Posts Tagged ‘Geffen Playhouse’

Wagnerite or not, the Ring Festival is upon us.  Let me explain.  If you haven’t heard, LA Opera spent $32 million on producing the ultimate Ring Festival that not only presents Richard Wagner’s infamous Ring Cycle, but also features an array of events, lectures, and concerts offering tons of things to do for German-loving Angelenos.  Starting this evening alone, one can find a visual exhibit on Maria Callas at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood, a Ring Cycle discussion panel chatting on “From Nietzsche to Star Wars: The Wagnerian Power of The Ring,” and at Los Angeles Conservancy, see the German influence on Los Angeles’ mid-20th-century landscape.  Who knew Wagner made such an impact on so many aspects of our lives?

There’s one truth I’ve yet to unveil.  I’m not really a Wagner fan.  Yes, Wagnerites, Tristan und Isolde is undeniably gorgeous and the famous aria at the end, “Liebestod,” is truly glorious.  But his Ring Cycle, which features four full-length operas from Das Rheingold to Gotterdammerung, is simply not my cup of tea.  Putting personal preference aside, though, LA Operas tour de force Ring Festival is a triumph of peering into what makes such an infamous piece of classical music tick.  There will be, over the course of the next few months (now through June 2010), lectures detailing Wagner and his influences paired with art exhibits, free film screenings “for opera lovers,” and of course, full length masterful productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.  In full.

The Cycle itself is four operas, each longer than the last.  There’s Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, which LA Opera produced during their 2008/2009 season and Siegfried and Gotterdammerung which both go up this season in June, finishing out the Cycle.  All four productions were designed by the controversial and avant-garde set director Achim Freyer and will be performed under the very accomplished tutelage of conductor James Conlon.

The Ring Festival is a huge accomplishment for the arts in Los Angeles.  Not only will it bring arts lovers of all shapes and sizes to our fair city, but it also derives its allure from many of LAs various attractions from food trucks (like Let’s Be Frank hotdogs) to the Hammer Museum and from LACMA to Griffith Park Observatory.  There’s rarely a better reason to cross the city in a German-and-opera-filled fury as there is now.

The show on at the Geffen Playhouse, Nightmare Alley, is also connected to the Ring Festival.  Running now through May 23, the show is based on the 1946 Gresham novel about the dark, wild world of “carnies, cons, and clairvoyants.”

The full schedule is about as long as a novel, proving again that LA Opera has gone above and beyond with this Festival.  Ticket prices range from free to $10 to $2000 (for really good front orchestra seats at the opera itself, calm thyself).

Regardless of my personal relationship with Mr. Wagner, when I say enjoy the show, I really do mean it. Really. Enjoy… Just make sure you bring your flask.

The Ring Festival has begun! Click here for more information on the Festival and click here for information on the Cycle itself. Click here to see the LA Times’ complete guide to the Ring Festival.

Women’s Rights have come a long way since 1920, the year that the 19th Amendment granting women suffrage was finally passed. Since then, women have thrust their way through the second and third waves of feminism, achieving greater economic, as well as social, equality. We’ve now reached a strange post-feminine stage, where the trend seems to waver back and forth between second- and third-wave values. Women are encouraged to be strong and independent, to choose a career, to foot the bill—but also to marry, to raise children, and to retain youth and beauty. While women have more power than ever to determine their own destinies, there still exists an overwhelming societal pressure to conform to that feminine ideal. Look at Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw —independent and successful, but also desperate for the one man who will make it all worthwhile.  It’s a lot to grapple with—and no wonder feminism has entered this confused stage today where women have hit the streets placarding for Botox and boob jobs.

Joanna Murray-Smith’s play The Female of the Species, on now at the Geffen Playhouse, promises to articulate just that frustration women are feeling with the state of feminism in 2010.  The play stars a ferocious Annette Benning as Margot Marron, a successful theorist of feminism who is held hostage in her country home by a former student.  Marron’s character is loosely based on Australian feminist Germaine Greer, author of the feminist classic The Female Eunuch, who was held hostage by an outraged dropout in her home in 2000. David Arquette, Mireille Enos, Julian Sands, and Josh Stamberg join the ensemble in this farce that is sure to underline everything outrageous, infuriating, and hilarious about modern feminist theory.

- By Helen Kearns

The Female of the Species is playing now at the Geffen Playhouse through March 14th. Visit the Geffen’s website for ticket information.

