Shari Barrett - Page 25

Neighborhood bars have always been a gathering place for locals to share drinks and camaraderie in a place far from the responsibilities of work and home life, or in spite of them. Fans of the popular TV show "Cheers" no doubt remember how hanging out in a place where "everyone knows your name" often seemed better than anywhere else in your life. McRae's new play takes place in the blue-collar Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in a rundown neighborhood institution called THE ALAMO, which its patrons refer to as the last great American bar. But times change and so do neighborhoods, and McRae paints a humorous yet heartbreaking portrait of eight working class Bay Ridge natives who always seem to find themselves on the front lines of change in America, even in their favorite hangout.

As it did last year with its first Block Party, Center Theatre Group continues to strengthen its relationships within the Los Angeles theatre community by creating additional avenues for the organization to work with local playwrights, actors, directors and designers to gain more exposure for their work in greater Los Angeles. This year, Center Theatre Group received 53 submissions for Block Party 2018 from intimate theatre companies in the greater Los Angeles area who each submitted one production that opened at their location between January 1, 2016, and May 30, 2017. This year's first Block Party 2018 selection is the Playwrights' Arena production of BLOODLETTING, written by Boni B. Alvarez and directed by Playwrights' Arena Artistic Director Jon Lawrence Rivera. The play opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City on Saturday, March 31 and closes Sunday, April 8.

Long before Felix met Oscar, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were ill-fitting roommates in the south of France, which turned out to be a fateful co-habitation that changed the face of art - as well as Van Gogh's face! Playwright Brendan Hunt cleverly re-imagines these two art masters as the subjects of Neil Simon's original draft of The Odd Couple, which Hunt presents as being co-written with yet another of the oddest couples possible - Sam Shepard, here introduced as Steve, an oddball busboy looking for his first big break.

LITTLE WOMEN, THE MUSICAL with book by Allan Knee, music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, is based on the beloved 1869 classic novel by Louisa May Alcott. It's a song-filled adaptation of the touching tale of young love, achieving dreams, and the power of family to overcome even the most difficult of life's challenges. No doubt almost every young woman read the novel at some point during their lives, devouring the tale of the March sisters adventures (budding author Jo, practical Meg, sweet Beth, and romantic Amy) who are coming of age during the Civil War under the care of their doting mother, whom they call Marmee, while their father is away fighting for the North. They gather together to read his too infrequent letters, each warmly cuddling together around their beloved mother like a safe cocoon in a world being torn apart by violence around them.

Real Art Daily Productions (RADProd) is a new company that produces both film and theatre productions. With concentrated study and education in both classical music and theatre, Georginna Feyst, CEO and Executive Producer, whose reverence for fine art, cinema, theatre and other forms of storytelling let her to select probably one of the most definitive and difficult plays, Jean-Paul Sartre's 1944 existentialist play, NO EXIT, as the company's kick off production. In it, three strangers are locked together by a Bellboy in what they assume is hell (since all know they have recently died). Expecting but not receiving any physical torture to occupy them, they are forced to simply exist with each other without any hope of escape from the room, each other, and worst of all - themselves. It is a 100-minute examination of the futility of life.

ENGAGING SHAW begins in England in 1897 in a comfortable cottage in Stratford, England, where Shaw hopes to complete his new play. As he engages in conversation with his friends, the happily married cottage owners, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, we learn Shaw is a notorious flirt and heartbreaker who enjoys romancing women, attracting them to him "like a moth to the flame." But it is soon apparent he is not particularly interested in sex, a fact reflected in his real life where he remained a virgin until his 29th birthday. It's the thrill of the hunt that is the main attraction for Shaw, thoroughly enjoying the effect he has on women as he pursues them, not in the keeping of them. In present-day parlance, he'd be considered a sexist cad. Beatrice sees an opportunity to deflect Shaw's interest in her (and hers in him) by inviting their wealthy benefactor Charlotte to visit, knowing when she meets Shaw, the financially challenged but famous Irish playwright and political activist, that sparks will fly.

