Stages’
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
By Dave
Barton
Thursday,
September 26, 2002 - 12:00 am
SPOILER
ALERT! I rat out the ending, so if you’re thinking about seeing the production
and want to know if it’s worth your $15, here are my thoughts:
1) Strong
direction by John S. Infante.
2)
Wonderful performance by Bob Kokol as a walking bladder problem.
3) Mike
Martin’s Einstein is too arch at the beginning but smoothes out half-way.
4) But
then the production grinds to a halt. Masumi Emil’s lackluster art dealer and
Grayson Berry’s "I’m-the-only-person-onstage-look-at-me" performance
as Picasso are the prime culprits.
5) The production looks to be DOA until
Shawn Michael Brewer’s entrance as obnoxious entrepreneur Schmendiman steals
the show and gives the pacing an ass kicking.
That
all adds up to a qualified "yes": a decent production of an often
very funny, if remarkably thin, comedy.
Now
stop reading if you don’t want the ending spoiled. The crispness of comedian
Steve Martin’s writing is a joy but doesn’t add up to much. The numerous art
and philosophy references indicate that he might lead us into deeper
intellectual territory, but it turns out he is merely name-dropping. Anyone who
has ever seen or read an interview with Martin knows the guy’s brilliant, but
in this, his first play, he rarely follows through with his ideas to any real
conclusion. When he does, the conclusions are pretty fatuous.
Case in
point: Picasso and Einstein meet in a small French tavern to talk about a third
genius who’ll invade the world’s consciousness with them. That third party
turns out to be Elvis Presley. At play’s end, when stars in the sky
miraculously spell out the men’s names, Presley’s overshadows the other two.
Martin may have been making a joke about society’s exaltation of celebrity over
substance, but there’s no indication it’s meant sarcastically, so who knows?
Presley —who once said, "The only thing a nigger can do for me is buy my
records and shine my shoes"—isn’t even remotely in the same league as the
scientist who drafted the theory of relativity or the artist who changed the
art world (and laid the foundation for rock & roll) with Les Demoiselle
d’Avignon. All three men were major pussy hounds, but that’s about all they had
in common. Reactionary as it might sound, it’s insulting to mention those
geniuses and a racist hick in the same breath.
Picasso
at the Lapin Agile at Stages, 400 E. Commonwealth, Fullerton, (714) 525-4484.
Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. Through Oct. 19. $13-$15.
Wednesday,
July 13, 2005
'Girl'
offers more sit than com
Review:
Santa Ana revival of Neil Simon's 1966 hit is bogged down by a tired script
that misses the mark.
By ERIC
MARCHESE
Special
to the Register
With so
much buzz today about the political divide, you might think that Neil Simon's
"The Star-Spangled Girl" would have a certain cachet.
Not so.
Simon's 1966 comedy pits the "Girl" of the title, a flag-waving patriot
from the Deep South, against two counterculture Harvard grads who fancy
themselves on the cutting edge of the radical '60s protest movement.
Presumably,
the joke was that underneath it all, Sophie, the young lady, really wasn't so
different from would-be radicals Andy and Norman. It's a tired joke, though,
and like so many early Simon works, "Girl" is essentially just a
sitcom. As the Pacific Art Theatre's inaugural production of it proves, it's
heavy on the sit, embarrassingly light on the com.
Broke
and starving, Andy (Erik Kaul) and Norman (Jeff Haut) publish a protest
magazine out of their San Francisco apartment. The resourceful Andy is editor
and publisher, while the brainy Norman is the prolific writer. When spunky
Southerner Sophie (Danielle Olsen) moves in next door, her presence triggers a
disastrous chain of events for all three: Norman falls madly in love with her.
He stalks her, causing her to lose her job. Despite her lack of skills, Andy
hires her as a secretary, to placate her threats and mollify his lovesick pal
... and Sophie winds up with a crush on Andy, putting the lifelong friends in
romantic competition.
Kaul is
well-tuned and naturalistic as Andy, but he hardly seems the slick, type-A
operator of the script. Haut is more soft-spoken schlub than the dynamic,
high-intellect, emotionally compulsive eccentric Norman ought to be. While both
actors are pleasant, even likable, they aren't even remotely credible as
white-collar subversives.
Olsen
portrays Sophie as a high-strung, hot-tempered, spoiled young belle, and while
Sophie's desire to keep the pesky Norman at bay makes sense, Olsen's vehement
anger as the character does not. In one well-written scene, she and Kaul have
an interesting conversation that doesn't sound forced, followed by a heated and
very funny physical struggle - one of the show's lone bright spots, aided
immensely by Kaul's penchant for subtle slapstick.
Yet,
even while Simon occasionally touches on some fairly intriguing dialogue that
tantalizingly touches today's red-state/blue-state gestalt, most of
"Star-Spangled" focuses on frustratingly prosaic material - for
instance, Sophie's ineptitude as a secretary, Norman's writer's block and
Andy's dating his landlady to stave off eviction.
Director
SuzAnne Bradaric and her cast generate a few laughs but get bogged down by
Simon's tired, fairly tame script. Bradaric's staging generates visual interest
in a generally static scenario, Tobie Stockwell's set design is credible as
well as functional, and Shawn
Brewer's sound design incorporates '50s and '60s rock and pop tunes with a
romantic theme, helping this young troupe find its footing despite so weak a
textual foundation.
Freelance
writer Eric Marchese has covered entertainment for the Register since 1984.
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