So I’ve been writing for Fine Arts LA for almost a year now, and I realized that this affords me one of the greatest of art-reviewers’ honors: the end-of-the-year top-ten list.  As a devout follower of numerous art, theatre, and film writers, I find that it’s often popular to downplay the top-ten tradition, dismiss it as a sad reality of the quick-fix world we live in.  But even in this downplaying, there’s a hint of relish in the writer’s voice, as if he/she felt obligated to somehow contain their own excitement at the prospect of shedding off those hundreds upon hundreds of shows, films, galleries, albums, installations, and happenings they consumed throughout the year, finally to narrow it down to the even, clean number of ten.

I myself haven’t been to hundreds of shows this year.  But as a weekly contributor to Fine Arts LA, I have been privy to some of the best art this crazy city has to offer, and I wasn’t limited to one medium.  I saw plays, movies, photography exhibits, I even flirted with the perils of a natural disaster, and thus… my top ten:

10. “Sam Cherry: Photographs of Charles Bukowski, the Black Cat, and Skid Row”

Representing one half of the double exhibit entitled “Bukowski and Burroughs” that went up in early April at the Track 16 Gallery, this series of simple photographs succeeded in portraying what none of these phantasmagoric, apocalyptic fantasy movies can pull off: it showed an old, self-destructive man, reflecting back on the good times he’s had, proud yet regretful, strong yet weak.

9. Ken Tanaka’s “Maximum Pleasant”

Ken Tanaka is one artist/performer/youtube-phenomenon I was lucky enough to interview.  His show at the Billy Shire Fine Arts Gallery back in May included videos, paintings, drawings, music, and even a fully functional garage sale.  But it neither the media mash-up that impressed me about Ken nor even his possible double identity.  It was his sense of pure pleasure in creation, his contagious childlike sense of comedy that emanates off his pieces, and made for one of the smiley-est art openings I’ve seen in LA.

8. Landscaping the Den of Saints

It’s easy to skip over small, live theatre in Los Angeles, especially when it’s a three-hour meditation on the ideas of success and ambition like Jacob Smith’s recent, original production at the Avery Schreiber Theatre.  But sometimes you miss out on gems, and this play took on the issue of being young and hungry in Los Angeles, and ended up representing the struggle with a sense of playful accuracy.  And actor Sean Fitzgerald deserves some sort of award for his transformative performance.

7. Visioneers

This film, which is now up on Netflix instant-play, began its distribution independently.  And I mean independently.  I saw Visioneers at the Echo Park Film Center, when it was traveling around to any screen that would take it, and I have to say that it stuck with me.  Starring the still-underrated Zack Galifianakis, the movie is about spontaneous combustion in a futuristic, corporate-run society, where giving someone the middle finger is a sign of respect.  Every time I enter an office building, I think of the bearded Galifianakis flicking me off with a smile.

6. Gavin Bunner’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”

Another interviewee, the friendly Mr. Bunner isn’t afraid to dress in a cardboard Moby Dick costume and compete in a public boxing match against a Berenstein Bear.  Sure it seems silly, but it’s emblematic of what this young, promising painter is attempting to capture and celebrate in his work: the absurd convergence of pop and pomp in our Google-ingrained brains.

5. Lie of the Mind

I only saw this play last week, so it might just be a fresh lie of my own mind, but Studio Five Productions’ latest show, which you can still catch until the 19th at the Studio/Stage Theatre, is a brave and forceful retelling of Sam Shepard’s original, 1985 story.  The actors are physical and fierce, the music is haunting, the makeup is extraordinary, and the set is like something Jason Schwartzman’s character would dream up in Rushmore.

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Angelenos seem to be taking quite a shine to the Guy Fawkes story.  Unsurprisingly, I guess, we’re always fond of taking apart truths and showing them for what they are – fiction.  Bill Cain’s Equivocation, on now at the Geffen Playhouse, has gotten rave reviews from both Variety and the LA Times recently and it prompted us to remind you, our dear readers, that Fine Arts LA has got an exclusive ticket discount for a number of remaining Sunday evening performances of the show starring Shakespeare and his troupe.

For $35, you get your ticket and an invitation to one of the Geffen’s Wine Down Sundays – i.e. drink delicious wines and see some theatre worthy of a standing ovation or two.  The secret password is: FAE35.  All you have to do is call up the Geffen box office at (310) 208-5454, choose a date (Nov, 22, 29, Dec 6, 12, or 20), tell them you’ve got connections (ahem, us!), and let us know if you’ll be celebrating Guy Fawkes Day after you see this play – the cast of the show had quite a bit to say about that when we interviewed them, too!

