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February 2009 Los Angeles Beat with Laura Hitchcock

laura — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:08:01 +0000

February 23, 2009

          The big week-end is over. Saturday night both boos and bravos greeted The Los Angeles Opera’s premiere of Richard Wagner’s “Das Rheingold”, the first in his four-opera saga based on Norse legends. Achim Freyer, 74-year-old German artist, designed and directed this unique, surreal production. Its basic theme is the timeless war between love and power acted out in a mythic realm. My full review is on CurtainUp.com so I’ll only say here that the Gods were giant puppets, the dwarfs wore masks, the Magic Helmet was a gold top hat and the characters emerged from Freyer’s dim mysterious lighting like exotic sea creatures.   I came down hard on the side of the bravos.

          No boos were heard, though some may have been hissed, at the Oscars, Hollywood’s New Year’s Eve and raison de etre. Hugh Jackman was Master of Ceremonies for the best production they’ve done in years. I much preferred his song-and-dance presentation of the top films to innumerable clips and would be happy to watch the multi-talented Jackson for the whole three hours. Another happy innovation was having each nominee introduced by a previous winner, so we saw such legendary stars as Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Robert DeNiro, Sir Ben Kingsley stepping out to acknowledge individual nominees. Even those who didn’t win went home feeling eulogized.

          There were some upsets, particularly Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke in the Best Actor category. A lot of people were rooting for the Comeback Kid but Penn’s superb performance and the powerful speech he gave for equality rang with undisputable power.   Penn’s speech reinforced that of “Milk”’s screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, who won for Best Original Screenplay.

          Best Supporting Actress Award went to that fine, delicious actress Penelope Cruz whose talent no one can debate but memory still clings to the unforgettable work of Viola Davis in John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt”. She had just one scene, that of a mother fighting for her child in a mid 20^th-century Catholic school when his sexual orientation would have doomed him. She whispered to the nun, played by marvelous Meryl Streep, what his life was like, what he was like. No one who saw it will ever forget this scene which was the cornerstone of John Patrick Shanley’s mesmerizing play. One can only hope Davis’s talent opens the door for many more opportunities to share her range.

One always wonders as the awards ceremony winds through its three hours, numbingly long, no matter who tries what, if some of the technical awards could have been presented on a separate occasion. There’s always much moaning about the ratings so there’s an obvious conflict between what the Academy wants to do and what the networks feel they need. One option is a separate banquet/presentation for technical awards which could then be briefly announced at the Oscars.

On the other hand, the good students among the viewers can listen to the excellent expositions given by the actors who introduced the technical awards and learn. The rest of the audience are forcibly back in school to learn what learning is all about.

Or you can have another drink and graze the buffet table as those of us did at the Oscar party at my former travel partner’s home. Everybody brought hors d’hoevres or wine, gossiped, fought, filled out the ballots for the Oscar pool, were amazed that the pool winner flew by the seat of his pants with no insider knowledge, and wound up singing around the piano, a great thing to do at show-biz parties.

February 20, 2009

          Reprise Theatre Company, which offers 2-week revivals of beloved Broadway musicals with professional casts, has struck it rich with its current production “Man of La Mancha”. Artistic Director Jason Alexander was right when he astutely observed in his Program Note that Don Quixote, the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, hits a resonant chord in his devotion to “impossible dreams” in grim times. In the end, as the Inquisition marches him away, it’s the courage and inspiration he leaves behind with his fellow prisoners that triumphs.

          This superb production, directed by Michael Michetti who collaborated with the original adapter Dale Wasserman, stars Brent Spiner as an unostentatious but determined Miguel de Cervantes, the actor/writer imprisoned for debt, who actually wrote “Don Quixote” in prison. Here he performs it in a desperate attempt to fend off the other prisoners who want to pillage his chest of actors’ props and destroy his treasured manuscript.

          He transforms lead into gold, particularly the brave brutalized scullery wench Aldonza (Julia Migenes) who, in his eyes, becomes his adored Lady Dulcinea. (See my review on CurtainUp.com.) Those who want to see Migenes on film can find “Carmen” with Placido Domingo directed by brilliant Italian director Francico Rosi or “Three Penny Opera” with Richard Harris and Raul Julia.

          The “Man of La Mancha” music by Mitch Leigh with lyrics by Joe Darion still resounds and “The Impossible Dream” gets a thunderous ovation every time.

February 15, 2009

  I’m all over the web this week. Monday I went to my first poetry reading with my first poem, an exhilarating new experience. There’s a big poetry community in Los Angeles which meets in bookstores, cafes and homes. The one I visited, Moonday Poetry, was in The Village Bookstore, Pacific Palisades (see MoondayPoetry.com). I was inspired to start a new magazine section, “Poetry”, below under Enthusiasms.

          Covered two theatre premieres, “Time Stands Still” a new play by Donald Margulies in which two journalists explore the nature of war, the media and their relationship with bite and wit at The Geffen Playhouse and “Dracula”, an erotic chiller which gives new meaning to the concept of “bite” at Noho Theatre Ensemble in North Hollywood. See reviews on CurtainUp.com.

Whether you devote Valentine’s Day to love or romance, the perfect thing to do is put on a red dress and dance the tango, “the dance of love” as one popular song croons. The millonga I went to was hosted by the appropriately named Linda Valentino and the music seemed to be especially enfolding. There were many other events and dances all over town but my heart has been lost to the tango which I was introduced to five years ago by an Italian actor who grew up in Buenos Aires where he danced the tango every night. He’s still the best tanguero I know. For more information, see Linda’s website at A Puro Tango.com or Tango Afficionado.com.



February 8, 2009

          “Minsky’s”, the bubbly new burlesque musical, debuted at the Ahmanson Friday night. (See my review on CurtainUp.com.) Barry Manilow was spotted speeding out the door afterwards. Ace producer Susan Loewenberg of LA Theatre Works blanched after a glance at her cell phone revealed that funding for the National Endowment for the Arts was on the government hit list. That would impact the arts as we know them! Hopefully someone will step up to the bat before the vote and strike a blow for the life of the spirit.

          On a brighter note, 80-year-old musical star Anne Jeffreys just got an offer to do the revival of Jerome Kern’s “Music in the Air” in New York. She’s turned it down to stay here with us. Someone should mount “A Little Night Music” with Anne.

          Anne may be too young to return to chilly New York but my 90-year-old girlfriend Frances Bay (“Happy Gilmore”’s grandma) just postponed our cocktail date for Tuesday because she had a job.

