review - Art

@ Pasadena Playhouse
starring Bradley Whitford, Roger Bart and Michael O'Keefe

review - Monday!

review - El Nogalar

RECOMMENDED
El Nogalar

review - Monday!

review- Judy Garland in Concert in the All New Peter Mac Showroom in WeHo

Some great things are already happening at the very beginning of 2012. Peter Mac now has his very own showroom inside the French Market Place on Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of WeHo called the French Quarter Restaurant Showroom. The room seats 65 and has the warm atmosphere of a small Vegas-like show palace but with a definitely distinctive Hollywood air, as portraits of the greatest Hollywood stars surround you. Opening night was Friday, January 27; the show was simply amazing, and the room was SRO. It was very exciting with Mac in top form, giving it his all, as the crowd hung on every word/note. I am so pleased that this terrific tribute artist is finally starting to get the attention he so richly deserves. Winning two Eddon Awards for Best Cabaret Artist-Male and Star Making Performer, Mac should be ranked among the best in his field, which includes the likes of Charles Pierce, Jim Bailey, Jimmy James and Steven Brinberg. He has a great singing instrument, is very funny and charismatic - and what amazing acting chops! Just when your sides are splitting as Judy Garland tells a riproaringly riotous anecdote about Noel Coward, you suddenly find yourself moved to tears, when Garland talks about the price a celebrity pays, her insecurities, but always triumphing over them and coming back a winner. This a great opening show with the promise of a sensational year ahead for Mac and his new venue.

Highlights of the evening include all the Garland favorites: "When You're Smiling", "Zing Went the Strings", "The Man That Got Away", "You Made Me Love You", "For Me and My Gal", "The Trolley Song", "Swanee" and of course "Over the Rainbow" and "I Will Come Back". Atypical Garland include: Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and from Dreamgirls "I Am Changing"...and from Ballroom "50% of Him", a song that Garland should have sung, but one unfortunately that got away due to her much too early demise. In fact, next month Songs That Got Away will be on tap as Mac's monthly featured show. The incomparable Bryan Miller serves as musical director at the piano and as occasional narrator.

Plays Fridays and Saturdays weekly, and every 3-4 weeks there'll be a brand new show.
Remember:
the French Quarter Restaurant Showroom inside the French Market Place @ 7985 Santa Monica Boulevard. Make reservations early, as most shows are selling out fast. Great show and have dinner first! The French Quarter is known for their truly superb cuisine.
visit:
www.FriendofJudy.com

Peter Mac Knocks 'Em Dead at the French Quarter

peter's new showroom inside the french quarter

judy with author james spada

review above!

peter's award from me proudly displayed

review - Clybourne Park

CRITIC'S PICK
Clybourne Park
by Bruce Norris
directed by Pam MacKinnon
Mark Taper Forum
through February 26

Bruce Norris deservedly  won the 2011 Pulitzer for his brilliant study of human nature Clybourne Park, which picks up where Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun leaves off. Now at the Mark Taper Forum, Park's director Pam MacKinnon holds tight reins over an outstanding ensemble, all of whom play two roles as the play shifts in two acts from 1959 to 2009, Chicago.

The bridge between the two plays A Raisin in the Sun (now playing at the Kirk Douglas Theatre) and Clybourne Park is the character Karl Lindner (Jeremy Shamos here), a Rotarian and supposed pillar of the community. In Raisin Karl tries to convince the Younger family, who are black, not to move to Clybourne Park, an all-white residential community. In Park he attempts to dissuade the Stoller family (Frank Wood and Christina Kirk) from selling their house to the Youngers. He offers the Youngers money to stay put. It's a selfish reason on the part of the whole community. In 1959 if blacks moved into a white residential area, the  property value would quickly depreciate, causing the majority of the other whites to move out, pure and simple. Neither family listens. The Stollers move on as do the Youngers. The waters are tested on Clybourne Street, and the Youngers face an historically long struggle for survival and recognition.

