Harker Jones - Page 2

Aerosol is in the air as Tracy Turnblad, Penny Pingleton, and the teens of Baltimore bring politics and pizzazz to Hollywood with a stunning production of one of the best and beloved musicals of all time.

Part of its Stephen Sondheim Celebration this spring, “A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC” is another triumph for the Pasadena Playhouse, following up the sublime “Sunday in the Park with George.”

Tony-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath’s THE THIN PLACE is an eerie meditation on grief, regret and the need for closure, though it is undermined by the lack of a satisfying conclusion despite phenomenal performances.

The show varies from insightful to manic, bordering on shrill but never crossing into it thanks to strong performances from well-cast performers and Thayer’s tight direction.

The friends’ frenetic jumble of revelations and their evening of navel gazing (so much navel gazing) is a powder keg of soap opera cum sitcom tropes.

Playwright Mara Nelson–Greenberg smartly and incisively takes on the topic of male toxicity to explosive and thought-provoking results.

Despite some deficiencies in the script, MEAN GIRLS still skyrockets in ways most large-scale musicals don’t these days. The young talent on the stage is astonishing and you’ll leave the show wanting to both download the original cast recording and stream the film.

With the state of the world these days, we need a heroine like Annie. With her positive outlook, her moxie, she should be a role model of hopefulness. We just need a better Annie. And Annie deserves a better vehicle.

The set-up of BROKEN STORY is interesting, it just never catches fire in this lackluster production.

It doesn’t help that director Matthew Dunster plays much of Danny Robins’ script for laughs when it could have been amping up some suspense. It would have been more cohesive and had a bigger impact if it hadn’t played as a comedy for most of its 2-hour run time, though it wouldn’t have been enough to make the story land.

The show is a blistering expose of a political campaign and the tenuous loyalty, fierce ambition and blinding hubris that takes place every day in every office across the country.

The ’80s are remembered as the most fun decade in recent memory but they were rife with strife and upheaval that affected everyone, even if they were living in a Broadway bubble, and this show looks back with clear-eyed, unsentimental affection.

EVERYBODY, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ contemporary riff on a 15th-century morality play, is a creative and chaotic allegory about Christian salvation which is, in the end, an uneven production for the usually consistent Antaeus Theatre Company. 

This is a sensitively crafted and introspective drama is. It isn’t easy to watch, but it can be cathartic.

Bridging the 1985 original with the contemporary leaves one with a sense of disconnection

In the end, the pathos that jut through the humor are jagged and piercing, leaving audiences with a lingering sense of both emptiness and hope, like a light flashed on and off in a dark room, the afterimage seared onto the memory.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is given a fresh spin by the Open Fist Theatre Company, changing the setting from Athens, Greece, to Athens, Georgia, in the antebellum South to mixed results.

What did our critic think? Audiences can’t help but compare and contrast, especially when the production is jumping through hoops to remind us of what made the film special. That becomes a bigger problem when the show itself fails on its own merits. While remaining faithful to its source material, PRETTY WOMAN lacks all of the fizz that made the film such a sensation.

The show couldn’t be more relevant today. The world feels like a hopeless place so much of the time that it’s difficult to remember that in the end, we’re all connected and need each other to get by. Perhaps that’s why COME FROM AWAY is so poignant. It reminds of us our own humanity and the need for that in others.

The absorbing script by S. Asher Gelman tries to take on the insensitivity and transitory nature of dating in the age of the internet and hook-up apps, though in the end, it’s really about the more organic and timeless issues of humans just trying to connect.