Posts Tagged ‘The Walworth Farce’

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.

(more…)

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.