Bill Cain’s Equivocation runs at the Geffen Playhouse now through December 20, 209.  For more information, please click here.

This past week, I saw four plays in two nights, all within a one mile radius of each other—a combined cast of ten, but at least twenty roles to fill—five-and-a-half hours in all (intermissions included), yet just two titles.  Stumped?

On one evening, I journeyed to the Freud Playhouse for UCLA Live’s newest production of Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce.  This prize-winning, Irish madhouse of a play, which has scored high praise from audiences in both Europe and the U.S., tests the ability of the viewer to keep up with its fast-paced, absurdist antics.  Under the direction of Mikel Murfi—who’s been with the show since its inception at The Druid Theatre Company in Galway, Ireland—the three main characters of the four-person play go about their daily routine amidst the cramped, London flat they call home.  Yet the daily routine of this trio (father and two grown sons) involves the obsessive reenactment of the exact events—beat-for-beat, line-for-line—of the day they last saw their long-lost wife/mother.  Traipsing around the three-room flat at lightning speed, swapping wigs, drag-dressing, imitating two characters at once (not to mention murdering a couple) are just some of the elements involved in this highly dysfunctional family’s farce.  It’s what happens when the characters are dropped, however, when the real roles are revealed, that the farce belies the true tragedy beneath the surface.

I traveled back to the Westwood area to the Geffen Playhouse for a preview of Equivocation.  Written by Bill Cain and directed by David Esbjornson, the play concerns itself with modern-tongued playwright William “Shag” Shakespeare, circa 1605-1606.  Shag and his band of “Globe-trotters” are commissioned by Sir Robert Cecil to write a play based on the events of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Shakespeare delves deeper into the “true” events of the plot and finds more damning information than he could ever perform on a stage, let alone in front of the King.  The question of the play, as well as the play within the play, becomes how to successfully equivocate, how to tell the truth in the face of grave danger, and still come out alive.  Check out our video interview with the cast and our special Equivocation ticket discount here.

The Walworth Farce ends this Sunday, November 15 and is playing at UCLA Live’s Freud Playhouse.  For more information, please call (310) 825-2101 or click here.

Equivocation is playing at the Geffen Playhouse through November 29, 2009.  For more information, please call (310) 208-5454 or click here.

Contrary to what we all might think, political dramas and fabled truths didn’t start with George W. Bush.  Those in power have long controlled the versions of the truth that end up in our news reports or history books.  Back in the day, Shakespeare’s day to be precise, there was once a foiled plot against the established government, known as the Gunpowder Plot, in which the houses of Parliament would be blown up while King James and his largely Protestant cabinet were inside.  Brits now celebrate the day as Guy Fawkes Day because it was Guy Fawkes who was sent late at night on November 5, 1605 to light the fuse beneath the house of Parliament.  It was also he who was captured and killed on behalf of his team.  It seems that we can all relate to the events that followed…

King James told his emissary, Robert Cecil, to hire the best playwright around to tell the story of the Gunpowder Plot.  Shakespeare, who was currently rehearsing King Lear with his troupe, was approached and accepted the challenge of telling the world King James’ version of the truth.  As he and his troupe struggled with the difference between fact and fiction, they come to realize the real power of the establishment.  And so did playwright Bill Cain in his Equivocation opening this week at the Geffen Playhouse.

All about this storied event (in more ways than one), Equivocation touches on Shakespeare himself, his troupe, and his relationship with his daughter. We were recently lucky enough to sit down with the entire cast of the show.  Our video interview is chock full of the cast’s favorite scenes, how they feel about Guy Fawkes Day, and how they feel about yours truly…

We’re not the only lucky ones, though.  The Geffen Playhouse is offering Fine Arts LA readers an exclusive ticket offer!  In the interest of killing two birds with one stone (drinking wine, seeing the play) our readers can purchase tickets for $35 to see the play on one of the Geffen’s Wine Down Sundays – you get tickets to the show and a chance to enjoy complimentary wines beforehand.  Talk about enhancing your theatre-going experience!

The following Sundays are eligible for this sweet, wine-soaked deal: Nov 22, Nov 29, Dec 6, Dec 13, and Dec 20.  To enjoy this offer, call the Geffen box office and mention this code: FAE35 – enjoy!

Bill Cain’s Equivocation runs at the Geffen Playhouse from November 10 – December 20, 2009.  For more information, please click here or call (310) 208-5454.

