Theater review: 'Mary Poppins' at the Ahmanson Theatre

 
Mary Poppins wafted into the Ahmanson Theatre on her magic umbrella Sunday evening, and even those who think they’ve outgrown her carpetbag of enchantment will have to admit that her timing is, to use one of her pet phrases, “practically perfect.”

The show, while not intended as a holiday entertainment, takes on a special glow as the days get dark early and merriment is placed on family to-do lists. (Sure, Mary can be a bit of a martinet, but wouldn’t you rather jump into a painting with her than clock more overtime with Scrooge?) More surprising is the tale’s recessionary relevance. Live-in nannies may be a thing of the past, but the story of a cold, uptight banker who discovers his humanity at home after his career falls off the hinges is like some kind of post-Lehman Brothers-WaMu fairy tale.

This musical adaptation of P.L. Travers’ classic invention, a co-production of Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, tries to reconcile the sharp edges of the original stories with the cheerier Walt Disney film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (the latter of whom made a surprise appearance at the curtain call on opening night, looking impossibly young and dapper). The high-flying spectacle, running on the rocket fuel of such memorable movie numbers as “A Spoonful of Sugar” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” can't help being delightful. But the contrasting tones between Travers and Disney aren’t any more blendable than oil and water.

Dance review: Pilobolus at the Ahmanson Theatre

The din at a Pilobolus performance is like that of no other dance crowd. If you were blindfolded, you’d have every reason to assume that you were attending a small-scale circus, what with the enthusiastic applause for acrobatic feats, the exhalations of wonder at contortionist extremes and the burst of laughter at clown-show antics. The company sets out to rouse spectators through a program of nonstop visual astonishment, and the biggest affront wouldn’t be boos but the reverential silence of a ballet recital.

The bill performed this weekend at the Ahmanson Theatre (part of the Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center 2009-10 season) offered an impressively entertaining if not quite revelatory sampling of Pilobolus’ athletic revelry. The two recent works paired in the first half, “Redline” (2009) and “Rushes” (2008), reflected strikingly divergent theatrical modes and methods, while the older pieces that made up the second half, “Gnomen” (1997) and “Day Two” (1980), flaunted the group’s signature protean magic in which human forms transfigure in ways that appear to defy fundamental principles of anatomy and physiology.

The audience was exultant at Friday night’s show, and the old debates over purism and populism that have riled the dance cognoscenti for a good chunk of Pilobolus' nearly 40-year history were completely drowned out by the adulation. If the company’s style is good enough for “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the Academy Awards ceremony, so be it. If corporate advertisers can’t get enough of the moves, more power to the dancers who collectively dreamed them up. Commercial appeal isn’t synonymous with compromise, even if the dangers are obvious. When fluidity reigns supreme, only a prig would fret over high and low brow-splitting.

Fall performance preview: A season of fancy footwork

This fall's rich L.A. dance and performance line-up offers something for just about everyone, from neophyte fans to avant-garde connoisseurs.

Plan your season wisely and you can sample from some of the world's most prestigious companies.

Want a challenge?

Check out the Southern California returns of Bill T. Jones and the British group DV8 Physical Theatre. For lighter, more family-friendly fare, there's Pilobolus and the always reliable Cirque du Soleil.

See the season’s most anticipated dance and performance events by clicking on the photo gallery.

-- David Ng

Photo: Pilobolus. Credit: John Kane

Theater review: 'August: Osage County' at the Ahmanson Theatre

According to playwright Tracy Letts, T.S. Eliot got it wrong. August, not April, is the cruelest month, especially if you’re experiencing a spiraling domestic crisis in the sweltering heat of Pawhuska, Okla., with the locusts raging outside and the old family pathologies running amok in the even more stifling climate indoors.

The occasion for all this flamboyant and sensationally entertaining misery is Letts’ highly decorated play “August: Osage County," the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner that opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre. The production, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, features a cast headed by Estelle Parsons in the to-die-for dysfunctional role of Violet, the pill-popping matriarch of the Weston clan, which has banded together at the old homestead after Beverly (Jon DeVries), the alcoholic poet patriarch, alarmingly disappears.