February 3, 2009

Welcome to February which began with the most unique and marvelous birthday party I’ve been to yet.

My friend Linda invited half a dozen girlfriends to the Olympic Spa on Olympic Boulevard, a superb Korean massage parlor, for an afternoon of steam room, hot tubs and an hour-long massage which ranged from scrub through shower to the kind of pounding, stroking, in-depth massage of your dreams, including a shampoo. We emerged to lie on the hot tile resting platform looking ten years younger. As we dried our hair with the hair dryers they provided, we were glad to be glowing for the rest of the party.

That included champagne and caviar at the home of our hostess and dinner in a Korean restaurant followed by tango lessons from Jason, an imported tango teacher who was gorgeous and smooth. What can you say to a hostess who thinks of everything? Just be glad she has a birthday every year.

January Los Angeles Beat with Laura Hitchcock

laura — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:32:45 +0000

January 31, 2009

One of the things I’ve done is lead theatre tours to Ireland, including the west coast of Connemara and Galway City where the tiny Druid Theatre made world history when its artistic director, Gerry Hynes, uncovered a play by Martin McDonagh in her slush pile in the 1990s. That play, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane”, went on to award-winning performances around the world, including Broadway. It was the first in a trilogy. The second, “A Skull in Connemara”, opened at Theatre Tribe in North Hollywood last week.

At its core, it’s a noisy irreverent deconstruction of death in this rural almost primitive wild west of Ireland in the 1970s. Mick (Morlan Higgins) has the job of digging up cemetery residents who’ve been dead for seven years to make room for the newly deceased. His neighbor, old Maryjohnny Rafferty (Jenny O’Hara) who drops by every night to cadge a drink, comments on the insinuations made against Mick by her grandsons Mairtin (Jeff Kerr McGivney), a rebellious high school drop-out, and Thomas (John K. Linton), a police inspector, who desperately emulates such American TV detectives as “Starsky and Hutch” in his search for promotion.

This year Mick must dig up the grave of his late wife Oona, who was killed in an auto crash while he was drunk-driving. Although he was acquitted, there are still whispers that Oona was dead before Mick took the wheel.

The play’s scurrilous plot twists are too deliciously bizarre to reveal but the image that lingers is the revengeful glee with which Mick and Martin hammer the skulls to bits. Though more contrived than “Beauty Queen”, it has the black energy and vital vulgarity that mark this writer. In his early plays McDonagh laughs at death with the bravado of a very young playwright.

Stuart Rogers has his finger on the leaping pulse of this piece of skullduggery and has assembled a first-rate cast. Jenny O’Hara is a sly, determined Maryjohnny who has found a way to cheat at Bingo with the skill of a Bernie Madoc. Linton projects the thankless role of a cop on the beat who wants to be, in the sneering words of young cousin Martin, “Macmillan and Wife”, an old American TV series. McGivney gives Martin a feckless animation. The cast is headed by award-winning Morlan Higgins whose beautiful voice is enhanced by the lilting Irish accent he uses and, though McDonagh hasn’t given him much information to work with, conveys the presence of a hulking man who lives with death. Rogers stations him front center stage staring us in the eye at the beginning and end of the play, as if to say “I’m one of you”.

Jeff McLaughlin’s incredible set design is reversible, beginning with Mick’s wood-paneled house which, during a black-out, becomes the cemetery where the men dug up graves. I don’t know how they did it but I’ve never seen anything like it.

At Theatre Tribe, 5267 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood, Reservations: (800) 838-3006.

Other plays reviewed this month on CurtainUp.com are “Mammals” at The Lost Studio, “Pope Joan” at the Stella Adler, “You, Nero” at South Coast Rep, “Taking Steps” at the Odyssey, “Pippin” at the Taper, “Stormy Weather” at Pasadena Playhouse.

January 28, 2009

Last Saturday marked the 90^th birthday of my girlfriend, actress Frances Bay. She’s played everything from the matriarch in John Guare’s “Bosoms and Neglect” at the Odyssey Theatre to Fonzie’s grandmother on “Happy Days.” Today’s youth remember her best as Adam Sandler’s grandmother on “Happy Sandler”.

We met at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference where she was an actress and I was a Critic Fellow. That’s where I first met playwrights John Patrick Shanley and August Wilson and brought home friendships with Frances Bay and others that I cherish.

Although there’s a generational difference, I’ve always thought of Fran as a girlfriend. Petite, unostentatiously youthful, she has the vivacity and curiosity of a child with the wisdom and emotional depth of a woman and the articulateness of a world-class actress. “I need my Frances vitamins,” I tell her for the joy of hearing her laugh and enjoying her beautiful voice and sparkling eyes. I went to Frances after the sudden death of my longtime companion, not only because the death of her own husband a few years ago was a parallel experience but because I needed the gentle understanding that offered no false panaceas.

Frances’s large family and many friends turned out in force for one of the hospitable parties she still gives regularly. Under the tent put up over the garden bar mingled producers, directors, artists, writers, actors and civilians of all ages and ethnicities. Every other person was a cousin.

Days after the party I talked about it with Ron Sossi, at the premiere of his production of “Taking Steps” at his Odyssey Theatre. Ron couldn’t make the party because of rehearsals but he’s still looking for a part for a dynamic 90-year-old actress in a wheelchair.

Before the cake was cut, we were asked to contribute Franny anecdotes. I have one I love.

After lunch at Farmers Market a few years ago, we both reached for the check but she was faster than I was. “I’m an old lady,” she said, flourishing it triumphantly, “and I get residuals!”

January 10, 2008

When I was invited to a séance with medium Hollister Rand, I accepted with alacrity. This was something I’d always wanted to experience, open-minded that I am to the three possibilities: it’s legit, it’s a fake or, as we were told when I worked for the Esalen Institute, it’s a form of ESP or mind-reading.

The meeting of well over 100 people was held in the Bodhi Tree Bookstore Annex, a mellowly lit room on Melrose Avenue. Rand, a jolly blonde woman, radiates positive energy. She works in what she called the Love Vibration to maintain that energy and turned down a TV show that wanted her to enter the Justice Vibration and solve a crime.

Rand told us there were many spirits in the room behind the people they knew in their earthbound existence. “He’s tall, he keeps rising up and up,” she told one woman. “Six foot three,” the woman said, tears running down her face. Another woman heard from her mother, once very critical about her clothes, hair, etc. but more mellow in the next dimension.

A writer got editing suggestions from his spirit guide and the spirit of a black lab running up and down the aisle was reunited with his former owner.