Directed by Jenny Sullivan in the smaller Lovelace Studio Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts so that no matter where you are seated, Burrows will repeatedly pull you into the very private life of this American icon on two of the most traumatic evenings of her life. Act I takes place on the night of Robert Kennedy's win the 1968 California primary election, which guaranteed him the Democratic nomination for President. But the play begins just after Jackie saw her brother-in-law get shot on live television as he walked through the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel after leaving his victory celebration. She is spinning out of control emotionally, smoking, drinking, and popping pills as she attempts to cope with the idea that the one man she has counted on since the death of her husband will soon leave her too, again due to a madman with a gun.

A story relevant to generations past and present, Shakespeare's cautionary tale of love serves as a modern metaphor for the influence of society over individual freedom. For although the personal journeys of Romeo & Juliet are integral to the tale, this is a love story within a clear social and political context - the collective identity of the group is considered more important than the desires of its citizens, dooming the young lovers from "opposite sides of the tracks" to their tragic end as their personal lives are molded by the hostilities of the previous era. Beginning in the 1930s during a time when a rigid dictatorial system had taken over the country, the Capulet family represents the upper-class conservatives with stiff, militaristic movement, while the Montagues represent the liberal low and middle classes, danced with loose, flowing motions laced with pedestrian naturalism.

Perhaps you are one of those people who cringe at opera's lengthy runtimes, rambling plot lines, and the need to read English subtitles rather than pay attention to the overall magnificent scenes being paraded before you. Then again, perhaps you are among the select group of aficionados who relish the pomp and splendor created by opera singers whose voices reach to the heavens while performing in the popular operas of Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Wagner, and Verdi. Certainly the four characters in Ronald Harwood's play QUARTET count themselves among not only the greatest operatic performers but also as some of the greatest fans of the genre to ever tread the boards in their glory days.

Have you ever wondered what the legal sex industry will look like in the future, given how rapidly our views on personal equality and freedom are changing? Certainly Tony Award-winning playwright and performer Sarah Jones has, given the subject matter of her new play SELL/BUY/DATE in which she takes on the role of an instructor presenting an honest, moving and even humorous look at the complex and fascinating subject, all while preserving the full humanity of voices seldom heard in the theater. Directed by Carolyn Cantor and brimming with Jones' masterful, multiple, multicultural characterizations, SELL/BUY/DATE asks the audience to participate as students in a study hall as Jones describes the historical research she will be presenting, recorded with futuristic mind-sharing technology which allows people to truthfully share their opinions on human sexuality and what part it has played in their lives as society evolved into an "anything goes" mentality.

Perhaps the Ammunition Theatre Company has a built-in audience of millennials who enjoy their brand of silly and senseless humor in THE TRAGEDY: A COMEDY written by D.G. Watson and directed by Ahmed Best. Currently promoted as being 'back by popular demand,' all I can figure out is since marijuana is now legal, the younger audience members went out and got the best varieties and smoked a lot of it before seeing this show, then really enjoyed laughing at all the silly situations and dialogue, performed to the best of their ability by actors who enjoyed engaging the audience to play along with them.

George Takei is known for his founding role as Mr. Sulu in the acclaimed television series Star Trek and as an influential social media icon. But long before that fame, Takei was born in Boyle Heights and spent his childhood in the Rohwer Incarceration Camp in Arkansas and later at Tule Lake in Northern California during World War II. His story of resilience and hope is the inspiration for ALLEGIANCE, a new Broadway musical making its Los Angeles premiere, co-produced by East West Players (EWP) and Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC) at JACCC's 900-seat Aratani Theatre in Los Angeles through April 1, 2018.

No one painted love like Marc Chagall. He once said, 'In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.' On Chagall canvases, couples sweep each other off their feet and up into the air. They soar over cities, arm in arm, leaving the rest of the world behind them. They are, one critic reckons, 'a banner to collective love.' As it turns out, his inspiration was based on the many struggles he and his wife Bella faced during the early years of their marriage when their overwhelming love for each other kept the element of sanity in an outside world gone mad. Now, the magical world of artist Marc Chagall and his wife Bella is being tenderly brought to life onstage at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (The Wallis) in director Emma Rice's production of Daniel Jamieson's THE FLYING LOVERS OF VITEBSK

TRUMP IN SPACE is a combination of Star Trek and Avenue Q meeting Trump, a musical battle of good vs. bad and ideals vs. opportunism, with tons of sex and profanity thrown in for fun. This original musical is an epic space adventure filled with all the sci-fi tropes we love and all the politics we love to hate. Taking place four hundred years in the future when the fallout of the Trump administration has left humans stranded without a planet, Captain Natasha Trump (Gillian Bellinger, writer of the script and lyrics), a direct descendant of President Donald J. Trump, races to find humanity a new planet called Polaris 4 to call home.

