A Taste of Honey: Still Sweet

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A Taste of Honey, now at the Odyssey Theatre through November 27th is a deeply felt revival of a 1958 classic. Directed by Kim Rubenstein, the once shocking Shelagh Delaney play is in firm hands, with innovative staging and a terrific cast.

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On paper the play sound like a sad but pulpy tale. Teenage Jo (Kestrel Leah) is left by her mother Helen (Sarah Underwood) when the latter runs off with her latest paramour,  uncouth but moneyed Peter (Eric Hunicutt). Left unattended, Jo has an affair with a handsome black sailor Jimmie (Gerard Joseph), becomes pregnant, and with both mother and lover MIA, invites a tender, caring gay friend, Geoff (Leland Montgomery) to live with her. He’s ready to help her raise her baby until mama, rejected by her lover, decides to move back in.

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That Geoff’s character even existed as a serious and admirable member of the cast was shocking in 1958, now it hardly stands out. What does remain vigorous and noteworthy is the sharp and pointed dialog,  and the show’s equally-groundbreaking-at-the-time breaking of the 4th wall, as characters address the audience, and here interact with a live trio on set.

The music and the lighting here adds a quality of hip, slightly surreal, and intrinsically contemporary gravitas to the production, which is very much rooted to it’s setting in the U.K., and it’s time period.

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Yes, the story is the stuff of melodrama and neither the sexual orientation nor race of the characters are cutting edge today. All the same, this is a story of tragedy, loss, birth, death, and the potential, perhaps lost, for redemption. That makes it classic, rather than dated; and the Odyssey’s production is a fine showcase for the play. Directing and performances are both top rate, adding new lustre to an old jewel.

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The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. on the west side. Performances run 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (also 8 p.m. some Wednesdays and Thursdays) through Nov. 27th.

 

 

 

Two from West Adams at MuzeuMM: Two Fine Artists, One Neighborhood

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Above, the dimensional art of Rufus Snoddy; below the unique, relief-style works of Lucinda Luvaass.

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Two from West Adams, now at MuzeuMM through the end of this month offers the works of two of the community’s own artists: local Lucinda Luvaas and Northern Michigan based sculptor Rufus Snoddy, who grew up in the neighborhood. It’s fitting that Muzeumm, a part of the West Adams community, is hosting these two geographically linked artists.

Curated by Mishelle Moross, the exhibition reveals two strong bodies of work, each infused with a sense of abundant curiosity and exploration, each rich and nuanced, entirely different in approach and style.

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Lucinda Luvaass produced a film from which the exhibition’s title is taken, Two from West Adams. “I’ve only been here three years, whereas Rufus grew up here. The film is about us and the neighborhood block party where Rufus grew up,” she explains.

The film screened at the opening on October 1st and will appear on PBS in December.  Luvaass first met Snoddy when she was curating a college art gallery in Mt. San Jacinto. “I showed a lot of local artists and he was a stand out there.”

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Luvaass’ own work here represents pieces she’s been creating since 2007. “The color scheme is really important in these relief paintings, some of which have photographic images in them. The relief is made of wax, oil, and gel. Some people feel the technique involved is like print making crossed with painting. I started out in sculpture but I was bad at it. I’ve pretty much invented this, no one has anything quite like it.”

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Her pieces have a three-dimensional quality that is also reminiscent of a musical composition in the balance, sculpture, and patterns.

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Snoddy uses all mixed media construction. “I use wood, plastics, metal. I am a sculptor, so anything I do I try to turn into the three dimensional. I work surfaces because I am crazy about texture. That’s what I see around me, the texture, which kind of started with me living in Los Angeles.”

His first studio was a half block away from MuzeuMM.

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“I am mainly concerned about perception and how we understand things. I am interested in what we need to have a happy life in a psychological way versus consumerism, and trying to buy happiness.”

 

Both artists offer compelling, fresh technique and pieces that evoke memory and illusion, transition and stasis. They are the epitome of Los Angeles: melding form and function, fusing a variety of artistic means to create an entirely new end.  Wherever either artist moves, they will always carry at their core the fact that they were or are a part of a diverse community constantly in motion.

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Above: reasons not to miss an opening at MuzeuMM again besides the stellar art: outdoor patio plus drinks; garlic-rich potatoes as the ultimate art snack.

MuzeuMM is located at 4817 West Adams Blvd.

  • story and photos: Genie Davis

Disruptively Tasty Blueberry Toast at the Echo Theater

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We had a sense of what to expect from Mary Laws’ Blueberry Toast, at the Echo Theater through October 29th. Laws, after all, is a writer for the incredibly dark, subversive, yet exceedingly well-written Preacher on AMC. Comic-book based characters and taste for the very morbid are a highlight of her work on that show – and morbid events and humor are also a keynote of Blueberry Toast.