Rand says these spirits are always around us, which is reassuring if that’s a good thing, and prompts us to be aware of new energies or realizations in our environments after a séance. My cinematographer neighbor once went to one mistaking it for a screening, as the France translation is closer to “viewing”.

I had a previous experience with rare energy. At an Esalen workshop, a man said he would put us in touch with the Crystal People. If we lay down on the floor in a circle and held hands, he would send a jolt of energy through the right hand and out the left hand. And he did. It was daylight, I was sober and I felt it.

Later I queried my then boss, the President of Esalen, about this. His take was that some people have rare energies and can’t define them, so they come up with explanations like the Crystal People or Spirit Guides.

Of the many paths, seen or unseen, that lie before us, that’s an alternative definition to what doubters call a bridge to nowhere.

January 6, 2008

A 12^th Night Party at the home of friends who live in a historic Hollywood house ripe with stories. Built by the legendary theatre magnate Pantages whose eponymous theatre on Hollywood Boulevard has been restored with gilt and statuary, the 1920s-era house is built into a hill in Beachwood Canyon. From the terrace Pantages could see his theatre winking below, framed by mountains and the glitter of Hollywood.

The house was used by Pantages’s showgirls and was, for a time, used by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.

Downstairs on the second floor, the master bedroom suite overlooks a fountain. A spacious study and second bedroom are also each paired with a bath. Two lower floors are used for storage and office space.

The living room contains both a piano and an organ on which the two musical hosts play duets for the sing-along which is a feature of their hospitable evenings.

January 1, 2009

Happy New Year, one and all! I danced it in at Vladimir and Dimitry’s Millonga at the Santa Monica Women’s Club, which included a buffet dinner, a belly-dancing demonstration from Marina and a samba demonstration from Francine in a Vegas showgirl costume. Although Marina invited people to dance with her, only the best and the bravest dared. The rest would have preferred more dance time for themselves.

The large floor, dim lights. sensuous music and compatible people dressed for a gala occasion made this a great place to dance in the New Year for tangueras and tangeros.

Evesdropping on conversations that weren’t all levity: A dashing Arab producer asked a blonde Jewish-American teacher: “What do you think of the Gaza Strip?”

New Year’s Resolutions: None, except the resolution not to make any. I’m dumping this dated concept in favor of goals.

1. Top of the list is making this revised magazine the best it can be, covering not only the LA Beat but whatever I come across that’s astounding and worthwhile.

2. Travel more. Sarasota, Florida, for The American Theatre Critics Convention, New Jersey and New York for a family reunion and a long-time dream, covering a visit to the Greek Isles.

3. And I’m always up for what Dorothy Parker called “a whole new set of dearest friends.”

4. With friends traveling in Galilee before the war broke out, that part of the world and its safety and peace are much on my mind. The inauguration of a new president with a firm fierce mandate for change is the brightest star in our cloudy sky.

To all of you, make plans, set goals and break them down into one small step at a time. If we don’t get there, we’ll get somewhere we could never have predicted. Go for it!

December Los Angeles Beat with Laura Hitchcock

laura — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:48:49 +0000

December 29, 2008

The end of a holiday week-end. A little tango in Westwood on Friday night, a holiday party yesterday at the home of my 89-year-old girlfriend, wonderful actress Frances Bay, where we met everyone from the director of her new movie “Bare Knuckles” to neighbors and relatives to the chance to catch up with Fran again, already planning her next party, her 90th birthday in January.

December 25, 2008

Christmas Day was a traditional family day in the usual weird and wonderful ways. All morning I was on the phone with far flung relatives. I went to Christmas dinner in the beautiful new home of a treasured friend, classified as a historic home. Many small rooms which she has with great sensitivity and taste heightened with warmth and color. Burnished wood floors, just a few well-placed pieces of furniture positioned in the right places, artworks that range from Victorian etchings to small exotic sculptures from many countries.
Dinner was potluck, conversation varied, directed by a guest who had spent time at The Esalen Instiute (as a former staff member, I recognized the style). He did it superbly and it was much more interesting than free form. There was one clash but there usually is on Christmas, whether it’s family or a new family of friends. I treasure families of friends. They’ve been through recent life with you. I treasure Christmas, cards dribbling in from old and distant friends, Christmas carols, the heightened sense of community, whatever you call it. We are human, we are loving, we are here and, God willing, will be here and human and loving for a long, long time!

December 24, 2008

When I opened my door today, I discovered a large white tent stretched across the patio of my building. Heaters and tables were being set up. My Italian-American neighbor announced he was having a Christmas Eve dinner and invited me to drop in.

Having a previous commitment to help a friend’s diversified family light a Hanukah candle, trim the tree and bake Christmas cookies, it was late in the evening by the time I got home. There was maybe half an hour to visit with neighbors and chat up new faces before heading out to midnight Episcopal Mass at All Saints Church. Despite two parties and driving through the rain, I was very glad I went. The music was beautiful, the poinsettias glowed, and the love and hope implicit in the Christmas message were more welcome than ever this year. As was the chance to wish a Merry Christmas to friends there. And take this chance to wish a Merry Christmas to you.

Greetings to you, far and near,
At the turning of the year.
May your Wassail Bowl be brimming
And your friends come round for trimming
Of your Christmas tree or palm
On a night that’s bright and calm.

O be joyful, near and far,
Underneath the Christmas star,
May your own New Year unfold
Treasures, pleasures, hands to hold
And delight in where you are.

By and From
Laura Hitchcock
Christmas 2008
Value-Magazine.org
CurtainUp.com
Laura-Hitchcock@sbcglobal.net

(323) 656-6309

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December 22, 2008

My kind of week-end. Tango Friday and Sunday, a play on Saturday. The performance was “Smokey Joe’s Café”, a rousing revival at El Portal in North Hollywood, featuring two Tony-nominated Broadway cast members, DeLee Lively, who does a sizzling shimmy, and her real-life husband Robert Torti, who is a suave singer-dancer. Full review on CurtainUp.com.
Friday stopped in at Linda Valentino’s practica to dance with some of the great social dancers she’s trained. Limbered me up for the Ministry of Tango’s Christmas millonga Sunday at a private home in Bel Air. The music was superb, I saw many old friends and made new ones, and had a wonderful evening of dancing, talking and listening.

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December 18, 2008

The Hollywood Arts Council’s holiday party was hosted in the charming Los Feliz Hills home of the publisher and editor of Discover Hollywood Magazine, Oscar and Nyla Arslanian. Guests ranged from John Holly and Ed Murphy, Chairman of the Board and Managing Director respectively, of The Blank Theatre to journalist Rena Dictor LeBlanc.

