inez). Worse, they arrive on the wrong night, causing confusion and embarrassment to the hosts, Henry and Sonia.

Written shortly after September 11, 2001, following Linda MacCluggage’s first visit to ruins of the Twin Towers, nine/eleven,her self-described “play for voices” conjures visions beyond the limits of traditional staging.