There’s a problem sweeping the nation.  To solve it, arts organizations and start-ups are thinking outside the box.  The problem boils down to the question: where have all the young people gone? Well, they’ve (or we’ve) started preferring hip-hop to Bach and graffiti to Picasso.  And while there’s nothing wrong with the cultural shift, it does create an issue for all those classical performers and painters holding onto older fine arts techniques. 

Lately, audiences have been comprised more of the hearing-aid set than the stiletto set, which is unfortunate for a number of reasons.  To be clear, the unfortunate side of this has nothing to do with the older patrons who frequent performances and museums.  They’re the lifers who, if asked, could tell you anything you need to know about Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5.  On the other hand, when young people decide against attending something, it says little in the way of longevity for those arts. 

In the interest of showing the youth how important, interesting, and relevant classical art forms are, opera houses, ballet companies, and museums have all created young patron groups.  Members of these groups are capped at a certain age and have benefits unlike those for more traditional memberships from a less expensive annual fee to more exciting parties.  At this point, New York has been the pioneer city for these kinds of youth groups – the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim, and pretty much every other top organization in New York have all become popular spots for the kids to party. 

Around the country, youth groups have put together parties to be reckoned with inside the walls of some of the country’s oldest, most beautiful buildings.  The annual fees agree with the disposable incomes of our country’s young professionals and the parties have started to include well-known DJs, they’ve upped the catering, and have adopted eccentric themes.  From Young Patrons Circle at the Houston Grand Opera to Young Patrons of the Portland Art Museum, the trend hasn’t yet gained the same kind of popularity in Los Angeles, but we have faith.  MOCA has their Contemporaries, LACMA throws parties for their youth group MUSE, and then there’s GenArt.  With a tagline that reads “access to emerging talent,” their mission is to recognize the talent (classical or not) coming from the young. 

Thinking further outside the box, there are new movements popping up like the Fourth Wall, who currently work exclusively with the Geffen Playhouse.  Then the Getty introduced summer concerts to their lineup presenting bands from across the country for free.  As organizations continue to try new ways of relating to us kids, we find more and more reason to love what we do here at Fine Arts LA.  We mentioned recently how proud we are of organizations that have shown their creative use of technology to connect to audiences and with youth groups, we’re even more proud of how they’ve learned to interact with us in person.  Our babies are growing up! 

Not to in any way demean the incredible hardships most Americans have had to endure — and are still enduring — due to the ongoing, economic disaster of the past two years, but I do believe at least one good thing has come out it.  And that, in the words of Matthew Modine (who is played accordingly by Matthew Modine) in the most recent Geffen Playhouse production, Matthew Modine Saves The Alpacas, is “significant theatre.”  Or, at the very least, cheap theatre that is significant in terms of my own youthful sensibilities.

I don’t want to pay $80 a pop to see aging, unknown theatre vets duke it out for who can do the best Elizabethan accent.  I want to see TV stars and movie stars live in the flesh testing out their true acting chops in material I can understand.  And I want it all under $30.  Before this recession and before the creation of such youth-outreach programs as the Geffen’s ‘Fourth Wall’ events, such dreams were laughable.  But now, with television and film actors looking elsewhere for dough and a new generation of theatre producers in bloom,  shows like Blair Singer’s Matthew Modine Saves The Alpacas, starring the likes of Modine, French Stuart, and Peri Gilpin of Frasier fame, are making the live stage fun again, not to mention affordable.

I for one was able to enjoy Tuesday night’s preview of Matthew Modine, which opens officially on September 16th and runs until October 18th, for only $25.  All thanks, of course, to the aforementioned ‘Fourth Wall,’ which, “in partnership with the Geffen Playhouse, provides and encourages experiences that enrich, challenge, inspire, and motivate young Hollywood in both creation and patronage of the arts.”  Other ‘Fourth Wall’ events have included a Q&A session with filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute, Connor McPherson’s The Seafarer, and Beau Willimon’s Farragut North.  But if you’ve missed these, don’t fret: the innovative, youth-run program, which formed in February of 2009, plans to host events for every Geffen main-stage show of the remaining season.

So in the midst of this awful economy, when a bad movie is the same price as a half a tank of gas and the TV seems to be re-hashing the same shows over and over, sometimes literally (CSI, Parks and Recreation, Melrose Place, 90210, etc.) there is at least one thing to look forward to and it involves French Stuart, llama-looking puppets, and a wig-wearing Matthew Modine.  That’s right, it’s “significant theatre.”

