LA theater's 2023 roller coaster. A top 15 list.
Plus four unusual holiday shows, including the Troubies' 'White (Album) Christmas'
Decades ago, in 1977, the Mark Taper Forum won the second annual “regional theater” Tony award. Since then, “Taper” was the first word that came to mind when most out-of-towners — and surely some Angelenos — thought about LA theater.
Finally, on May 23 of this year, the Pasadena Playhouse became the second company in Los Angeles County to win that same award. It was officially presented to the playhouse at the Tony ceremony on June 11, televised live on CBS.
But LA theater fans could take only a brief “pause” to savor that moment.
Four days later, Center Theatre Group announced that there would be a much longer “pause” at the once-trailblazing Taper — indeed, no 2023-24 season at all. Why? “Ever-increasing production costs with significantly reduced ticket revenue and donations” — below pre-COVID levels, said CTG.
A few “special events” have been held at the Taper since then — most notably, comic Alex Edelman’s solo “Just For Us,” which played Nov. 10-26 and will return for six performances, Dec. 19-23. What comes next hasn’t been announced.
Is it time to exchange Santa hats for sackcloth?
Perhaps, if your idea of LA theater is limited to the Taper and Pasadena. But greater LA’s vast theatrical landscape can’t be reduced to a couple of major companies.
As regular Angeles Stage readers might have figured out, in most weeks I attend at least two, sometimes as many as four or five, professional productions. Yet I doubt if I see even half of the shows that are open to critics. Theater companies arise here as oranges once did, thanks to all of the actors and writers and directors who live here.
I can’t see them all, but here are my reactions to some of the mostly holiday-themed productions that I have seen since my last post.
Two musicals drawn from 'Christmas’ movies
The good news about Troubadour Theater Company’s “White (Album) Christmas” is that it’s rowdy, witty and hilarious, as you might expect (this is the 20th annual Troubies Christmas show). The bad news for customers is that available tickets appear to be extremely rare — and often in the form of scattered singles — on the online website of the production at Burbank’s Colony Theatre. Members of the Troubie tribe apparently buy tickets ASAP. The show is scheduled to close on December 23.
Adapter and director Matt Walker transported the narrative of Hollywood’s 1954 “White Christmas” movie to the ‘60s, with musical numbers inspired by songs on the Beatles’ “white album” (officially named “The BEATLES”). Yes, two WWII vets become showbiz pros, encounter a singing-and-dancing-sisters act in Florida, and then work out their romantic entanglements in a Vermont inn as Christmas approaches. Here, they sing melodies like those in the Beatles’ 1968 double-disc album — but with new lyrics.
The movie’s roles for Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are taken over by Rick Batalla and Philip McNiven, respectively, and those previously occupied by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen are now occupied by Cloie Wyatt Taylor and Suzanne Jolie Narbonne. Troubie ringmaster Walker plays the innkeeper who was also the vets’ commanding officer, and Beth Kennedy plays his eavesdropping aide (plus one other character, familiar from previous Troubie Christmas shows). Dallys Newton transforms the role of the innkeeper’s odd granddaughter into something rather spectacular.
I wonder if anyone at the CTG has recently considered inviting the Troubies, an LA-bred treasure, into the mostly vacant Taper, which has more than double the capacity of the Colony. A lot more Troubie zealots would have been able to catch this latest installment, and the Taper’s apparently declining core audience — many of whom surely grew up listening to the Beatles — might have joined the fun.
Then again, CTG is already presenting a second but less interesting musical derived from a holiday movie, “A Christmas Story,” next door to the Taper, at the much larger Ahmanson Theatre.
The original “A Christmas Story” movie from 1983, based on Jean Shepherd’s stories and directed by Bob Clark, is a much better, more credible film than the 1954 “White Christmas." It hardly needs improvements, and it doesn’t get them by adding the big musical production numbers from Joseph Robinette’s adaptation, with a merely serviceable score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — who would two years later reveal their talents more thoroughly through the much stronger “Dear Evan Hansen” and then in the movie “La La Land.”
When I think of the “Christmas Story” movie, I remember shimmering close-ups of the face of young Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) . But close-ups are almost impossible in a big musical at the Ahmanson — here Ralphie is almost lost in all of the frantic efforts to “open up” the material for a big stage.
