Put a Little Drama in your Life
PAT LAUNER - TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 8/29/15 “PARLOUR SONG” AN OMINOUS AND AUSPICIOUS START FOR NEW THEATER The identical houses, just six feet apart, line up in neat little rows. Behind the tidy lawns and closed doors, menace lurks. Welcome to suburbia, English style, as imagined by playwright Jez Butterworth in “Parlour Song,” his 2008 drama (with comic relief). In this dark-hued portrait of middle age, some of the symbolism is a bit heavy handed: there’s the demolition Read More →
Pat Launer, Center Stage on KSDS JAZZ88 August 28, 2015 Fasten your seatbelts. It’s a bumpy ride: an intergalactic space flight that is a mishmash mashup of B-level 1950s sci fi, The Bard and 1960s music. Sounds wacky, right? It is. And not always in a good way. At New Village Arts, “Return to the Forbidden Planet” has a far better cast and production than it deserves. This jukebox musical spoof, created by playwright Bob Carlton, Read More →
PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 8/21/15 ANOTHER REASON TO REVEL IN NEW FORTUNE: THEIR PRODUCTION OF “THE BIRTHDAY PARTY” The title sounds so festive. But since “The Birthday Party” was written by Harold Pinter, expect more menace than merriment. The late Nobel laureate penned this disturbing drama in 1958, and it was greeted (as still often happens) with head-scratching and hostility. We don’t really know exactly what’s going on here. And that’s Pinter’s point (Life is like that). Rumpled, broken Read More →
Pat Launer, Center Stage on KSDS JAZZ88 August 14, 2015 Did you ever look at someone you thought you knew and wonder, ‘What is going on inside your head?’ Well, the world premiere musical “Up Here” gives us an inkling of what’s ‘up there’ for one nerdy, shy, smart, introverted guy: Dan, the computer-man, engagingly played by Matt Bittner. We meet all the conflicting, disruptive characters in his mind – who sing, dance, cavort and keep him Read More →
PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 8/11/15 Sedaka Songs go Catskills: Premiere Productions’ “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” My grandmother is rolling in her grave. Premiere Productions is doing a show set in the Catskills, circa 1960, with a main character who’s a classic Borscht Belt comic. Both onstage and offstage, characters have blatantly Jewish names, and some are written in obvious New York/Jewish dialect. Yiddishisms punctuate the dialogue. The two leading ladies, one smart but klutzy, the other Read More →
Pat Launer, Center Stage on KSDS JAZZ88 August 7, 2015 Who let the dogs out? That monstrous, murderous hound is back, in “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery,” at The Old Globe. This West coast premiere is the brainchild of Ken Ludwig, the award-winning comic playwright best known for “Lend Me a Tenor.” Here we have a deliciously campy riff on the classic 1902 Arthur Conan Doyle story, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” Hewing surprisingly close to the Read More →