Blair Singer’s Matthew Modine Saves The Alpacas runs from September 16th to October 18th at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood Village, located at 10886 Le Conte Avenue.  For the box office, call (310) 208-8383 or visit  www.geffenplayhouse.com.  To contact the Fourth Wall, call (310) 208-5454.

There’s no question that what you see in Beau Willimon’s Farragut North, on now at the Geffen Playhouse, is a piece of a whole, a particular look at larger issues.  The set, before the action begins, is lit to look as though it’s entirely painted with blue and white blocks which introduces the feel of a painting in an exhibit or an invitation to look closer. Once the actors grace the stage and the dialogue begins, you’re faced with a fast-paced, media heavy production that feels like Anderson Cooper’s insiders guide to political campaigning.  You’re faced with politics, sex, and the politics of sex. 

Starring Star Trek’s Chris Pine (we’ll get to him later), Sex and the City’s Chris Noth, Juno’s Olivia Thrilby, and a host of other accomplished actors, Willimon’s words are well taken care of.  Noth, as Pine’s boss, plays a crude, fast, and clever campaign manager who has obviously been through the ringer in this business.  Pine plays his younger, more charismatic counterpart and, in all honesty, steals the show.  I haven’t seen Star Trek yet, but I will say that considering the shift from Hollywood blockbuster to Geffen Playhouse I was dubious going in.  His performance alone is worth seeing this play.  Not to lessen the achievements of his fellow actors; they’re all on top of their roles and deliver their dialogue with presence, passion, and conviction.  As they should be – Noth, Thrilby, and Isiah Whitlock, Jr (whose role is the personification of a quiet storm) are all reprising their roles from the play’s original production at the Atlantic Theatre in New York. 

Based on Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign for Democratic candidacy, the play follows Stephen (Pine) as he gloats about and works diligently on his flourishing career as a campaign press secretary.  His fast-paced, charm-fueled character becomes entwined in the backroom politics of campaigning and, without giving anything away, ends up taking a few certain others down with him.  The music, lighting, and projected multimedia used during set changes seems as if it was pulled from CNNs “Situation Room.”  It’s a quick-witted look into the power struggles, hierarchies, and sexual antics inherent on the campaign trail.  Imagine if HBOs Recount had a love child with Clive Owen’s recent Duplicity and then met up with better dialogue, Chris Pine, and a live stage.

Farragut North is on now through July 26 at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood.  For more information, please call (310) 208-5454 or visit their website.  

Connor McPherson’s Tony Award-nominated play, The Seafarer—which runs until May 24 at The Geffen Playhouse the way an amiable drunk runs into an old friend—starts off an awful lot like a good episode of Frasier (or a good reading of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, depending on your point of reference).  It even stars John Mahoney, who famously played Martin Crane in the much beloved NBC series, and here, too, spends much of the show sitting in a comfortable-looking chair. 

Mahoney assumes the role of Richard, the blind-but-buoyant older brother of Sharky, and for the first twenty minutes or so, he could easily be performing an Irish adaptation of his old sitcom self (or an updated version of Hamm, the central character of Endgame), as he whines and cracks jokes at the expense of his quiet and depressed work-horse of a relative.  Even Ivan, the brothers’ loveable old drinking-buddy, who stumbles in looking for his glasses, could pass for a plausible Niles Crane—if Niles were thirty years older, fifty pounds heavier, and 100-times more drunk.       

What begins as a playful mix of Frasier-esque banter and Beckett-esque determinism, however, soon takes on the form of an old-school morality play, with the additions of Nicky, and his mysterious cohort, Mr. Lockhart.  Just like the old English poem from which the play takes its title, the main character—in this case, Sharky—meets with a deep and frightening crisis of faith mid-narrative, and spends the rest of the time coming to terms with it.  But of course, it wouldn’t be a true Irish play if those terms didn’t include whiskey, cards, and a lot of fun.

All five actors seem to revel within their respective parts, each finding their niche within the intimidating quintet of talent and running with it.  The mere fact that they don’t get dwarfed behind Takeshi Kata’s incredible, multi-layered set design says a lot for any actor.  Director as well; because under the unseen touch of Randall Arney, these characters seem to breathe with a joy and knowledge of not only Irish culture and drama, but contemporary TV culture as well.  And it’s this inter-weaving of subtexts, of the old and the new, the experienced and the fresh, the wilting and the hopeful, that so brilliantly serves McPherson’s original vision for The Seafarer.

- By Josh Morrison

The Seafarer runs at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood until May 24. For more information regarding this show or others, please call (310) 208-5454 or visit www.geffenplayhouse.com.