Written by Scotty Keister
The Rapture, it seems, will be delayed. Samuel D. Hunter’s 2011 Obie Award-winning play, “A Bright New Boise,” now running at Chance Theater, shines a rather searing blowtorch on rapture/last days church cults, but not without both heartbreak and major laughs. Continue Reading
Written by Alina Mae Wilson
Here’s the thing–The Addams Family is old. By kid’s standards, really old. After being created by cartoonist Charles Addams in 1938, they decided to air the television series about the ghoulish family in 1964. The premise of the show is mostly that some weird family living in a mansion consistently creeps out the neighbors with their non-traditional love of all things macabre, as well as some supernatural abilities that are never fully explained. This was successful enough to warrant the creation of an Addams Family movie in 1991–which was in turn popular enough to warrant a sequel in 1993. Some years later it was turned into a musical comedy and opened on Broadway in 2010. 3-D Theatricals current production of the show is cast absolutely perfectly, but the play itself is the problem. It is built too heavily on the history of the Addams Family, and history does not entertain entire families. With a story so heavily geared towards people who are already fans, can this really qualify as a successful family show? After seeing it Saturday night, I can’t help but say: not really. Continue Reading
Written by Patrick Chavis
As you become more familiar with Shakespeare’s works, you will soon find different trends and concepts explored more than once in different places. I have always felt Twelfth Night to be the perfect example of this. Twelfth Night is like a late-night paper, the kind a brilliant but procrastinating student writes at the last second to graduate. It’s creative, outside the box, and probably a mixture of three or four old ideas–but who cares because we need to pump out another play, and I want to go to the bar! What makes it even more hilarious, it’s also known under the title What You Will. Shakespeare already knows he’s shotgunning out another play, but you have to admire his “you’re gonna love it because I’m Shakespeare” attitude.
Fullerton Community College’s production of Twelfth Night, directed by Tim Espinosa, is a unique and extremely comical rendition. With masterful stage work, design, music, and direction, we witness a truly professional level throughout a large portion of the production. The minor flaws with line delivery and a lack of energy at lengthily sustained moments are pretty much remedied in this brave new adaptation. Continue Reading
Written by Daniella Litvak
In 2013 Qui Nguyen was part of the South Coast Repertory’s CrossRoads Initiative, a playwright residency program in Orange County. During his time, Nguyen visited the Southeast Asian Archives at the University of California, Irvine. There he found photographs of a subject near to his heart –Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, one the refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees, including his own family, were relocated to following the fall of Saigon. Seeing those photos finally made Nguyen commit to the project he wanted to write about for so long –a sex comedy starring his parents. Continue Reading
Written by Alina Mae Wilson
Right before Segerstrom Theater’s curtain rose for Disney’s famed stage classic The Lion King, the suspense was palpable. Why wouldn’t it be? In 1994 the Disney film of the same name shattered records as the highest-grossing animated feature of all time. It debuted as a Broadway musical in 1997 and in 1998 was nominated for and won a myriad of Tony Awards –including Best Scenic Design and Best Costume Design. With over a decade of historic nostalgia preceding it, the current touring company is doubly pressed to turn out a great performance for lovers of both the movie and the original Broadway show. How does this production measure up? The answer is pretty well. Continue Reading
A gentle and fractured man — who has recently had his world forcibly turned upside-down. Will looks to the white walls and florescent lighting of Boise’s Hobby Lobby to provide him with a new job and, hopefully, a fresh start. What starts off innocently with Will getting to know the eclectically goofy group of employees, quickly begins to unravel as the truth about his past is revealed…. and his true motivation for returning to Boise threatens to change all their lives. Taken from the Chance Theatre website
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Tune in every Friday to http://www.kuci.org/or if you’re in the areas of Santa Ana, Irvine or Tustin turn your radio receiver to 88.9FM @ 4pm – 5pm for the AMB Theatre show in partnership with the Orange Curtain Review.