If you struggle with managing your busy schedule, making it to the gym, while you just can't say no to that giant chocolate chip cookie with your name on it, you aren't alone! Under the direction of Matthew E. Silva, WAISTWATCHERS THE MUSICAL with Book and Lyrics by Alan Jacobson and music by Vince Di Mura, takes us inside Miss Cook's Women's Gym where four women share their marital pitfalls, a "little more to love" body size issues, and their weakness for sweet treats. Their universal tales of weight loss struggle amid lives in turmoil will keep you laughing continuously, wishing it could assist you in losing a few pounds of your own during the 90 minutes of hysterics!

Celebration Theatre is a very small venue known for putting on very big musicals and doing them very well. But I have to tell you, seeing Del Shores claim the stage as his own was really a treat as he transformed himself into not only his mother but several other friends and relatives from his childhood in Texas or others he has met over the years in gay bars, banks and convenience stores in SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY. The title, of course, riffs on Pirandello's classic title, but in this one, Shores brings to life six one-of-a-kind characters he has met in real life that haven't quite made it into one of his plays, films or TV shows. In 90 minutes, the audience heard the truth behind how he collected these eccentrics and their stories as he portrays his hilarious, off-the-rails encounters with them.

Actors Co-op Theatre Company presents the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award nominated drama A WALK IN THE WOODS, written in 1988 by playwright Lee Blessing. The witty two-hander concerns a relationship between two arms negotiators, one Russian and one American, and what happens when they step out of the war room and into the woods above Geneva, Switzerland, during a year of negotiations. Although the two eventually develop a friendly relationship, their personalities certainly differ in that the American is formal and idealistic while the Russian is easily led off topic and very pessimistic that any agreement will ever amount to any changes in the escalating arms race.

Yazmine Reza's 2009 Tony Award winning play GOD OF CARNAGE centers on two sets of parents, unknown to each other until their 11-year old sons, Benjamin and Henry, get involved in an argument in a public park because Benjamin refused to let Henry join his 'gang'. In their altercation following the snub, Henry knocked out two of Benjamin's teeth with a stick, details we learn in the opening scene taking place that night as the parents of both boys meet to discuss the matter. However, as the evening goes on, the "adults" become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening dissolving into chaos.

The third and final play, THE HAPPIEST SONG PLAYS LAST, is being presented by the Latino Theater Company, directed by Edward Torres with the heart and soul of Latino culture brought into crystal clear focus. Set to the joyful sounds of traditional Puerto Rican folk music beautifully played onstage by guitarist Nelson Gonzalez, HAPPIEST SONG chronicles a year in the life of two kindred souls as they search for love, meaning and a sense of hope in a quickly changing world. At the dawn of the Arab Spring in an ancient Jordanian town, Elliot, an Iraq War veteran (Peter Pasco), struggles to overcome the traumas of combat by taking on an entirely new and unexpected career: an action-film hero. At the same time, halfway around the world in a cozy North Philadelphia kitchen, his cousin, Yaz (Elisa Bocanegra), takes on a heroic new role of her own as the heart and soul of her crumbling community, providing hot meals and an open door for the needy.

As you relax at cocktail tables with drinks in hand, chatting amicably with others seated near you, singer Marian Frizelle, who we later learn is the director's ex, steps onto one of the two platforms in the room to entertain us with a sexy rendition of "It Was Just One of Those Things," which happens to be exactly the type of relationship action we are about to experience around us. The show then begins as actors walk around among the tables as their characters meet and get to know each other, often speaking directly to audience members who are more than welcome to answer back or give an opinion on how their hook-up chances are going. Without the fourth wall to separate the actors from the audience, everyone is the room has a chance to be in the show - so be prepared!