Between ogling the view from the Arslanians’ balcony, sampling the exotic and delicious buffet, and hanging out at the bar off the dining room to chat with whoever bellied up next, there wasn’t a dull moment.

December 14, 2008

The Oscar Goes To…Because I’ve seen so many new movie screenings lately, I’m giving them a category all their own. You’ll find it under the Arts category.
Otherwise, the week-end included Friday night tango practica welcoming back Linda Valentino, teacher par excellence, where I had many excellent partners and learned to follow the new steps Linda taught them.
Saturday’s highlight was an open house posted by my actress neighbor Peaches, featuring her usual bountiful spread and beautiful friends, including actors and others. Despite dubious rumbling about the possibility of a SAG strike, most of them doubted it would come to that. On a happier note, there were lots of stage appearances and screen triumphs, most notably the nomination of the hostess’s friend Viola Davis for best supporting actress by several awards shows.

December 11, 2008

My last Film class was bitter-sweet. I’ll miss all my students but their assurance that they’ll miss me, too, and the thoughtful gifts they gave me will carry me through until next summer when I may be back teaching a new and different class.
For our farewell holiday screening, I chose a personal favorite: “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Holidays, whatever your persuasion, are permeated with family memories. You can’t get away from it. You can’t walk down a street without being more aware of children and festivities. But lots of us don’t have our families close by at Christmastime and lots of us have developed families of friends that give a new meaning to the sense of community. That’s why I chose this film that follows a group of friends who have been tight since schooldays through the weddings of some, the funeral of one, the suppressed love of one for another, the romantic confusion of the leading characters who marry the wrong people and somehow manage to make the right lives for themselves. Written by Richard Curtis and directed by Mike Newell, Hugh Grant, Andie McDowell and Kristin Scott Thomas play the fun, the laughter, the sorrow, the joy, and the romantic confusion of the characters in this 1994 British hit. There’s lots to laugh at and identify with in this delightful movie.

December 10, 2008

Charlie Kaufman is the only screenwriter/director whose subject is the mind: its fantasies, the use it makes of reality, imagination, will. The first film he has directed, “Synechdoce, New York” is more obsessed with this subject than any of his previous films. The surreal is as strong an element as he can get away with in most of his films and, in this latest one, where he holds the reins, it’s very much in play. The title is a rhetorical term in which the whole of a thing stands for a part or a part for the whole. Thus, star Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays stage director Caden experiences and is inflicted by everything that afflicts humanity. Too self-involved to make either of his two marriages work, he spends 17 years directing a play, subsidized by a MacArthur grant, alternating only with hypochondriacal illnesses. Caden is the only man in the play. There’s something Woody Allen-ish in the way Kaufman surrounds him with adoring blond actresses. Although Kaufman has made the film true to his own vision, his previous films, directed by others, had more pace, character development and sense of timing. This one is redeemed by Hoffman’s humanity which makes Caden constantly sympathetic, no matter how limited his behavior.

December 7, 2008

My head and heart are so full of “Revolutionary Road”, Sam Mendes’s film starring Leonardo de Caprio and Kate Winslet. At first I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to see a film about a dysfunctional marriage. Been there, done that.” But the acting, direction and depth of this story put it, in my mind, on a list of 100 Best Movies Ever Made. Credit, the cast say, must be given to Richard Yates because they all love his novel on which the film is based. Michael Shannon, who plays the exceptional role of Richard, a man who has had a nervous breakdown, 37 shock treatments and a maddening mother (Kathy Bates), gives a vivid cameo performance. Full review under Arts on this web site.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Premiere of “Santa Must Die!” at Tim Robbins’ always avant-garde Actors Gang Theatre. Playwright/director Angela Berliner turns Dickens’ traditional Christmas Carol and its characters inside out. Life on the seamy side includes hedonistic porn (no nudity), homosexuality, cruelty, crudity, and irreverence. David Harris plays Scrooge with manic nastiness. Berliner directs her excellent cast with vitality, though the porn scenes become somewhat repetitious. It narrows down at the end to a heartfelt solo by Chris Schultz that reluctantly expresses latent spirituality. Full review on CurtainUp.com.
Opening night reception at the theatre, followed by Michael Espinoza’s tango millonga at LA Dance Experience on Westwood.

Friday, December 5, 2008

“Jane Austen Unscripted” by the remarkable Improv Theatre at Hollywood’s Theatre Asylum. This group improvises a different story every night from the core narratives and characters of Jane Austen’s novels. They’ve toured the world successfully with unscripted versions of Shakespeare, Dickens, Tennessee Williams and Stephen Sondheim. As Jane Austen wrote in “Emma”, “Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” Full review on CurtainUp.com.
Being in Hollywood, I wound my way to the Hollywood Dance Center for Linda Valentino’s tango practica. I danced all the time with wonderful dancers, old friends and new.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Christmas season is a good excuse to show my film class John Huston’s 1988 film “The Dead”, based on James Joyce’s most famous short story from “The Dubliners”. It begins at a Christmas party in Dublin in 1904, includes an Irish poem recited by the famed actor Sean McClory and a solo by Frank Patterson, at that time Ireland’s leading tenor. Anjelica Huston as Gretta is her father’s leading lady. Renowned Irish actor Donal McCann plays her husband. At the party’s end, when the two are alone in their hotel room, Gretta speaks feelingly of her first love, Michael, who died at 17 and her husband realizes there are many things he never knew about his wife. He looks out the window at the falling snow and has a sense of the isolation that is part of every life, described by James Joyce in words more beautiful than these.
The class was divided between those who thought it was too slow and those who thought it was unique, special and wonderful. Having interviewed Tony Huston when he wrote the screenplay for this movie, I was glad to hear his work appreciated. John Huston raised Tony and Anjelica in Ireland. “Someone from a different environment wouldn’t have had the ear,” said Tony with a soft Irish accent.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Journeyed downtown to interview Ty Giordano and Michael Arden who will co-star in the Deaf West/Center Theatre Group revival of the 1970s hit musical “Pippin” opening in January at the Ahmanson. Ty played Huck Finn in the award-winning production by the same group of “Big River” which then went on to Broadway. Jeff Calhoun is again directing and, though Pippin is, in his words, “much more sophisticated and abstract” than Big River, it’s also the most exciting prospect to open the 2009 theatre season. Full interview to be published in L.A. Stage Magazine.