Also, the stage version doesn’t look as firmly set in 1940 as the original movie. This raised a nagging question in my mind about whether a Christmas-themed musical should focus on a child’s quest for a gun — yes, a BB gun, but still a gun that inspires Ralphie to imagine that he might some day wield a more deadly gun. I’ve read too many reports of teenagers using guns in mass shootings since the movie’s release in 1983.
Speaking of CTG’s efforts to tell kid-oriented stories, its Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City is currently hosting a production of “Dog Man: The Musical” from the New York-based TheatreWorksUSA, based on Dav Pilkey’s series of graphic novels. The title character has a dog’s head and a policeman’s body and fights a cyborg fish and an evil cat. The premise of the stage version is that two fifth-grade boys (played by adults) try to create a musical based on Pilkey’s characters. I am so far removed from the target audience for this (3rd to 5th grade, mostly boys) that I will refrain from judging it. In case you know any parents who already saw it with their children, ask them if their kids enjoyed it. I doubt if the parents did.
‘Tis the season to be sentimental — or not
Let’s start with the anti-sentimental. Some playgoers get their fill of the warm seasonal sentiments quickly and then appreciate the few shows that present joyous holiday songs, for example, in ironic juxtaposition to characters who aren’t at all joyous.
If you’re one of those curmudgeons, the play for you is “A Permanent Image,” by Samuel Hunter, in a production (image, above) at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice. It isn’t new to LA — Rogue Machine produced it in 2015 — but that production occurred in the summer, not the real-life Christmas season, and the timing of PRT’s production underlines the irony.
I had forgotten how dark this play is — (trigger warning) suicide is one of its topics, although the stated impetus for that act isn’t entirely gloom and doom. Andy Weyman’s staging gets some laughs, amid the tense family reunion at the heart of the play. The three actors on stage (a fourth appears only on video) — Terry Davis, Scott Jackson and Dalia Vosylius — are terrific.
On the other end of the seasonal mood spectrum is “Santa’s Circus,” at the Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood. Created by Francisco Santos for Cirque Factory (not Cirque du Soleil), this is a nearly wordless spectacle in which a variety of cirque acts appear in front of a Santa’s workshop backdrop. Santa and Mrs. Claus make occasional appearances, but the stars of the show are the agile and adept gymnasts, contortionists, unicyclists, magicians, and other circus practitioners. They’re accompanied by one extravagantly attired violinist as well as a recorded score, with a few dashes of audience participation.
I had recently been missing the days, mostly in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when LA appeared to be the primary US home of the pre-behemoth Cirque du Soleil, before it moved its US empire to Las Vegas. “Santa’s Circus” fills that gap without requiring a trip across the desert. Ooh. Ah.
Highlights of 2023
Trumpets, please. Here is my list of 15 highlights of LA theater in 2023, in somewhat alphabetical order, with links to my previous coverage of them in other Angeles Stage posts. As you will see, 22 productions are represented here — as usual, I enjoy making connections between different productions:
“Appropriate”, South Coast Repertory
“Blood at the Root”, Open Fist Theatre, and “How It’s ‘Gon Be”, Echo Theater, side by side at Atwater Village Theatre
Chekhovia, as represented by a “Seagull” and a “Cherry Orchard” at South Pasadena Theater Workshop, as well as the modern Chekhov-inspired variations “Life Sucks” from Interact Theatre and “Vania and Sonia and Masha and Spike” at Pacific Resident Theatre
“Come Get Maggie”, Rogue Machine at the Matrix Theatre
“La Egoista”, Skylight Theatre
“Exit Wounds”, International City Theatre
“The Lifespan of a Fact”, Fountain Theatre
“Macbeth”, Theatricum Botanicum
“Mean Girls”, Pantages Theatre
“The Mountaintop”, Geffen Playhouse
“Much Ado About Nothing” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, A Noise Within
“Scintilla”, Road Theatre
Sondheimania: “A Little Night Music” and “Sunday in the Park With George”, both part of Pasadena Playhouse’s Sondheim festival, plus “Into the Woods”, Ahmanson Theatre
“Twilight, Los Angeles: 1992” (the revised five-actor version), Mark Taper Forum
“A View From the Bridge”, Ruskin Group Theatre
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