STAGE REVIEW: WE WILL ROCK YOU By: Faiz No comments

Galileo Figaro (Brian Justin Crum) in We Will Rock You. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

A night at the musical

By Ed Rampell

This musical is a sheer delight for lovers of the British band Queen in particular and of classic rock in general. Like Mamma Mia!, which features Abba’s disco music, We Will Rock You creates a story to rather cleverly wrap around Queen’s songs. However, director Ben Elton’s book conjures and weaves a saga far more imaginative than Mamma Mia’s! rather trite one. We Will Rock You is imaginatively set in a dystopian future, where instead of book burning, “Globalsoft’s” totalitarian state led by Big Sister Killer Queen (the hilarious Jacqueline B. Arnold) has -- horror of horrors! -- banned rock ‘n’ roll music!

Somehow, although it’s never explained why or how, classic rock songs and lyrics filter through the mind of a teenager called Galileo Figaro (Brian Justin Crum), who teams up with another social misfit he dubs Saramouche (Ruby Lewis). They make common cause with keepers of the flame, the Bohemians -- aged outsiders who remember rock and the day the music died -- in their crusade and rebellion to revive, rehabilitate and resurrect rock ‘n’ roll. (The musical playfully panders to its audience, many of them hailing from the generation that came of age during Queen’s heyday and are roughly the same age as the Bohemians.)

No Brechtian agitprop play, We Will Rock You soft peddles its anti-censorship, antifascist pop politics, which are mostly played for laughs in this rather humorous show. There’s even a droll torture scene that makes witty use of Queen’s “Flash Gordon” number.

The two-acter has a multimedia vibe and two-level stylish set with an eight-piece orchestra sporting dual drum sets, belting out the live tunes from above. Architect Mark Fisher is the original production designer and video director, with Arlene Phillips’ frenetic choreography rousingly hoofed by a large cast accompanied by fab singing. At the Bohemians’ lair is what’s presumably a replica of the Freddie Mercury statue located near the Charlie Chaplin statue at Switzerland’s Lake Geneva. (Here’s the fun fact of the day: According to a plaque on that Swiss sculpture, four octave Freddie Mercury was actually born in Zanzibar.)

There’s just one flaw in this overwhelmingly enjoyable production: While the Globalsoft dictators suppress rock, they themselves perform rock ‘n’ roll numbers, which sort of undercuts their point. But this is a mere quibble: A splendid time was had by all as the musical transformed the Ahmanson into a joyous Radio Ga-Ga-palooza. To paraphrase that enlightened philosopher Jerry Lewis: “You’re only young once, but you can stay immature forever.”

Now, here are two hints from your humble reviewer to enhance your theatergoing experience to the fullest: See/hear this merry madcap melodious musical with a kindred spirit who enjoys Queen music and having a good time. And although this critic is loathe to disclose spoiler alerts, let’s just say that when you think the play is over, do not depart, Dear Reader. Stay put for a grand finale that’s, well, sure to rock you!

We Will Rock You runs through Aug. 24 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: Queen (213)628-2772.

THEATER REVIEW: THE LAST CONFESSION By: Faiz No comments

Cardinal Giovanni Benelli (David Suchet) in The Last Confession. Photo by Craig Schwartz.

Vanity and the Vatican

By Ed Rampell

Roger Crane’s The Last Confession is first rate drama at its best. Not only does it tackle the big issues, but it also has a topnotch cast that delivers solid, riveting performances. The ensemble is rather cannily led by David Suchet, who from 1989 to 2013 has portrayed Inspector Hercule Poirot on TV adaptations of Agatha Christie’s celebrated sleuth. 

The major topics that The Last Confession takes on are the role of religion and the behind-the-scenes infighting of Holy Mother Church, which is both a spiritual as well as a temporal power. As the latter, Vatican City is literally an independent state and as the earthly representative of the official creed of almost a billion people, it’s also a political and economic entity to be reckoned with. Viewers of 1990’s third installment of The Godfather saga may be familiar with the Vatican’s purported banking scandals and Mafioso ties.