November Los Angeles Beat by Laura Hitchcock

laura — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:22:08 +0000

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Friday is tango with favorite partners and some surprising erotic moves from unexpected persons. One of the wonders of the tango world is that you never know what the night will bring.

Saturday morning we visited our great and good girlfriend, Frances Bay, 89 years old and every inch
a star. She’s best known as “Hollywood’s Grandma” because she played Fonzie’s grandmother in “Happy Days” and Adam Sandler’s grandmother in “Happy Gilmore”. I took Frances out to lunch the other day and when the check came, she snatched it out of my hand. “I’m an old lady!” she told me fiercely “and I get residuals!”

the rock opera “Lovelace” about the late star of “Deep Throat”, still America’s best-selling movie in the porn genre and maybe any other. This 90-minute sung-through popera was very well done, with a fine cast directed by the excellent Ken Sawyer, in the little Hayworth Theatre on baja Wilshire Blvd. My full review is on CurtainUp.com.

Although I never met the late Linda Lovelace, I have met Georgina Spelvin, star of the original “The Devil in Miss Jones” who was recently spotted signing her memoirs at Book Soup, the dishy book store on the Sunset Strip. Georgina dashes off a sprightly memoir about a life unlike most others. She survived it and is currently enjoying a happy marriage and accepting awards at Adult Film Conventions.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

The morning I’m on the phone with far-flung friends and relations. The late day there’s a glorious Thanksgiving dinner with a family of friends. Traditional food, untraditional people and a lot of new ones. Hope you all had a HAPPY THANKSGIVING, too, and found things to be thankful for.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Culver City has blossomed into something far more than a bedroom community and home of that giant studio once known as MGM, now same lot, same place as Sony. The heart of town now offers restaurants of every nationality, a multi-plex and two, count them two, world class live theatres: Tim Robbins’ The Actor’s Gang at the charming Ivy Sub-Station, once a city facility, and The Kirk Douglas Theatre, operated by The Center Theatre Group, named for a major donor, legendary movie star Kirk Douglas, usually seen there on opening nights. It’s located in a former movie theatre, renovated in gleaming red that would make Nancy Reagan proud, and practically spitting distance from the former MGM where Mr. Douglas made his bones.
Today the Douglas opened Douglas Carter Beane’s “The Little Dog Laughed”. Beane won a Tony nomination for this Hollywood satire and Julie White won the Tony itself, as deadly chic agent Diane who manipulates her gay client and the play he’s bought into heterosexual megaplex country no matter what lives are warped along the way.
To quote from my full review on CurtainUp.com: “At an awards show, Diane says, “We’re in New York, which we of Los Angeles love, accepting awards from critics, which we love even more so.” Here the show is, in Los Angeles, accepting applause from an industry audience which doesn’t mind being laughed at, knowing that without them, there would be no humor, no money and no play.”
Glimpsed at the after-party were Larry Pressman, who played Woodrow Wilson in the Douglas’s recent play “Of Equal Measure”, and Victor Garber, who starred as Frederick in “A Little Night Music” at the Ahmanson and will be seen next week in the film “Milk”, starring Sean Penn as the late Harvey Milk.
Garber will play the handsome, charming, unaffected San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, murdered by Dan White the same day as Milk. Moscone would sometimes drop in at the writers’ watering hole, The Washington Square Bar and Grill (known as The Washbag) in North Beach, have a drink at the bar and affably chat with anyone who met him. Luckily for me, an old friend had gone to high school with the mayor and I have a brief but warm memory of this progressive public servant. He was just the sort of Mayor San Francisco deserved and just the sort of guy you always hoped to meet at the Washbag.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Friday morning is sacred to reading the reviews in both The New York and Los Angeles Times, making it an excuse for café/croissant at Farmers Market in Los Angeles. Though more crowded and upscale than it was when it started out, I guess that’s true of everything. Among the rising prices you can always find a bargain, like Starbucks wonderful Almond Brioche for breakfast or, for lunch, a slice of Patsy D’Amore’s pizza or a hand-selected lunch from the Pampas Grill’s buffet. Some old Hollywood directors still make it a breakfast must on a certain day each week and it holds great memories for many Angelenos and a whiff of multi-culturism for visitors.
Friday night is sacred to tango. Of the many opportunities, all listed on Tango Afficionado, tonight’s stop was Michael Espinoza’s millonga, following his class at L. A. Dance Experience on Westwood Boulevard. The emphasis tonight was on the music of Nuevo tango and it was delicious. The dancers are all ages and all nationalities. Their common bond is a love of the dance. Tangueros look sinister and dashing in black pants and shirts. Tangueras enter the spirit of the dance with something elegant and sexy, showing the curve of a good leg or the slope of a sweet shoulder. You’ll see people listening, watching, at the hors d’oeuvres table, greeting old friends, making new ones. There’s the mystery of a new partner, the pleasure of a familiar one. Above all, there’s the night and the music and being part of a dance that embodies passion, communion and a wonderful sense of being in the world.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Thanksgiving movie day for my film class. Screened several trying to find the one they would like best. Was leaning towards “Pieces of April” starring Katie Holmes, now unfortunately best known as Mrs. Tom Cruise, who does a lovely job in the title role, playing a hippie girl in New York who can’t cook but bravely invites her estranged conventional New Jersey family to Thanksgiving dinner. Her mother, played unforgettably by Patricia Clarkson as a terminally ill bitch, leads this dysfunctional (what else?) family to Manhattan. A plus in its favor was being written and directed by Peter Hedges, who wrote the marvelous “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”
But the film I chose, one I’d seen many times before, was Woody Allen’s Chekhovian “Hannah and Her Sisters” because, although also featuring a dysfunctional family at Thanksgiving, it’s Allen’s best. His customary neurosis is leavened by love at its most irrational and forgiving, by a hilarious exploration of death and comparative religions, by the warm décor of Hannah’s apartment and one of Allen’s intuitive nostalgic classic pop music scores, featuring Cole Porter and Gershwin.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The first holiday movie for me is “”A Christmas Tale” and it’s home for the holidays in France for a group who give a new meaning to “dysfunctional”. Mother Junon (Catherine Deneuve) is facing looming leukemia which can only be cured by a bone marrow transplant and finding a donor among a group she thought she got rid of by giving birth to them proves to be challenging for any number of reasons. Still haunted by the memory of her six-year-old son who died of leukemia long ago because no donor could be found, she resents her daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), a successful playwright, because she wasn’t a compatible donor, never liked her second son Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and condescendingly considers third son Ivan Melvil Poupaud) her pet. Ivan was pathologically shy until his brother and cousin Simon (Laurent Capelluto) fixed him up with beautiful Sylvia (Chiara Mastroiani, daughter of Deneuve and Marcello Mastroiani who looks as much like her father as Isabella Rosselini looks like her mother Ingrid Bergman). When Sylvia learns about the fix-up, she confronts Simon with their blighted relationship and they try to heal it under the same roof as Sylvia’s husband and children who take it with Gallic equinimity. Elizabeth’s hauntingly handsome teen-age son Paul (Emile Berling) is as neurotic as Henri. Junon’s husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), a troll-like man of infinite charm, is much older. When asked why by Ivan and Sylvia’s two little boys why, he says he likes younger women.
The warm décor of this family home and the Christmas play the children put on are at curious variance with the inner conflicts of the family but the movie, co-written and directed by Arnaud Desplechin, is consistently fascinating, maddening and curious.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Over the hill to the Valley to visit one of my favorite small theatres, Theatre Banshee, which focuses, though not exclusively, on Irish plays. Co-producers are husband and wife Sean Branney and Leslie Baldwin, graduates of Valencia. That night they were presenting one of famed Irish pubkeeper/playwright’s productions, “The Year of the Hiker”. Only in Ireland! The fine actor Barry Lynch heads a very good cast in this uniquely Irish story which plays on universal themes: father/son, husband/wife, those who stay and those who run away. Worth a visit to quiet Magnolia Blvd, where you won’t have to fight the Melrose traffic. Full review on CurtainUp.com.