The four character play also has a bit of a comic-book sensibility, with its candy-colored suburban set, it’s broadly drawn characters who are certainly not the cheerful mom, dad, and two kids contingent they appear when first on-stage.

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Directed by Dustin Wills,  the play is as scabrous as it is hilarious, the tale of disgruntled Walt (Albert Dayan), a middle school poetry teacher; his long-suffering and deeply angry wife, Barb (Jacqueline Wright), and their two children, Jack (Michael Sturgis) and Jill (Alexandra Freeman), who are hell-bent on performing a bizarre play within the play for their parental audience.

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The action gets started when Barb offers to make the likely having-an-affair and anxious to get on with it Walt breakfast. He says blueberry toast, she makes it, he says he meant blueberry pancakes, and a power struggle ensues with drastic and bloody results.

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Splaying their vitriol everywhere they can, the adults make love, war, and twisted commentary their compulsions; the kids are clearly twisted in their own way from their exposure to mama and papa’s war.

Fresh and crazy, shocking and idiosyncratic, Blueberry Toast entertains in a vibrantly depraved fashion, encouraging the audience to immerse themselves in a world all the more bleak for its sunshiny set and seemingly comfortable middle class home.

 

Both brutal and highly amusing, this is one piece of toast audiences will enjoy crunching, while delighting in the fact that whatever dysfunction they may have in their own home lives, it ain’t nothing like this.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the Echo Theater.

After It Happened – Invertigo Dance Theatre Thrills

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Los Angeles contemporary dance company Invertigo Dance Theatre is awe-inspiring. With sinuous movements that seem to defy gravity and the human body, an enthralling flow of dance and a testament to the human spirit ignites audiences in After It Happened.

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Choreographed and directed by artistic director Laura Karlin, the beautiful, poignant story of the aftermath of a natural disaster is a vibrant and involving 90 minute performance that’s truly a must-see. Playing at the newly re-opened Ford Theaters on Cahuenga September 30th only,  After It Happened will also be performed in Santa Barbara October 22 and 23 and is well worth the drive.  We saw the dress rehearsal tonight, and were as blown away as if a hurricane or tidal wave had carried us.

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Originally sold out when performed in 2014 (see photo directly above), the production chronicles what occurs in a community as it rebuilds following an unspecified natural disaster. The community is near the sea – awash in blue light, with fishing, boating, and triumphant performer/waves appearing at certain points in the production.

Even during light-heartened moments there is a tinge of deep seated sorrow underpinning the often-ecstatic choreography, as this isolated community turns to its own members for the strength to rise again.

Artistic director Karlin wrote the story as well as creating the dances through which its told – in what she describes as “an intensely collaborative” effort.

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The piece opens with the occurrence of the disaster, moves through clean-up, disaster-porn tourism, robbery out of hunger, the rise – and fall – of dictatorship, rebuilding, illness, and the memories nearly lost in the terrible destruction of a place that was once home. Ending with a spirit of renewal and rebirth for the devastated community, the performance is nothing if not redemptive; both story and choreography are transformative.

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This is the second piece I’ve seen from Invertigo, the first being last year’s relationship story,  Reeling. Like Reeling, the production is an incredibly intense, truly jaw-dropping spectacle of human movement, one that wrings emotion from viewers and serves up inspiration to compensate. To create the living sculptural art that are these dancers bodies is no small feat, to infuse this performance art of the highest order with such heartfelt, political and emotional substance is rare indeed.

But above all, Invertigo offers pure pleasure: through modern, eclectic dance, contemporary live music and song, imaginative costumes and set design. As a side note,  John Burton, the company’s set designer worked with the community at large and CAFAM in the creation of collaborative set pieces such as a tree that grows and blossoms in the back of the stage.

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And beyond the wonder that Invertigo shapes, there is the fact that the company supports such terrific causes. Invertigo offers engagement programs such as Invert/ED youth education and Dancing Through Parkinson’s. “We believe in empowering people through the creative process ,and the idea that dance is for everybody and every body,” Karlin has said.

As to After It Happened, the performance is an experience – of heart and soul, mind and body. The compact, rehabilitated Ford amphitheater setting adds to the vibrance of the production, but frankly it could be performed in a parking lot and lose none of its wonder.

Fan of performance art? Dance? Fine music? Subtle but seductive stage design? Then hurry to the Ford Theaters or plan a late October drive north to Santa Barbara – you won’t want to miss the visceral impact and adrenaline-rich excitement of After It Happened – get there before, not after, the show.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Invertigo and Genie Davis