After Albino Luciani, aka Pope John Paul I (Richard O’Callaghan in a moving performance), replaced Pope Paul in 1978, he lasted only 33 days as the pontiff, triggering conspiracy theories about foul play in the Vatican. Thus the sheer genius of casting Suchet as Vatican powerbroker Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, who investigates the death of the benevolent man who turned out to be far more liberal than the conclave of cardinals had expected, and only wore the shoes of the fisherman for a month before his mysterious death. 

His demise occurred shortly after he purportedly attempted to remove entrenched Vatican bureaucrats from their sinecures of power. Suchet’s sleuth lives again -- although not as a suave Belgian in this theatrical whodunit. This time he’s an Italian cardinal trying to crack the case of: Who murdered the pope.

But this is a detective case unfolding in the corridors of power. And, as it is the Vatican -- and not the White House, like in TV’s Scandal series -- where the story takes place, the subject matter includes the significance of faith. The playwright does an excellent, even philosophical job, of interweaving Christian beliefs with Vatican faction fights (move over Trotsky and Stalin! The Kremlin has nothing on the Vatican!).

The costumes by Fotini Dimou impart and reinforce the realism necessary to convey the pontifical subject matter. William Dudley’s stage design likewise conveys a sense of being inside the Vatican, and his use of cage-like sets is, well, a cagey way of expressing a sensibility of imprisonment and crime.

Crane is, unsurprisingly, an attorney, but it is quite shocking that this script, suggested by what may have been actual events, is the playwright’s first produced drama. Kudos, Mr. Crane! The Ahmanson Theatre’s ambitious production is the second stop on an international tour for this taut, thought-provoking play about conspiracy theories at the very highest levels of the Bishop of Rome’s realm. It is very astute to present this show just as another reformist-minded pope rocks Christendom.

With what appears murder most foul afoot, will Benelli, like Inspector Poirot, get his man? You’ll just have to find out for yourself by high-footing it Downtown to the Music Center. Your humble scribe doesn’t mean to pontificate, but original, modern drama written for the stage doesn’t get much better than this work, which is reminiscent of Jean Anouilh’s Becket. And your critic must confess, that’s the god’s honest truth.



The Last Confession runs through July 6  at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: Confession (213)628-2772.   

L.A.-based reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book. See: Hawaii Book. Rampell and co-author Luis Reyes will be signing books at the Egyptian Theatre’s 10^th Annual Tiki Night Sunday, June 28 at, 7:00 p.m., at 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90028. See: Tiki for more information.

THEATER REVIEW: END OF THE RAINBOW By: Faiz No comments



Judy Garland (Tracie Bennet) in End of the Rainbow.

 Live at Rainbow's End

By Ed Rampell

The star playing Judy Garland (Tracie Bennett), playwright (Peter Quilter) and director (Terry Johnson) of the Tony Award nominated End of the Rainbow are all Brits, and this Judy Garland bio-play is appropriately set in London.

After a series of show biz and personal setbacks, Garland sought a career reboot there in 1968. The action takes place in Garland’s suite -- which, the diva repeatedly gripes, is too munchkin sized -- at the Ritz Hotel and the Talk of the Town nightclub, with the sets convincingly designed by William Dudley. Although this is the sizzling sixties at the swinging London town of Sgt. Peppers and the Rolling Stones, Garland -- who’d become a movie star 30 years earlier in Love Finds Andy Hardy and The Wizard of Oz -- still commands a loyal following.

But offstage -- and sometimes on- -- the oft-married Garland is beset by personal demons, bedeviled by financial problems and relationship woes. Worst of all, Garland is in the grips of alcoholism and an addiction to amphetamines and barbiturates that greatly heighten her torment, whether performing in public before a nightclub or radio audience or in the privacy of her quarters.

The gay icon’s fifth husband to be, Mickey Deans (Erik Heiger), is a former club owner and jazz pianist who seeks to control Judy’s substance abuse -- and possibly the out-of-control Garland herself. It’s interesting that toward the end of her life Garland hooked up with a beau who bore the same first name as Mickey Rooney, her co-star in nine Andy Hardy movies. Was this handsome lounge singer a dozen years younger than Garland really in love with her or using Judy as his meal ticket?