Time, in other words, for kith and kin to sharpen the flaying knives. Those ancient parent-child grievances, still unappeasable after all these years, are about to get a painfully overdue airing.

Tracy Letts, dark and light

When playwright Tracy Letts walked into New York rehearsals for the touring production of his “August: Osage County” earlier this summer, he did not find the fellow Steppenwolf Theatre Company ensemble members who blew away brittle New York aesthetes with their gale-force, Chicago-style acting in Letts’ devastating Broadway play. Although a few of the touring cast members — mostly notably, the widely acclaimed Estelle Parson— had done the show as Broadway replacements during the long New York run, and many have ties to both Letts and other Chicago theaters, the famously dysfunctional Westons of Oklahoma are being played on the road by none of the original cast.

“I really have to say,” Letts says over lunch, a devilish grin on his face, “I was kind of relieved not to be looking across the table at the same exhausted faces.

Even though he had written his Pulitzer Prize-winning play especially for them. Even though he knew where most of the bodies were buried in the infamously complex web of relationships — professional, romantic, always personal — that have been part of the Steppenwolf gestalt ever since Gary Sinise, Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney founded this most famous of Chicago theaters in 1974 and dragged it to fame, longevity and international acclaim by the sweat of their own ambition. Letts was happy to see some gung-ho fresh meat taking his play out west.

 “August: Osage County,” which premiered to critical acclaim in Chicago during the summer of 2007 and opens at the Ahmanson Theatre on Sept. 9, is the semi-autobiographical story of three adult, angst-laden sisters who return home to their pill-popping mother’s house of emotional horrors following the mysterious disappearance of their father, a sometime writer and a constant drinker. A symphony of domestic violence ensues, conducted by the caustically manipulative Violet Weston, who knows how to reduce her hapless family to self-doubting blubber on the Plains.

For an in-depth look at Letts' career today, by Chris Jones, click here for Sunday's Arts & Books story.

Photo: The playwright. Credit: Alex Garcia/For The Times

Mamet, McDonagh and 'Bengal Tiger' highlight Taper's 2010 season*

In a season that had to make concessions to the changing economy, the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum  has announced a 2010 lineup that includes David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow," directed by Neil Pepe, Martin McDonagh's "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," Rajiv Joseph's "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" and Judith Ivey in the Long Wharf Theatre production of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie." 

The season, announced today by Michael Ritchie -- artistic director of CTG, which oversees the Taper, the Ahmanson Theatre and Culver City's Kirk Douglas Theatre -- also includes the world premiere of a musical which CTG describes as featuring "the work of one of America's greatest living singer/songwriters," with title and details to be announced soon. The touring production of 'Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps' at the Ahmanson Theatre is offered as a bonus production to Taper subscribers.

The new season opens Feb. 21 with "Speed-the-Plow" and runs through Dec. 19 but leaves empty most of the month of June. In an interview Thursday, Ritchie said that leaving one month open for programming that will be scheduled later is an effort on the part of CTG to take advantage of the fact that more and more theatergoers seem to be forgoing the subscription model and making their ticket-buying decisions at the last minute.

Theater cast album reviews: 'Next to Normal' and more

We cast album geeks tend to spend a fair amount of time in bad lighting conditions. We're either bathed in the glow of a computer screen as we search the Internet for news of upcoming releases, or we're awash in  fluorescent light as we skulk the aisles of what few record stores remain, seeking signs of our ever-harder-to-find must-haves.

The current search is rewarded by the release of "Next to Normal," winner of this year's Tony for best score. The story follows an otherwise typical American family down the rabbit hole of mental illness -- not an easy place to go. But composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Brian Yorkey make the journey  fascinating. We come out on the other end having learned something about ourselves.

The album is reviewed in Sunday Arts & Books, along with the Broadway cast recordings of the movie adaptations "Shrek" and "9 to 5," the latter of which changed a bit after its tryout at the Ahmanson; the '80s hair-rock assemblage "Rock of Ages," which also started in L.A.; and revivals of the landmark musicals "West Side Story" and "Hair."

"Next to Normal" stands out for a number of reasons, not least: It's an original idea amid all of those adaptations, jukebox piece-togethers and revivals. Geeks rejoice!