Norris portrays 1959 to the letter, showing how neighbors trusted one another, but keeping their true feelings about race under wraps. The Stollers, who are in the process of leaving Clybourne Park permanently, have their own personal tragedy to deal with. Their son after returning from the Korean War committed suicide and father Russ (Wood) has not adequately dealt with the loss. Strong Bev (Kirk) does her ingratiating best to cope and make everyone around her happy, including maid Francine (Crystal A. Dickinson), who in 1959 within her station as a black woman would never dare publicly speak her mind about her bosses' attitudes or actions. When Karl enters and puts a damper on the Stollers' move out of Clybourne Street, by explaining his reasons, all hell breaks loose, tempers rage and Russ comes out of his stuper to defend his family against the prevailing racial injustice. Act One could be classified a drama with comedic undertones, but Act Two, fifty years later, is definitely more of a comedy, as the changing mores have allowed much more freedom of speech, especially for the black couple (Dickinson and Damon Gupton) who try to defend their ancestors' struggle to get and maintain a sense of power and prestige in the changing neighborhood. They are no longer afraid to speak their minds, so when white couple Steve and Lindsey (Shamos and Annie Parisse), who are about to move into Clybourne Park, informally bring up their casual friendly associations with blacks and Steve starts telling racial jokes, he has no idea what a spark he has lit. His behavior strikes a nerve with Lena, the young black woman played by Dickinson, and the air is filled once more with an uncomfortable barrage of tense racial accusations. So, as Norris points out in the play, yes, indeed from 1959 to 2009, there have been some positive changes but human nature, unfortunately, remains unchanged. 

I particularly like the ending where we see Dan (Wood) discovering Russ' son's letter in a trunk that had been buried out under the myrtle tree in the backyard in 1959. We see Bev (Kirk) and the son Kenneth (Brendan Griffin) in the shadows behind as he writes the letter the very night he would take his own life. Kenneth was so willing to die for the racial atrocities he unwillingly committed as a soldier, so with Norris passing the letter from one generation to the next, we ask "Will this really affect changes in the way people think about others?" Maybe not enough, but it certainly cannot hurt. It's a good gesture and another poignant reminder of past actions influencing the present.

Director MacKinnon ingeniously guides 7 actors, who essay all the roles in both time periods. The entire ensemble is wonderfully sharp and on target including Dickinson, Shamos, Kirk, Wood, Parisse, Gupton and special praise to Brendan Griffin who also plays a quiet minister in Act One and an equally reserved gay man, with a terrific comedic retort in Act Two, as well as son Ken at play's end. Daniel Ostling has designed a great set - that during intermission receives just the right touches of change from the passage of time, and Ilona Somogyi, appropriate costumes to show changing trends from the 50s to present day.

Bruce Norris' thought provoking Clybourne Park is Broadway bound and should continue to shake up audiences from coast to coast with its hard-hitting comments and witticisms as it realistically depicts the ugly, undying racism that continues to plague our country's existence.

5 out of 5 stars

review - Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour

RECOMMENDED
Michael Jackson The Immortal
World Tour
@ Staples Center
Friday, Saturday, Sunday January 27, 28, 29/ August 14, 15

The King of Pop is getting a dazzling tribute in one of the most atypical Cirque du Soleil shows. Atypical, because there's less aerials and acrobatics and a lot more dancing, which makes sense if you're going to do right by Michael Jackson. With multi- rear projection screens, a live band and backup singers to enhance Jackson's own prerecorded sounds, and pyrotechnics galore, Michael Jackson The Immortal, especially for Jackson fans, comes ecstatically alive.

Jackson's life is seen through big screen images of him as the cute little boy with the Jackson Five onward through "Thriller", "Beat It", "Man In the Mirror" and other classic hits, returning in the end once again to the little Michael singing "I'll Be There". After all, Jackson never stopped being a child, as, according to his credo, he continually Believed, Dreamed and flashed a never-ending sense of Hope. And it was the child in him that never stopped...stops performing. At one point, it is eerie when the lights come down and there is a long silence. One almost senses his presence, and for an instant, I expected him to pop up out of nowhere ... the crowd was pushed to the brink with some shouting "We love you Michael". As performers walk through the audience holding red glowing hearts, nothing could symbolize his spirit better, a spirit that is indeed eternal.