Friday, November 14, 2008

When I first moved here, Melrose Avenue was the sleepy main street of a quiet West Hollywood residential neighborhood. A few shops who wouldn’t dream of calling themselves boutiques, a couple of restaurants known mostly to locals. That was Then. Now is WOW, if you like Wow. Every block is lined with, let’s call them shopping opportunities or Shop Ops, restaurants ranging from mid-price like Louise’s Trattoria to high-priced like Citrus, and three or four little theatres, all with soaring standards.
I went over there Friday for my first visit to the Meta Theatre and finding it was my first challenge. The publicity material gave its address at 7401 Melrose Avenue. Actually the entrance is around the corner on Ogden Street and I literally stumbled across it because I had parked on a side street and was walking down Ogden towards Melrose.
Here we saw an excellent production of Keith Bunin’s “The Busy World Is Hushed”. The set’s production values in the tiny space were warm and evocative. The only minus was the acoustics in the little theatre. They may be hampered by the fan but it’s something that needs work. Full review is posted on CurtainUp.com.

Los Angeles Beat by Laura Hitchcock

laura — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:01:40 +0000

LOS ANGELES BEAT BY LAURA HITCHCOCK

People tell me I have an interesting life. Because I’m an arts journalist, many have suggested I write an arts journal about the theatre and opera beat I cover here in Los Angeles. They’re also interested in my personal passion, tango, and the Film Appreciation course I teach at a local college.

Hallowe’en, my favorite holiday, seems like an auspicious time to start. I always loved dressing up like a person from another planet and wandering dark streets, even past the trick or treat age. Metaphorically, I do it still.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Today is the day I teach Film Appreciation and I’ve been sifting ghost movies all week. Not horror stories but really good films, both classic and contemporary. I’ve debated “The Innocents” starring Deborah Kerr, “The Sixth Sense” starring Bruce Willis, “Somewhere in Time” starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, Jack Nicholson’s “The Shining”. I had a first choice but none of these were it and I couldn’t find my first choice.

I took my back-up, the wonderful 1944 thriller “The Uninvited”. Based on a novel by Irish writer Dorothy McCardle and scripted by Dodie Smith (“I Capture the Castle”,), it stars Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey as a brother and sister who buy a beautiful house on the cliffs of Cornwall and find they’re sharing it with a pair of beautiful ghosts. Gorgeous young Gail Russell is the object of one’s malevolence. Other actors include Donald Crisp, Alan Napier and Dorothy Stickney in a cameo turn as dotty Miss Bird. Considered the first real film ghost story, its noted for its film noir cinematography and Victor Young’s classic ballad “Stella by Starlight”. In addition to these two values, I always loved the charming old house that was as much a character as any of the cast.

The villainess is played by stage great Cornelia Otis Skinner, also a writer who, with college roommate Emily Kimbrough, wrote a book about their trip to Europe called “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay” which was a best-seller and became a movie starring Diana Lynn as Emily and, as Cornelia, Gail Russell! There’s a story in there someplace.

Fortunately, after trying four video outlets, I found my first choice favorite ghost movie: “Truly, Madly, Deeply” the first film written and directed by the late Anthony Mingella, who won an Oscar for “The English Patient”. He wrote it for English actress Juliet Stevenson and paired her with the magnificent Alan Rickman. For anyone who has ever lost a loved one, this tender funny poignant film is consoling and unforgettable. Mingella’s photography and lyric original script make one wish he’d been able to do more of his own things. It was an especially fitting tribute to a sensitive original artist who died way too soon of a brain hemorage last spring at age 54.

Tonight was the premiere of “Spring Awakening”, the multi-Tony winning musical about teen-age angst based on Frank Wedekind’s 19^th century play. My guest was my friend Paul, a professional actor/singer/dancer whom I call my artistic adviser. The Ahmanson Theatre. always has a special buzz on opening nights with the paparazzi carefully herded into photo-op area next to the press desk. Autumn’s in the air and a starlet in a strapless black sequined sheath tossed her coat to an assistant just long enough to smile and pose for the cameras and then dashed shivering back to put it on. Jane Seymour, gorgeous in a red silk shirt and slinky black-and-white print pants, sat in our row. She made me glad my leopard print dress wasn’t any slinkier, as I contemplated losing weight again. Cheering me up was Marisa Janet Winokur, pudgy stair of “Hairspray”, who tossed weight to the winds.

New York production values were intact with a new young cast that interpreted them vividly. The score for this rock popera didn’t make our ears bleed and some of it, like folk music, had charm and energy. I missed any hint of the joy and curiosity that leaven the life of teen-agers occasionally, no matter how dark their lives. This lack made the characters one-dimensional, perhaps partly because there were so many of them. My full review, along with our New York reviews, is posted on CurtainUp.com. Com, so I’ll just echo Paul who said, “This is a production that should bring young people into the theatre.”

Friday, October 31, 2008.