The star’s gay pianist, Anthony (Michael Cumpsty), thinks so, and there is even an allusion to Mickey’s writing a book about Garland in order to cash in (indeed, Deans' co-authored 1972’s Weep No More, My Lady). As Anthony and Mickey duel over Garland’s well-being, performances and affections, there’s an exchange about Judy’s gay fans that’s brief but intriguing.

The self-absorbed Garland is alternately touching, lusty, witty, desperate and pathetic during the offstage scenes at the Ritz. While trodding the boards at the Talk of the Town, accompanied (when they can follow her!) by a live five piece band, the onetime superstar alternates between the commanding stage presence of a truly immense talent and a drug addled performer one step away from becoming a has been, as the years and decades of substance abuse catch up with her, along with an unfulfilled private life.

Bennett’s Garland is often salty; she slings some humorous zingers about her sex life (or lack of) with husband Vincent Minnelli, and more. (In the play there’s little if any mention of Liza Minnelli, the daughter she had with this director.) In the interests of full disclosure this reviewer/film historian should reveal he is no expert in all things Judy, but having said that it seems that Bennett does a superb job incarnating -- rather than merely “impersonating” -- a 46-ish year old Garland. Bennett, who’s the right age for the role, seems to capture and express Judy’s mannerisms and movements, minus any trace of Tracie’s English accent. The actress also looks remarkably like Garland, who in her post-Dorothy years was no conventional beauty. Most importantly, Bennett can belt out a tune worthy of the character she is inhabiting and depicting. Bennett’s portrayal is nothing short of uncanny.

However, End of the Rainbow shares a problem with other biopics/bioplays that portray the later years of actual historical personages, such as the 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris as action painter Jackson Pollock. The playwright does not provide enough back story for viewers unfamiliar with the subjects being depicted to explain their self destructive behavior. In Quilter’s script there is only a very brief allusion to Judy’s youth that explains where her drug habit began, but there needs to be a bit more info for the uninitiated and younger auds. After all, Garland became a star back in the 1930s and died more than 40 years ago.

Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics of Judy’s signature tune, “Over the Rainbow” and other songs in the beloved 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz (a blockbuster spin off was just released), was a socialist who was later blacklisted. In that spirit, it would have been interesting to pursue the angle of Louis B. Mayer, MGM and even Judy’s mom mercilessly exploiting the labor of this phenomenal child artist, using uppers and downers to squeeze every drop of talent and sweat out of her during her waking moments. Indeed, this lifelong drug addiction enabled the studio powers that be to control the singer-actress part of her life, and arguably to ruin the rest. Although this aspect of exploitation is raised vis-à-vis the Mickey Deans character, and how he comes to cope with her addictions to love and substances, the playwright could have more fully explored this theme in End of the Rainbow.

I mean, how is a star of screen, clubs, live concerts, television and recordings reduced to avoiding a hotel manager in order to beat bills? As great as Bennett’s live numbers performed during the nightclub scenes are -- and her singing and hoofing is worthy of Garland in all her glory -- End of the Rainbow is a cautionary tale. Fame is no substitute for a rewarding personal life offstage and offscreen, with loving family, friends, lovers/spouses. For Garland, celebrity and adulation proved to be empty intoxicants: There was no man behind the curtain for troubled Judy. Like amphetamines, renown may give one a temporary perk and high, but being a legend cannot replace the need for flesh and blood true love.

Why is it that the happiness some artists give to so many eludes them? You’d have to be a Tin Man with no heart to not be moved by this dramatization of the last days of the late, not-so-great Judy Garland.


End of the Rainbow runs through April 21 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: www.centertheatregroup.org/; 213/972-4400.

 

    

THEATER REVIEW: SEMINAR By: Faiz No comments

Write away

By Ed Rampell

One of the great things about L.A.’s theater scene is that the TV and film industries provide a vast talent pool of thespians, some of whom are eager to ply their trade by trodding the boards, from Equity waiver 99-seaters to the Ahmanson. And Angelino audiences are in luck, as Seminar’s lead role is played by Jeff Goldblum, a bona fide Hollywood star who has appeared in blockbusters from Jurassic Park to Independence Day.

