{"id":2389,"date":"2014-03-15T07:19:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T07:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/?p=2389"},"modified":"2014-03-20T01:42:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T01:42:33","slug":"stage-rows-bill-raden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/stage-rows-bill-raden\/","title":{"rendered":"Stage Rows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stage<\/a><\/h1>\n

Stage Rows<\/h1>\n

BY BILL RADEN<\/p>\n

We at Stage Rows would like to formally thank Stage Raw<\/em> for inviting us to share the hottest if not-very-well substantiated L.A. stage rumors and bald-faced show plugs in this, the inaugural of what we hope will be a regular weekly column of scandalmongering and sludge-raking among the personalities that make the Los Angeles stage scene the fractious, fecund and incestuous community that it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spring has Sprung, Early<\/h2>\n

Following a rather bleak and inauspicious January and early-February, the L.A. stage erupted in recent weeks with an explosion of unusually muscular must-sees, including Echo Theater Company\u2019s world premiere of <\/span>Tommy Smith<\/b>\u2019s deliriously transgressive pedophile black comedy, <\/span>Firemen<\/i><\/a>, (starring the sizzling <\/span>Rebecca Gray<\/b>), and, next door at EST-LA, director <\/span>Gates McFadden<\/b>\u2019s gut-splitting L.A. premiere of the dark <\/span>Marius von Mayenburg<\/b> plastic-surgery farce <\/span>The Ugly One<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Those detonations were echoed across town at The Odyssey, where <\/span>Murray Mednick<\/b> again demonstrated why he is this city\u2019s literary-stage \u00e9minence grise with <\/span>Villon<\/i><\/a> (featuring the always-mind-blowing <\/span>Peggy Blow<\/b>), his layered, philosophic and funny meditation on the theater as refracted through France\u2019s medieval lumpen poet laureate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bart Catches his Breath, Briefly<\/h2>\n
\"Bart
The Breathless Bart DeLorenzo (Photo: Pauline Adamek)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also in-house at Odyssey was <\/span>Bart DeLorenzo<\/b>\u2019s fabled Evidence Room and its production of <\/span>Sarah Ruhl<\/b>\u2019s <\/span>Passion Play<\/i> (that closed on Sunday), in which the inimitable <\/span>Shannon Holt<\/b> displayed a versatility at nationalistic megalomania even we never previously dared suspect, playing <\/span>Queen Elizabeth<\/b>, <\/span>Adolf Hitler<\/b> and <\/span>Ronald Reagan<\/b>, albeit not at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stage Rows managed to corner the hardest working man in stage biz at LADCC\u2019s recent nominee reception party \u2014 yes, the habitually awarding LAD Sissies are finally acknowledging Bart\u2019s directing genius with something called \u201cThe <\/span>Milton Katselas<\/b> Award,\u201d which we presume has nothing at all to do with <\/span>Dianetics<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bart says that after workshopping the new Steven Drukman<\/b> play Death of the Author<\/i> over the next two weeks, he\u2019s shooting comet-like to NYC to remount his 2013 Odyssey hit Annapurna<\/i> Off-Broadway with The New Group and, following the opening-night cast party, is red-eying it back to Westwood to get up Death<\/i> in time for its May 20 world premiere<\/a> at the Geffen. Whew! We\u2019re out of breath even typing that.–Reported by Pauline Adamek<\/em><\/p>\n

SoHo on the Pacific, Sort-of<\/b><\/h2>\n
\"Mehrten<\/a>
Wooster Trojan Greg Mehrten panders to SOSE’s Melina Bielefelt at Kate Valk’s Standard birthday fete (Photo: Bill Raden)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of the loudest concussions rattling the city\u2019s cultural fenestration came via a flurry of frenzied stage experimentation that fleetingly gave our staunchly middlebrow burg the avant frisson of downtown NYC, circa 1981.<\/p>\n

Making the biggest noise was Wooster Group<\/b>\u2019s polarizing and provocative world premiere of Cry, Trojans! (Troilus and Cressida)<\/i> at REDCAT, director Elizabeth LeCompte<\/b>\u2019s razor-smart and dizzyingly radical attack on Shakespeare\u2019s rarely produced antiwar play, and which featured LeCompte’s ironized \u201cre-appropriation\u201d of Hollywood-appropriated Native American history and gestures.<\/p>\n

Typically, the town\u2019s cadre of well-made-play panderers (aka the mainstream bloggers\/critics) sorely missed the point, which left the show without a defender and vulnerable to polemical brickbat attacks<\/a> and screams of \u201cracist!\u201d carried out by narrow identity-politics absolutists on REDCAT\u2019s Facebook pages. Out of all of L.A.\u2019s theater artists, only the valiant (and embarrassingly talented) stage designer Matt Richter<\/b> seemed to have the cojones to rush in where other Angel(eno)s feared to tread, as Matt made repeated pleas<\/a> for the show in comment threads on Bitter Lemons.<\/p>\n