Hallowe’en has always been sort of the national holiday of L. A. I remember librarians at UCLA wearing billowing black capes. I think of them every time I see a “Harry Potter” movie. The first Hallowe’en I was down here I drove 30 miles to see Vincent Price give a one-man show that featured Edgar Allen Poe readings. Those two were made for each other and it was illuminating to hear him read Poe with respect and a sure instinct for subliminal values beyond the camp he used for his movies.

Tonight my Hallowe’en begins at home when I open my door and look up to the costumed recent college grads who live next door. My black-haired 6’3” neighbor wears a blonde page-boy. His date looks like Paris 1900. One neighbor is having a party and they’re dropping in, before casing the scene on Santa Monica in West Hollywood, the gay capitol of L.A. Buzz was that a large percentage of guys are going to that as Sarah Palin.

I’m wearing white because the TANGO MILLONGA of my choice is featuring black lights which make women in white glow. The room is so dark I can’t see who my partner is until I’m in his arms. Try it sometime! My first partner Michael has been studying with an Argentine teacher and has perfected the art of the pause. One thing I’ve finally learned in my dance studies is not to fear waiting. It’s a beautiful part of the dance. Another highlight of this particular millonga hosted by Michael Espinoza at LA Dance Experience is a soul-shattering flamenco guitar performance with vocal accompaniment by the incomparable Bill Freeman.

Other tango ops for Hallowe’en include the Tango Masquerade, hosted by Orlando Paiva, Junior, and Laura Tate at the Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel, a three-day extravaganza with many classes, millongas, master teachers, costume competition and a fashion show. There was also a class in the wonderful sensuous Canyengue, a dance preceding tango, expertly taught by Robert Schafer and Vivian Wong at Linda Valentino’s class in the Hollywood Dance Center. Full info on the wonderful world of tango in Los Angeles can be found on Tango Afficionado.

Granted, you have to fight Hallowe’en traffic which this year is compounded by Friday night traffic. Everybody is out and you’re right in the middle of it. Don’t be in a hurry, absorb the scene, and play something you love on your CD/tape deck, either music or a truly scary detective novel, anything from Margery Allington to Jeffrey Deaver, from your local library. By the time you get home you’ll be ready for the nightcap of your choice, whether it’s peppermint tea or a martini on the rocks. And so to bed with your favorite haunting companion.

Saturday, November 1, 2008.

Another day, another premiere, this time at The El Centro Theatre, one of the many small theatres in Los Angeles. This one is located a block from Paramount Studios and when both venues have events, street parking is scarce. Actors who come here for the film/TV work feed their souls in these little venues and many of the productions are excellent, like this one, the west coast premiere of Christopher Durang’s “Miss Witherspoon” by the West Coast Ensemble Theatre under the inventive direction of Joel Swetow.

Miss Witherspoon is the nom de plume assigned to Veronica by her after-life guide, a beautiful Indian named Maryamma. Proud at having rid herself of her earthly life by committing suicide, Miss Witherspoon is bent on controlling her after-life, too, but Maryamma has other ideas. Although Miss Witherspoon wants no part of reincarnation, that’s what she gets and the journeys she takes are pierced with Durang’s signature hilarity. He gently spoofs all organized religions, as well as such fictional guides as Gandalf the Grey from “The Lord of the Rings”. Full review posted on CurtainUp.com.

We stopped by the after-party at a small Mexican restaurant, Pueblo Viejo, which served fabulous empanadas as well as the opportunity to dish with cast and audience.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Hallowe’en is followed by All Souls Day which reminds us that after all the trick-or-treating and the masquerades, the holiday was originally intended to honor the departed. Nowhere is that commemorated more gorgeously than at All Saints Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills. It’s their patronal or saints day when the congregation celebrate all the saints for whom their church is named, renew their pledges and hear a necrology read. A necrology is a list of names submitted by the congregation of people who have died in the last year. It’s particularly poignant to hear familiar names ring out in company with all those others and acknowledged by the congregation. Some of the church’s most beautiful hymns are sung: “For all the saints who from their labors rest”, “Ye watchers and ye holy ones”, “Ye holy angels bright”, with dazzling brass, drums and organ accompaniment composed by All Saints Associate Director of Music and Composer-in-Residence Craig Phillips. The nationally known and commissioned composer celebrates his 20^th anniversary at All Saints tonight with a concert christened Phillips Fest.

November 3, 2008

I get behind on movies but fortunately I’m only blocks away from one of our city’s second run theatres, THE REGENCY FAIRFAX, on the corner of Fairfax and Beverly. It’s in the traditional Jewish part of town, across the street from CBS Television and spitting distance from Farmers Market and the Grove where you can eat and shop in that order.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, would have loved it. The movie I caught up with was “The Duchess”, based on Amanda Foreman’s biography of this gorgeous 18^th century fashionista and ancestress of Princess Diana whose life paralleled hers in many other ways. Both were married to members of the nobility who flaunted their mistresses. The Duke actually took his, formerly best friend of “G” as her husband called her, to live with them. The screenplay, by outstandingly original playwright Jeffrey Hatcher and Anders Thomas Jensen, focuses on children as the motivating and humanizing influence of these women. Keira Knightly makes a gorgeous duchess, though, under Saul Dibbs’ direction, she conveys none of the wit, intelligence and political passion of the real G. But her gowns are magnificent and the movie is a visual treat, enhanced by Hatcher’s screenplay and Ralph Fiennes beautifully calibrated performance as a distant Duke, the living definition of droit du seigneur, basically interested in nothing but his dogs. Full review posted on Value-magazine.org.

November 4, 2008, Election Day

I stood in line for TWO HOURS up behind the Chateau Marmont waiting to get into somebody’s family room and vote, while the fog glowed around the towers below. The Paparazzi were there but they didn’t take any pictures that I saw. The crowd was very patient and good-tempered. Nobody left.

The streets were extremely crowded. The air was sizzling. Of course, I had the TV on all day.

11,000 people had RSVPd for The Democratic Gala at the Century Plaza Hotel. Doubting I could even get a parking place, I opted to walk down the hill to the local Democratic office, a storefront on Santa Monica at Crescent Heights. The election party was scheduled to start at 8:00 PM but at something like 7:57 Obama was declared President-Elect.

Horns hooted and people screamed up and down Sunset Blvd., more jubilation than New Year’s Eve, more excitement than Hallowe’en. A man stood at the door of the little office pouring champagne. It was a real working office and I know they’d been working the phones up to the last minute because somebody called me. McCain was giving his concession speech when I walked in and the workers applauded him and then applauded Sarah Palin and thanked them for their hard work.