A once promising novelist now under a cloud of suspicion, Leonard seems to have abandoned his art for booze and bedding co-eds, as he turns to book editing, magazine articles and academia to keep the wolf (re: bill collectors) at the door. He also teaches a pricey rarified weekly writing seminar for young aspiring literati in the Upper Westside apartment of wannabe wordsmith Kate (Aya Cash), who comes from a well-to-do family. At Kate’s posh Manhattan pad Leonard proceeds to alternately praise or rip his tutorial subjects apart, lauding or lambasting their literary efforts, as he, perhaps, unleashes and works through his own inner demons. (When he does so Goldblum is the creepiest he’s been since David Cronenberg’s 1986 sci-fi horror remake The Fly.)

Douglas (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) is a pretentious scribe who happens to have a last name with a certain cache in the dynastic-oriented literary realm. He pompously holds forth on topics, describing their “interiority and exteriority” and so on. Izzy (Jennifer Ikeda) schemes to attain celebrity status by sleeping her way toward the pantheon of scribblers in the public eye. The stony broke Martin (Greg Keller) is critical of both the maestro and his classmates alike. But for some strange reason he never quite gets around to submitting his own unpublished manuscripts for review, and possible scorn and derision.

As the quartet strive for success in the world of publishing, the rapidly paced clever dialogue references creative communities and colleges such as Yaddo and Bennington, supposed hothouses for launching hopeful literary lions towards getting published, fame and fortune. As Leonard’s class unfolds there are enough shifting romantic liaisons to make Woody Allen’s polyamorous skull spin. Who does and does not get “lucky” (and with whom) is a wry commentary on “success,” which can be sexual in the celebrity sense and/or artistic.

Award winning playwright Theresa Rebeck’s must-see (and hear) Seminar is often funny, sometimes sexy and always insightful, shedding light not only on the trap and claptrap of celebrityhood but more importantly on the literary creative process and on what it truly means to be a writer. Along the way there are meditations upon ethics and great lines tossed about, such as thoughtful Kate’s spot on observation: “Fraud is a way of life in a capitalist culture, especially in the arts.”

Sam Gold, who helmed the Broadway production of Seminar, expertly, tautly directs the current ensemble cast with finesse. They all strike the right notes of pathos or humor, especially Goldblum, who, in addition to his Tinseltown big budget hits, has a rather extensive theater background and has acted in films by Robert Altman, Paul Mazursky, etc. At age 60 Goldblum is hitting his stride and all his marks, whether delivering zingers, stingers or soliloquies.

The breezy dizzy Izzy is no ditzy blonde -- she’s an Asian-American. Ikeda appeared on the Great White Way in Top Girls, which is ironic as her girl goes topless in Seminar while she uses her feminine charms to climb the literary ladder towards media acclaim. Some may consider Izzy to be a blithe free spirit; others may find her to be a sensationalized sensual-ized stereotype of the “Eastern” sex kitten who freely pleasures white males.

Rebeck’s rumination on the literary life contains plot and character twists that reveal what it genuinely means to be an artist, especially in this overly commercialized world where a terrifyingly small number of Americans read contemporary fiction, and where the publishing world is undergoing major shifts due to the nature of technology and a collapsing economy. Of course, the underlying core of the problem is the small amount of readers of books in our glitz-driven electronic and digital media saturated society, which seems poised on the verge of becoming a parody of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where there’s no need to outlaw reading books, since so few people do, anyway. (The lawmakers are probably illiterate and couldn’t write the legislation anyway.   

Seminar ends contemplatively and with the play’s only scene change. In another realistic set designed by David Zinn, Martin confronts his tutor at Leonard’s apartment, its shelves brimming with books, where the truth is revealed by the student and his teacher, who confesses to having “no skin.” The perfect note -- literally -- is struck, as church music mysteriously sounds, suggesting the spiritual nature and calling of the writing process.

What, pray tell, exactly is a writer, those creatures inking out a living by creating a precious cosmos composed of words, as Seminar puts it? For my money (or lack of, since I am one) a writer is someone who has something to say and says it well, in written form. And, dare I say it, may even hope to write the wrongs of the world in doing so.


Seminar runs through Sunday, Nov. 18 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: www.centertheatregroup.org/; 213-628-2772.