-- Daryl H. Miller 

Credit: Decca Broadway

Return engagement: Are musicals better the second time?

 

Repeat offenders is the term of art (in my book, anyway) for theatergoers who see shows again and again. You know, the “Wicked” tweens and their eager-to-please moms, the “Spamalot” crew of Monty Python obsessives, the global army of “Mamma Mia!” dancing queens, etc.

In this Sunday's Arts & Books section, I look back on musicals I’ve seen more than once and, to my surprise, reversed my verdicts. Yes, even critics have second thoughts.

Rewinding my long history of theatergoing, I think the productions I’ve experienced the most are ones that I worked on, either as a student or professional dramaturge. I’ll never forget an “Othello” starring Michael Potts and directed by Anna D. Shapiro at the Yale School of Drama, which I attended numerous times, each one better than the previous.
 
But as I recount in this essay, revisiting big splashy musicals has been more of a roller-coaster ride. Sure, it's no fun when the dazzle dips, but what a treat when the ho-hum suddenly becomes unexpectedly thrilling. 

--Charles McNulty

Photo: "Spamalot" at the Ahmanson Theatre, starring John O'Hurley. Credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

Broadway's '9 to 5' closing Sept. 6; tour to launch in 2010

The working girls of Broadway's "9 to 5: The Musical" got their pink slip notices today when the show's producers announced that the Tony-nominated production will close on Sept. 6 after playing for 148 performances.

But the musical, which features songs by Dolly Parton, will get a second life when the national tour kicks off in -- where else? -- Nashville in September 2010.

"I can’t wait for this show to hit the road so people across the country can see why I’m so proud of everyone involved," Parton said in a statement. "And I'm so pleased that we'll be opening the tour in Nashville. Great things happen in Nashville.”

"9 to 5" had its world premiere in September 2008 at the Ahmanson Theatre in L.A. before transferring to Broadway's Marriott Marquis Theatre in April 2009. The New York critics were generally negative toward the show, which stars Allison Janney, Megan Hilty, Stephanie J. Block and Marc Kudisch.

The show garnered four Tony nominations -- including nods to Parton, Janney and Kudisch -- but was shut out during the awards ceremony.

Promoters said the national tour of "9 To 5" will launch the week of Sept. 20, 2010, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville.

--David Ng

Photo: Stephanie J. Block, left, Allison Janney and Megan Hilty in "9 to 5: The Musical" at the Marriott Marquis Theatre on Broadway. Credit: Joan Marcus

Monster Mash: LACMA kills film program; Council mulls $30-million loan to Cirque; '9 to 5' closing soon?

 

--Time to rent a DVD: Los Angeles County Museum of Art dumps its 40-year-old film program, which celebrated vintage Hollywood films, such as 1933's "King Kong."

--Big bucks for big show: Los Angeles City Council considers $30-million loan to Cirque du Soleil for its Hollywood & Highland show.

--In with the new: Banner featuring incoming Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel goes up at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

--Final curtain?: Dolly Parton musical "9 to 5," which premiered at the Ahmanson Theatre last fall, and Disney's "The Little Mermaid" expected to close on Broadway after Labor Day, N.Y. Post's Michael Riedel says.

--Fire sale: Lehman Bros. Holdings begins selling off multimillion-dollar corporate art collection.

--More musical chairs: Salzburg Festival leadership changing yet again.

--Camp Alpha: U.S. troops in Iraq cause "major damage" to historic ruins of Babylon.

--Another name: David Allen Grier joins cast of "Race," David Mamet's new, no-longer-super-secret Broadway play.

--Congratulations: Architect Michael Rotondi and the Daly Genek firm are among winners of AIA/Los Angeles awards.

--'Vandalism'?: Scottish art exhibition encourages visitors to deface the Bible -- and the pope isn't happy.

--Overseas project: Architect from Westlake is creating Ghana's "Millennium City" development featuring green technologies.

--New appointment: President Obama names David Ferriero, chief of research libraries at the New York Public Library, as the next Archivist of the United States.

--We're shocked: Song-and-dance show about Ernest Hemingway's final days fails to find an audience.

-- Lisa Fung

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times