Tagged With Hff16
You Win Some, You Lose Some, in Love and "War Stories"
According to the website DiscoverLosAngeles.com, there were 4 million people living in the City of Los Angeles in 2015. If you add all of LA County, the number grows to 10.1 million. That’s a lot of hearts falling in and out of love at any given time.In Sarah Kelly’s new play, War Stories, we meet four of them: Chelsea (Sarah Schreiber), an actress constantly attracted to catastrophe; Sam (Clayton McInerney), a writer whose motto is ‘never fall in love with an actress’; J...
This "Wheel" is Missing Too Many Spokes
Writer/Director Brandon Beck has divided this supposed cautionary dystopian excursion into mankind’s dubious future into two sections. Part One offers a thematically jaundiced glimpse into a theme park universe envisioned and ruled over by megalomaniac Herman J. Weintraub (played to the basso profundo hilt by Sokratis Frantzis). The fictional Weintraubsylvania, in West Nyack, New York grotesquely exaggerates the sins of today’s monumentally overpriced and suffocatingly overproduced mega theme parks, w...
"Porn Rock: An Unintentional Comedy" - Intentionally Explicit
In 1985, the Parent’s Music Resource Committee put together a list of songs they dubbed the Filthy Fifteen for what they said contained explicit lyrics unsuitable for children. Among them were Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” Judas Priest’s “Eat Me Alive,” Mötley Crüe’s “Bastard,” Madonna’s “Dress You Up” and the song that would become their poster child for attack, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sist...
"Sexy Maus" Brings a Seductive Spin on the Homeric Odyssey
Andrea Schell is that friend of yours who is the life of the party. Entertaining, enthralling, smart, sexy, she can salvage the shoddiest dinner party by her mere presence.And there you have both the strength and weakness of “Sexy Maus” which is appearing as part of the 2016 Hollywood fringe.Schell is a dynamo as she relates her journey through some of continental Europe’s inviting capitals – her itinerary connecting her various destinations together to for...
Carla Delaney Corrals her "Voices"
Actress/voice over specialist Carla Delaney has successfully plied her craft in a number of performance outlets, including such animated TV fare as The Family Guy and The Cleveland Show, commercials (the voice of Carol Brady for Snickers) and reality TV (Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Dana Carvey’s First Impressions). Her one-person show, Voices, follows her intrepid journey in her efforts to reveal not only the source of her talent but her essence as a human being. Solo show guru Jessica Lynn Johnson helms the...
An Informal "Doctor in the House"
What the audience soon learns from his mildly awkward introductory remarks is that Dr. Ahmed Z. Kazmi is a British GP, living and practicing in Australia, currently intent on doing standup comedy at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. What ensues over the next 70 minutes is a good-natured, show-and-tell that not only provides a nice smattering of GP clinic humor and a bit of cogent medical advice, but also a sample of Dr. Ahmed’s vocal ability and terpsichorean prowess. But once the novelty of the good doctor&rs...
THE DESCRIPTIVENESS IS GREAT BUT THE STORYTELLING NEEDS WORK IN "WARM CHEESE"
Mom. It’s one of the few things all of us have in common, and she is perhaps the most important relationship any of us will ever have. Some moms nurture, some abuse. Some do a little of both. Some moms inspire, some discourage. Some are peculiar and some are positively nuts. In the one-person memoir which just opened at the Hollywood Fringe, writer Teresa L. Thome sums her mother up as a “mildly neurotic control freak....
IT’S A BIT CHAOTIC INSIDE ‘YOUR MOTHER’S VAGINA’
There was an inherent awkwardness to my editor’s request, “I want you to review Your Mother’s Vagina at Hollywood Fringe.” Playwright/director Amy Chaffee is quite aware of the title’s projected discomfort. She has sewn it into the fabric of her two-hander journey through the convoluted friendship of struggling actress/bartender Leila (Beth Gudenrath) and part-time university academic/cocktail waitress Sue Anne (Rachel Hirshorn). Within three time-spanning scenes, they spend most of...
ABSURDISM AND REALITY CLASH IN "MOUNT VERNON"
As if we needed more evidence, the recent shootings in Orlando substantiate how America’s relationship with gun ownership, gun usage, and the Constitutional right to bear arms remains a contentious issue that sorely needs to be publicly dialogued—and what better place than the theater? Straight out of the school of Albee, Rena Brannan has written a two-character puzzle-box of a play which means to highlight these themes, but even with some knockout performances, the show gets lo...
BUMPERSTICKER: THE MUSICAL, a Toe Tapping Song Fest
Gary Stockdale and Spencer Green display great originality in their choices for topic to frame their musicals around. Bukowsical was their last effort, a toe tapping song fest about Charles Bukowski America’s ugliest poet. When they received a “cease and desist” letter from the lawyers representing Bukowski’s estate that threatened legal action, in a move that warmed the hearts of gadflies across this great nation of ours, they turned that correspondence into the show’s opening numbe...