The crowd hushed when Obama spoke, as silent as the crowd in Chicago. His speech was not triumphalist. He reached out to those who hadn’t voted for him. When his family and Biden’s family came out afterwards, tears sprang to my eyes. We have a remarkable young President and a First Lady with Flair. So strong, so charismatic – so American!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

“By the Waters of Babylon,” by Pulitzer-Prize winner Robert Schenkkan, opened at the Geffen Theatre tonight. The combative passionate relationship between a Texas widow (Shannon Cochran) and the Cuban refugee she hires to work in her garden (Demian Bichir) becomes a metaphor of guilt, pain, confession and, ultimately, acceptance and absolution. Schenkkan has worked in the metaphorical mode before, specifically in “Heaven on Earth” which I saw labbed at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference in the 1980s. A literate humorous writer who is not afraid to try many approaches, it was a pleasure catching up with him again. Full review is posted on CurtainUp.com.

The after-party honored the Latino influence with a delicate but finely-spiced buffet catered by Loteria, the Farmers Market based Mexican restaurant, which my guest swears is the best in town. The Chicken Mole Poblano spoke for itself.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

My Film Appreciation class deserved a dose of Americana after several weeks of English movies, and I showed them the highly-praised “The Visitor”, written and dircted by Tom McCarthy whose first feature was the quirky, moving “The Station Agent”, starring Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson.

In “The Visitor”, a widowed 60-something college professor, Walter, played by Richard Jenkins, is so withdrawn he has no compassion or even communication with anyone: his students, the elderly lady he hires to give him piano lessons and fires almost immediately for no reason. Returning to the long-abandoned apartment he still keeps in New York to give a paper at a convention, he is dumbfounded to find a black girl from Senegal in his bathtub and her boyfriend Tarek from Syria also in residence. They’ve been conned into renting the apartment. Walter relents and lets them stay and they change his life. Walter learns piano, his late wife’s instrument, isn’t his. It’s the drums, which Tarek teaches him and coaxes him into performing. The young couple are illegal immigrants and when Tarek is picked up and put in detention, their lives change. Tarek’s beautiful mother, who has been living in Michigan, comes to New York where she and Walter embark on a desperate odyssey to save her son.

My class loved this movie and it seemed strongly appropriate in this historic Election Week to see a film in which fear of other races plays a cruicial role. Unlike the movie, in real life, we have what the cover of this week’s The New Yorker illustrated: light at the end of the tunnel.

Friday, November 8, 2008

“Song of Extinction”, by E.M. (Ellen) Lewis, is one of the most beautiful and important plays of the season. Presented by Moving Arts, it premiered at the John Anson Ford as part of their Winter Partnership Program to give three small companies with no permanent performance space an opportunity and support.

Lewis won this year’s $10,000 Primus Prize for an emerging woman theatre artist, awarded at the American Theatre Critics convention last summer in Washington, DC, where I first met her. Since I interviewed Ellen for L. A. Stage Magazine, a review by Cynthia Citron will be posted on CurtainUp.com.

Lewis wanted to write about science exploration but this play is about much more than that with vivid, believable and unforgettable characters. Max, a teen-age musician, suffers from the approaching death from cancer of his mother, Lily, and the neglect of his biologist father, Ellery. Ellery is obsessed with trying to save a rare insect species he discovered in Bolivia from the land development planned by Gil Morris. Morris reminds him of the jobs and income his work will bring to the needy country. As well as the conflict between science and development, the play deals with Khim Phan, Max’s Cambodian science teacher, whose family suffered extinction from the Khmer Rouge. Khim is the only person who perceives Max’s dilemma but, frozen for 40 years in his own grief, has a journey of his own to undertake before he is able to help. Lewis tells this story with beautiful economy and compassion.

What a coup for Los Angeles theatre to be in on the premiere of a world-class woman playwright! Watch for her work!

There was the after-party and a little tango for me at Linda Valentino’s practica at the Hollywood Dance Center on Highland Avenue but I want to leave this at the feet of Ellen Lewis who deserves it.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

The New Mark Taper Forum opened the American premiere of English playwright Peter Whelan’s “The School of Night”, inspired by the mysterious murder of Shakespeare’s contemporary, the dazzling playwright Christopher Marlowe. The fine cast portrays other famous Elizabethans, such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare himself.

I wrote: “It’s a brave playwright who puts words in the mouth of another playwright, particularly Christopher Marlowe, as famed for his lyricism as for his dramatic passion, but Peter Whelan pulls it off gorgeously.”

The first act is a little long but, having spent two years in Japan where I happily sent through day-long productions of Kabuki Theatre, that doesn’t put me off.

Bill Alexander, who directed many of Whelan’s plays, helmed this particular production, with an intuitive sense for its suspense and passion. Russell H. Champa’s shadowy film noir lighting design projected a cell’s barred windows on the floor. Full review is on CurtainUp.com.

The after-party drew such English thespians as actress Joan Collins and James Warwick, now President of the American Academy of Dramatic Art West.

Tango

Eduardo — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:27:02 +0000

If you’ve ever had a secret hopeless dream of being what Argentines call a “tanguero” (he) or “tanguera” (she), sweeping around the ballroom with passionate grace in the arms of a dashing partner, do not despair! It can happen to you! It’s never too late and it’s not out of sight in any way! The Tango, which originated in the port district of Buenos Aires and was gentrified in the salons of Paris, rose, then fell in popularity and now has experienced an incredible resurrection. Young Argentines whose parents don’t even do the tango are studying it here. It’s very big in Finland.

For those who want to go to Argentina, escorted tours led by dance professionals are recommended. Parts of the city can be dangerous and young desk clerks at some hotels don’t know where the best millongas (tango dance events) are held. There are tango B&Bs which include tango lessons in the price of lodgings.

For those who want to begin close to home, check your local web site, such as tangoafficionado.com in Los Angeles, or just type in “tango dance”. Begin with a class, progress to a practica, culminate in a millonga. You don’t need a partner.

In large cities, there is usually something every night. In smaller ones, there’s the example of a man in Maui who set up a web site for a bunch of dedicated dancers who imported a tango teacher. Now tango in Maui has spread like the proverbial vine.

$ Financial Values:
Classes can begin at $12. Visit several in your locale and choose the one that appeals to you. Practicas where dancers go to practice steps and often dance with one another more than at the millongas can range from $7-10. Millongas (the millonga is the name of a dance and also the name of an evening of tango dancing) can begin at $12 and include a class and refreshments.

O Personal Values:
In addition to the delight and physical exercise that comes from learning this complex and exhilarating dance, it’s a wonderful way to get out of the house, socialize and meet new people.