\"SOSE's
SOSE’s Melina Bielefelt toasts the one-year-more-beautiful Kate Valk at downtown’s Standard Hotel (Photo: Bill Raden)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Woosters themselves seemed unperturbed by the fracas at a post-show birthday party on the rooftop of downtown\u2019s Standard Hotel for its incandescent leading lady, the magnificent Kate Valk<\/b>. Amid pounding dance music and what looked like lots of bored, 20-something metrosexual Russian mobster types (and the odd fashionista club kid) lounging around the Standard\u2019s over-upholstered pool-side bar, the likes of REDCAT\u2019s Mark Murphy<\/b>, Poor Dog Group\u2019s Jesse Bonnell<\/b> and Son of Semele\u2019s Melina Bielefelt<\/b> attempted to carry on conversations with the birthday girl and Woosterites LeCompte, Cynthia Hedstrom<\/b>, Scott Shepherd<\/b> and Greg Mehrten<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Mehrten, the show\u2019s decidedly oily Pandarus, said he\u2019d been passing his off-time locked in his REDCAT-provided hotel room and taking advantage of the Standard\u2019s bountiful room service. (Nice work if you can get it.) He did, however, admit to attending an exclusive Oscar party at the lavish hillside home of L.A. performance-art legend John Fleck<\/b> \u2014 an affair that was conspicuous by the presence of bicoastal stage director David Schweizer<\/b> and the absence of uninvited Stage Rows. (Note to self: Never mention fair-weather Fleck\u2019s name in digital print again!)<\/p>\n

\"Rob
Rob Zombie star Jeff Phillips and Villon’s Gray Palmer imbibe at Pharmacy (Photo: Bill Raden)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One guest list on which Stage Rows did find itself was impresario-playwright Kevin O\u2019Sullivan<\/b>\u2019s triumphant revival of his free evenings of one-off experimental theater called Pharmacy. After being booted from its Chinatown home two years ago during an ownership change, Pharmacy finally landed at the downtown-adjacent Monty bar, which was filled by a well-oiled capacity crowd for a stellar evening opened by an outrageously funny Mark Boone, Jr.<\/b> (Sons of Anarchy) and Justin Tanner<\/b> star Chloe Taylor<\/b>, with appearances by poete maudit<\/i> John Tottenham<\/b> and the likes of Darrett Sanders<\/b>, Corryn Cummins<\/b>, Mike Wiles<\/b> and Suzanne Fletcher<\/b> in works by O\u2019Sullivan, Wes Walker<\/b> and Sharon Yablon<\/b>.<\/p>\n

\"Mark
A post-show Mark Boone, Jr. chills outside Pharmacy (Photo: Bill Raden)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The final show in what totaled up as an L.A. avant-garde trifecta is the premiere of experimental-stage collective Poor Dog Group\u2019s long-anticipated opus, Five Small Fires<\/i><\/a>, which features a riveting ensemble (Brad Culver is especially on fire) in a smart and tightly mounted, 75-minute riff off the House of Atreus that is cut into a wittily self-referential and knife-edged exploration of the cult dynamic at play in any avant theater group. Go see it!<\/p>\n

\"Cat
The newly legalized Cat Ventura and Jonney Ahmanson enjoying experimental bliss in Five Small Fires (Photo: Jesse Bonnell)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And when you do, be certain to give your felicitations to Fires<\/i> stars Jonney Ahmanson<\/b> and Cat Ventura<\/b>, who revealed to Stage Rows that they are newly hitched! The avant \u2014 and now state-sanctioned \u2014 couple assured us that the announcement was a Stage Rows exclusive, and it would have been had not PDG\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> scooped us by a good three months.<\/p>\n

\"Lewis
Avant-art power couple Lewis Klahr and Janie Geiser pose at Covell Wine Bar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stage Rows got its revenge, however, by crashing PDG\u2019s victory celebration at Hollywood\u2019s Covell Wine Bar and getting belligerently tipsy on some excellent Argentinian sparkling wine in the company of experimental collagist-animator Lewis Klahr<\/b> and his wife, filmmaker, avant-garde puppeteer and Automata gallery<\/a> founder Janie Geiser<\/b>.<\/p>\n

\"Brad
PDG’s free-bassing Brad Culver at Covel Wine Bar (Photo: Poor Dog Group)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also at the party was director and CalArts theater honcho <\/span>Travis Preston<\/b>, who said he had come straight from LAX and that, earlier that morning, had been in Hong Kong as part of a Pacific-rimming logistics trip in advance of the international tour of his Getty Villa stage hit <\/span>Prometheus Bound<\/i><\/a>. The highlight of the trip? Seoul, South Korea, enthused Preston, a city that he said now boasts one of the most vibrant and edge-cutting performance scenes on the planet. (Calling <\/span>Mark Murphy<\/b>.) Their cars aren\u2019t so shabby either.<\/span><\/p>\n

And This Late-Breaking Blind Item From the Stage Rows Archive (circa 1956)<\/p>\n

What renowned Broadway playwright and author of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof openly admitted in a Key West bar that he was not only a friend of\u00a0Dorothy<\/b><\/a>‘<\/b>s but of a known Key West practitioner of outlaw “perversion?”\u00a0Or, as\u00a0our exclusive source<\/b><\/a>\u00a0puts it, “How do you think it would sound all over the world if folks began thinking America’s leading playwright wrote with a limp wrist. How do you think it would look in the history books?” Hmm. We at Stage Rows couldn’t say, though we suppose it isn’t entirely improbable that an\u00a0appreciator of Broadway musicals<\/a>\u00a0should find a home in the theater.<\/p>\n

As always, any reader tips, gossipy tidbits and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 party invitations (host-bar only, please) will be gratefully accepted at rows@stageraw.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY BILL RADEN<\/p>\n

We at Stage Rows would like to formally thank Stage Raw for inviting us to share the hottest if not-very-well substantiated L.A. stage rumors and bald-faced show plugs in this, the inaugural of what we hope will be a regular weekly column of scandalmongering and sludge-raking among the personalities that make the Los Angeles stage scene the fractious, fecund and incestuous community that it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_custom_body_class":"","_custom_post_class":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stage-rows-bill-raden-los-angeles-theater-reviews","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2389"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2852,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389\/revisions\/2852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}