A home sweet home for Culture Clash in MacArthur Park?

Will the sweet green icing of success be pouring down on Culture Clash, the iconic L.A. Latino comic-theater troupe, if it moves to a new home beside MacArthur Park?

Under a proposal spearheaded by the Community Redevelopment Agency of the city of Los Angeles (CRA/LA), the Westlake Theatre at the edge of MacArthur Park, which was built in 1926 and currently is used as a swap meet, would be converted into a multi-use entertainment space for live theater, film screenings, musical performances and community and social events. The project also would include the creation of 49 units of affordable housing and a 300-space parking garage.

L.A. stage productions extend their runs through holiday season

On Culture Monster earlier today, Times theater critic Charles McNulty dispels the prevalent belief that Los Angeles is not a theater town. (Said belief is usually held by those who live far outside L.A., many of whom have such area codes as 212 and 718.)

To add more (if modest) evidence that theater is thriving in Tinseltown, Culture Monster has compiled a list of stage productions that have announced extensions through the holiday season, providing local audiences with alternatives to the Hollywood noise machines and Oscar bait that clog the cultural airwaves this time of year.

The Blank Theatre's "The Santaland Diaries," adapted from David Sedaris' NPR broadcasts, has added seven performances to its slate. The one-man show starring Nicholas Brendon runs through Dec. 20.

In Pasadena, "Baby It's You!," the new jukebox musical about the career of Florence Greenberg, has extended its run also through Dec. 20. The Pasadena Playhouse production tells the story of Greenberg's rise from a suburban housewife to a Hollywood record producer. "In the annals of jukebox musicals, this one won’t reach the average mark without a major rewrite and some recasting of the subpar supporting players," McNulty wrote in his review.

Theater brawl: Yes, L.A.'s cup runneth over

Stereotypes stick in your craw because of their willful obliviousness. One that I’ve had to contend with as the theater critic for The Times is the notion that L.A. isn’t a theater town.

“I didn’t know they had theater there,” is a line that has actually been uttered with a straight face in my direction. Yes, here in Tinseltown we also have hospitals, schools and museums, along with all the movie studios and scandalous starlets.

In a recent New York Times “Escapes” article about the vibrancy of Seattle as a theater town, I ruefully noted the cliché about L.A. theater rearing its ugly head again — and from someone who ought to know better: “One of the reasons I came to Seattle was because there’s a theater scene here unlike most other cities,” said Brian Colburn, managing director of the Intiman Theatre, who moved there last year from the Pasadena Playhouse in Southern California. “There’s probably as much theater here as in the city of Los Angeles, but the population is one-sixth the size. You can walk from theater to theater here, meet friends or colleagues at a cafe.”

Monster Mash: Pompidou strike could spread to Louvre, Versailles; Warhol musical; 'Donuts' closing

-- Labor unrest: The strike at the Pompidou Center in Paris is poised to widen to other museums in France, including the Louvre and Versailles palace. (Bloomberg)

-- Off-Broadway skirmish: A battle is brewing at New York's Soho Rep theater after the overlapping booking of two productions. (Variety)

-- 15 minutes: A new stage musical about Andy Warhol titled "Pop!" opens this week at Yale Repertory. (Playbill)

-- Large-scale artwork: A more-than-6,890-square-foot painting in Hong Kong has broken a world record. (Xinhua)

-- Playing another lawyer: James Spader discusses his Broadway debut in David Mamet's "Race." (New York Times)

-- Check, please: The Broadway production of Tracy Letts' "Superior Donuts" has posted a closing notice for Jan. 3. (Playbill)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne discusses the architecture of lowered expectations; looking ahead to the Art + Auction power issue; "Louis & Keely" heading for El Portal Theatre.

-- David Ng

Photo: Centre Pompidou in Paris. Credit: Eric Feferberg  AFP / Getty Images

Theater review: 'Extinction' at Elephant Space

Sociobiologists could have a field day parsing “Extinction,” Gabe McKinley’s world-premiere play at the Elephant Space.

McKinley traverses territory already well-trod by Neil LaBute and other playwrights who treat the darker side of the masculine psyche, but though his play doesn’t break much new ground, it enters a few unexplored and very murky corners en route to a shattering denouement.

The wrinkle here is that the embattled “couple” is heterosexual and male. For Max (Michael Weston), sex is conquest, and the more women he “scores,” the better. Tension erupts when his best friend and co-womanizer, Finn (James Roday), shifts the familiar paradigm of their relationship during a get-away weekend in Atlantic City.  Finn is newly in love and intent on fidelity, but when Max hires two “pros” for the occasion, Finn slams head-on into his own primordial need -- and it isn’t pretty.

Theater review: 'Sin' at Playhouse West Repertory Theater

 "From the sky, the world is perfect," says Avery (Elena Fabri), the lofty-minded heroine of "Sin," but things on terra firma are the opposite of flawless. Therein hangs Wendy McLeod's edgy 1994 dramedy at Playhouse West Repertory Theater.