Highlights of the evening in song, dance and Cirque feats include: in the opening a spectacular Mime who becomes infused with Jackson's spirit, a wonderful look at Never Land and "Childhood" (photo above), "Dancing Machine" with welders flying and swinging on motorized cables, a lovely quiet "Ben" showing Michael's love of the animal kingdom, "Dangerous" with a sexy female acrobat performing an exotic pole dance, an exciting Act I finale with "Thriller" executed in a cemetery, "Human Nature" with aerialists wearing some of the most beautiful multi-colored lit costumes imaginable representing the various constellations, a lovely straps duo on "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", a terrific "Beat It" with life-sized glove and loafers so associated with Michael's attire, and a spectacular fusion of music, dance and acrobatics in a mega mix of "Can You Feel It", "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough", "Billie Jean" and "Black or White".

I prefer a typical Cirque show like Iris or Ovo, but cannot deny the excitement generated by Michael Jackson The Immortal, which I'm told is similar to Cirque's now famous tribute to Elvis. Great show which brought the entire house to its feet to sing and sway to the sounds of one of the greatest musical superstars of all time - Michael Jackson, who, indeed, will live forever! Don't miss Michael Jackson The Immortal at the Staples Center this Friday, Saturday, Sunday January 27-29 only!

4 out of 5 stars

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/michael-jackson-tour/tickets.aspx

review - Hunger: In Bed with Roy Cohn

RECOMMENDED (with reservations)
Hunger: In Bed with Roy Cohn
by Joan Beber
directed by Jules Aaron
Odyssey Theatre
through March 11

Playwright Joan Beber's concept of Roy Cohn in her intriguingly nightmarish Hunger: In Bed with Roy Cohn, now onstage at the Odyssey Theatre, comes off a self-indulgent, spoiled, gluttonous, untrusting child monster, which certainly does not add up to a positive view of his humanity. In Angels in America, as I was too young to know the real Cohn in the McCarthy era, I saw Al Pacino's hard-edged, evil-to-the-core interpretation of the man. Barry Pearl's in Hunger, yes is more childlike, whimpering, whining, but if Beber truly wants us to witness a good side to bad, she has not succeeded. I despise the lying, bigoted, hateful man just as much as I did before, reality or fantasy. On the positive side, director Jules Aaron has ingeniously staged the over-the-top entertainment with a marvelous cast. Hunger will run through March 11.

Pearl, always a dandy actor, carries of the crazed, confused man/child to perfection. Interestingly enough, this is a play, but with music, and he and the others dance and sing to Kay Cole's snappy choreography. The numbers do not further the plot, as in a musical, but rather are incorporated to add comments or character traits. And indeed they do, but scenes are so short and choppy, and character entrances and exits so abrupt, it truly appears to be a psychedelic nightmare and many of the characters, cartoonish. Cohn is in a huge queen sized bed center stage with his toy froggie and other indulgences around him like half-empty plates of tuna sandwiches - his favorite, but this is the after-life and Cohn is in Purgatory, where he is awaiting God's decision to rise up to Heaven or fall into the depths of Hell. Although he died in '86, it's present time, as Barbara Walters mentions The View and other current fads are alluded to. A haunting bell tolls every once in a while as if to summon him, but nothing results from it, so the merriment goes on. There's his overly protective mother Dora, with whom he lived until her death in 1969, played out convincingly by Cheryl David and his maid/nanny/girl toy Lizette, played with sparkling effervescence and conviction by Presciliana Esparolini, who caters to his every whim. Then there's a younger version of himself - this may be the only real innocent Roy, who is open to other, more positive life choices - played wonderfully, especially in dance, by handsome Jeffrey Scott Parsons. Roy's supposed homosexual lover G. David Schine is essayed with fervor by Tom Galup; long time friend Barbara Walters is played with self-assured aplomb by Liza de Weerd; Ronald Reagan is given a very amusing portrait of political ignorance by David Sessions and then there's Julius Rosenberg, played with fortitude by Jon Levenson, who seems to alternate as Roy's enemy/friend - Roy betrayed his confidence as the prosecuting attorney, but, Oh my, both being Jews, they could have been such buddies! Beber adds such questionable complexity to this role. The whole ensemble work beautifully separately and together under Aaron's bright, upbeat pacing to make the crazy entertainment work at its optimum best. Even though the people are not three-dimensional, they do amuse. John Iacovelli's set is at once garrish and lush, not such a bad place to be as one awaits his fate.

Great direction and great cast provide a fascinating fresh look at an old demon. Even if the bad boy Cohn stays irritating and rotten - does he really go to heaven in the end?/ that's right, this is only a fantasy! - he's still somewhat amusing to watch.

3/5 stars