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Dream Plays and Nightmare Seasons
A list of shows Back Stage West critics can't wait to see and others they never want to see again.
July 18, 2002
By Scott Proudfit
Having been in a few shows myself, I understand the frustration an actor feels when he knows he's in a great show but can't get anyone out to see it—besides friends and family, that is. However, having long been on the other side of the desk, as well, I have found it similarly frustrating, week in and week out, to try to assign my stable of Back Stage West critics plays that no one wants to sit through.
L.A. has more shows opening within its borders every week than any other city in the United States. But with abundance, there is always waste. Back Stage West critics can't see everything, of course, but some shows never get a fighting chance because our critics are simply tired of them. Nothing is more depressing than watching a familiar show sit on our assignment list for its entire run without a nibble of interest from our scribes—especially when other shows barely make it on the list before they are fought over ruthlessly by any number of eager writers.
Theatre is an impermanent, ephemeral medium. Nevertheless, a bad theatre experience seems to stay with you forever. And our critics are like any theatre lovers: They want to be moved, excited, informed, entertained. It's no surprise, then, that during these dog days of summer, when fewer theatre companies and independent producers seem to be putting things up, we at Back Stage West have taken the time to consider what shows we really want—and really don't want—to see in the coming year, and for many years to come. The seasons—for those theatres that plan such things—have already been announced, for better or worse. So we hope no one will accuse us of acting as artistic directors for all Los Angeles if we publicize those shows we would love for someone to produce in the coming months.
To come up with this wish list, editor in chief Rob Kendt and I informally polled our reviewers as to which plays they would love to see produced at a local venue, and which plays they would never care to see produced again—anywhere. The following survey is by no means comprehensive, nor is it a guarantee. If you produce one of the shows we're supposedly dying to see, we can't promise it will get reviewed—much less that it will get a positive review. But its chances of garnering interest are likely to be better. Nor is this a proclamation that the shows on this list we don't care to see again will never be reviewed. After all, there are a number of theatre companies in town whose reputations precede them. Even if they decide on the most unexciting of productions, we'll probably be there. Great companies seem to do wonders even with less-than-thrilling material.
Consider this, then, merely what it is: a taste test of BSW's reviewers and editors, a suggestion box for 99-Seaters, an informal list of some shows we believe have been overlooked by local companies, and more than a few we feel need never be looked at again. And, as always, let us know whether you agree. After all, we are your paper as much as you are our theatre makers.
Don't Bother
The following shows are among those plays that, as far as we're concerned, can be retired permanently.
Book musicals: Annie, Babes in Arms, Brigadoon, 42nd Street, Grease!, Happy End, Hello, Dolly!, Paint Your Wagon, Miss Saigon, On the Twentieth Century, The Unsinkable Molly Brown (come to think of it, any stage version of a musical film). Musical revues/ anthologies/etc.: Blame It on the Movies, Fosse, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The 1940s Radio Hour, any revues of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Rodgers & Hart, or Noël Coward. Webber musicals (apparently our critics felt he deserved his own category): Evita, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Phantom of the Opera. Hoary chestnuts: Arsenic and Old Lace, Charley's Aunt, The Time of Your Life, 12 Angry Men. Contemporary chestnuts: The Boys Next Door, Bus Stop, Butterflies Are Free, Driving Miss Daisy, Escape From Happiness, Fortinbras, The Gin Game, A Life in the Theatre, Love Letters, On Golden Pond, Tracers, Whose Life Is It Anyway? Recent perennials: Art, Eastern Standard, Collected Stories, Fully Committed, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Two Rooms. Stunts/novelties: The Compleat Works of Shakespeare Abrgd., one-word specialty shows (Swing!, Blast!, Stomp!, Aeros, etc.). Neil Simon (again apparently deserving of his own category): Barefoot in the Park, California Suite, Come Blow Your Horn. Little seen, and keep it that way: Corpus Christi, Tennessee Williams' American Blues. Any "original comedy" about advertising, Hollywood, agents, politics, business or telemarketing, or any "searing drama" about any form of addiction, abuse, disability, or dysfunction. Pretty much any evening of one-acts.
Sit On It
The following shows are great, but give them a break for a year or four.
Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice. Classics: All My Sons, Antigone, Blood Wedding, The Cherry Orchard, Doctor Faustus, The Glass Menagerie, The Importance of Being Earnest, Our Town, The Servant of Two Masters, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tartuffe, Uncle Vanya, The Crucible. Musicals: Annie Get Your Gun, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk, Bye Bye Birdie, Cabaret, Carousel, A Chorus Line, The Fantasticks, Fiddler on the Roof, Forever Plaid, Godspell, Hair, The King and I, Mamma Mia!, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, The Threepenny Opera. Played-out recent plays: All in the Timing, Dinner With Friends, Master Harold… and the Boys, Old Wicked Songs, Over the River and Through the Woods, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, The Sisters Rosensweig, Skylight, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, Sylvia. Contemporary chestnuts: American Buffalo, Bent, Burn This, Equus, Glengarry Glen Ross, Golden Boy, The Hostage, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Maids, Marat/Sade, Noises Off, Oleanna, Savage in Limbo. Perennials: A Christmas Carol, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Odd Couple, Private Lives, You Can't Take It With You. Sam Shepard: Fool for Love, True West. Nun novelties: Late-Nite Catechism, Nunsense.
Bring 'Em On
The following shows are ones we'd love to review ASAP. We've even provided certain playwrights' names to make it easier.
Welcome to L.A.: Anton in Show Business (Jane Martin), Be Aggressive (Annie Weisman), Betty's Summer Vacation (Christopher Durang), Fuddy Meers (David Lindsay-Abaire), Killer Joe (Tracy Letts), Passion (Lapine/Sondheim), Polaroid Stories (Naomi Iizuka), Shakespeare's R&J (Joe Calarco), Stop Kiss (Diana Son), Urinetown, the Musical, The Young Man From Atlanta (Horton Foote). For rescue and rediscovery: Adaptation/Next (Elaine May & Terrence McNally), Alice's Adventures Underground (Christopher Hampton), The Art of Dining (Tina Howe), The Bundle (Edward Bond), The Colored Museum (George C. Wolfe), The Comedians (Trevor Griffiths), The Chalk Garden (Enid Bagnold), Dear World (Jerry Herman), The Entertainer (John Osborne), Les Blancs (Lorraine Hansberry), Purlie Victorious (Ossie Davis), The Revengers' Comedies (Alan Ayckbourn), Safety (Sarah Morton), Three Postcards (Craig Lucas & Craig Carnelia), Thrillsville (Sarah Morton), Tom Cobb (W. S. Gilbert), Vampire (Snoo Wilson), Vilna's Got a Golem (Ernest Joselevitz), Visit to a Small Planet (Gore Vidal), The Waltz Invention (Vladimir Nabokov). Overdue revivals, classical division: Faust (Marlowe), Peer Gynt, She Stoops To Conquer. Overdue revivals, contemporary division: Awake and Sing, Cavalcade, The Country Girl, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Murder in the Cathedral, The Petrified Forest, Spring Awakening, Torch Song Trilogy, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, The Visit, Woyzeck, Zoot Suit. Overdue revivals, musical division: Applause, Boy Meets Boy, Goblin Market, Zorba. Bring 'em back, we can't get enough: The Adding Machine, Counsellor-at-Law, Design for Living, The Duchess of Malfi (as adapted by Brecht and Auden), Endgame, Habeus Corpus, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Homecoming, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Memorandum (Vaclav Havel), Rhinoceros, Sweeney Todd, Volpone. Edward Albee: The Play About the Baby, Seascape, Tiny Alice, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Bertolt Brecht: The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Galileo, The Good Person of Setzuan, In the Jungle of the Cities, Mother Courage, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Caryl Churchill: Blue Heart, Hot Fudge, Serious Money, Vinegar Tom. Jean Genet: The Blacks, The Screens. Erik Ehn: anything. Lillian Hellman: anything. Suzan Lori-Parks: anything. Charles Mee: Big Love, Summertime. Eugene O'Neill: Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Mourning Becomes Electra, Strange Interlude. Luigi Pirandello: Enrico IV, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Shakespeare: Anthony & Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Henry IV Part I (in fact, most of the histories), King John, Pericles, Richard II, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, The Winter's Tale. George Bernard Shaw: Heartbreak House, Man and Superman, Pygmalion, Saint Joan. Wallace Shawn: Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Designated Mourner, The Fever, Marie and Bruce. Tom Stoppard: Arcadia, Hapgood, The Invention of Love, Jumpers, The Real Thing, Travesties. August Strindberg: A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata, Miss Julie. Mac Wellman: anything. BSW
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