First produced in Chicago by the Goodman Studio, "Sin" fuses contemporary character study to medieval mystery play. We're in San Francisco, circa 1989, where traffic reporter "Avery Bly in the Sky" gauges everyone by her ethical standards.

They inevitably disappoint, being modern versions of the Seven Deadly Sins. Michael (Lance Delgado), Avery's estranged husband, is a slothful alcoholic, roommate Helen (Holly Clapham, cast against type) a slovenly glutton. Blind date Jonathon (Bradley Hasemeyer) proves a greedy yuppie, poet Louis (Rocky Benoit) reeks of lust. Co-worker Fred (Vito Viscuso) envies new boss Jason (Jason Fox), a wrathful climber. 

Theater review: 'A Lie of the Mind' by Studio Five Productions

Sam Shepard's three-act, three-hour "A Lie of the Mind" restlessly roams the human condition, mapping out ways in which people function in families, in romantic relationships and in the world. It's an enormously difficult play, all the more so because it is conveyed in a complex mixture of tones: naturalistic, symbolic, poetic and just plain avant-garde.

What sheer audacity, then, for the new Studio Five Productions to launch itself with this piece. But these folks seem pretty savvy. For starters, they secured John Langs, the director of such arresting presentations as Circle X's "Eurydice" and "Battle Hymn," to stage the production -- and it's a knockout.

The set, by Dwayne Burgess, is built of America's old junk -- an evocative context for the West (read: U.S.) that Shepard deconstructs in his 1985 play.

Jake (Lance Kramer, hollow-eyed and zombie-like) is on the run after savagely beating his wife. Brain-damaged Beth (Natalie Avital, in a luminous performance) now speaks in fragments, sometimes using the wrong words, yet every utterance is pure, heartfelt poetry.

Theater review: 'Tent Meeting' at The Banshee

It’s a hard-knock life for Becky Ann (Amanda Deibert) the down-home Madonna of “Tent Meeting,” an evangelical comedy now at the Banshee. Her baby was born without a face or limbs, making it tough to know which end to diaper. But never underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit. The newborn’s granddaddy, Rev. Edward Tarbox (Gary Ballard), receives a sign from above and drags Becky Ann and her dubious brother, Darrell (Travis Hammer), on a road trip to the promised land — a.k.a. Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

Levi Lee, Larry Larson, and Rebecca Wackler’s quirky, meandering satire works more as a character study than a story. As director, Wackler pushes her excellent cast to embrace their respective lunacies, and the evening’s chief diversion is seeing who can out-crazy the others: the reverend, who decides the freakish babe is the Second Coming? Darrell, who imagines his appendix scar is a glorious war wound? Or Becky Ann, who may not be as oblivious as she pretends?

Unproduced Tennessee Williams screenplay finally reaching movie theaters

Like many great playwrights, Tennessee Williams did his stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter and even earned two Oscar nominations for his work. But he also had his share of unproduced projects -- one a screenplay titled "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond," which he is said to have written for director Elia Kazan during the 1950s. 

On Dec. 30, a new film that uses his screenplay will open in theaters in L.A. and New York. The movie stars Chris Evans and Bryce Dallas Howard, and is directed by actress Jodie Markell.

The trailer for the film (above) is available online. From what we can tell, the plot seems to be pure essence of Williams, who died in 1983. It features a daffy Southern dame (Howard) who harbors a jealous lust for a hunky piece of rough trade (Evans). The period setting and the humid atmosphere are sure to get Williams completists all hot and bothered.

Early reviews, however, have been lukewarm. When the film debuted in 2008 at the Toronto Film Festival, a critic for the Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The story is a sketchy, dramatically muddled rumination on familiar Williams themes about the Old South and its brave, beautiful, rebellion women always on the brink of love, suicide or madness."

A reviewer for Screen Daily wrote that Howard "probes the vulnerability that lies beneath" her character but added that Evans is "oddly stiff."

-- David Ng

New version of 'Louis & Keely' musical to open at El Portal Theatre

 People are starting to call it the musical that keeps on giving.

The team behind the popular "Louis & Keely: Live at the Sahara" is mounting a revised version of the stage show at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. The production,  retitled "A Vegas Holiday! Songs from 'Live at the Sahara,'" will play for a limited run from Dec. 19-31.

The El Portal said that the new version of the musical will be different from the Taylor Hackford-directed production that recently closed at the Geffen Playhouse following an eight-month run. But it will feature the same two lead actors, Jake Broder and Vanessa Claire Smith -- who are currently rewriting the book in preparation for a planned national tour -- as well as the same band members.

Hackford is not participating in the new version of the show.

Jay Irwin, a co-manager at the El Portal, told Culture Monster that he received a message from Smith in which the actress outlined details for the new production. According to the message, the actors will be performing all of the songs in character from the original show plus some of the onstage banter. 

However, the musical will contain none of the offstage scenes that audiences saw in the Geffen production, including scenes in the characters' apartment.

Broder and Smith "are planning a couple of surprises but I don't know more about that yet," Irwin said. "The show is also open to special guests and we're working on that right now."