Theatre 29, has long been the hi-desert’s home for family value musicals, comedies, and dramas. Over the years, the community theatre has ventured into a tad bit stronger theatrical fare, but always comes back home to its core family values roots.

The current offering “Urinetown”, the musical, written by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, may be an odd sounding title, but the popular musical ran for three years both on and off Broadway; nabbing three Tony Awards in the process.

In the Theatre 29 production ably directed by Gary Daigneault, the cast of eighteen enthusiastic performers give it their all in bringing to life this satirical comedy musical that pokes fun at just about everything. How about the following subjects for starters: our legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate management, and municipal politics (did I miss a category?). In other words one might say the story by Hollmann and Kotis has been ripped from today’s headlines, Cable TV and Network TV. What is it that Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra used to say? “It’s déjà vu all over again”.

The simplistic story, such as it is, is set in the future where a 20-year drought has forced the government to take draconian measures in water conservation and its distribution, even going so far as to ban the use of private toilets. In the mythical city of Urinetown, only privately owned Public Amenity facilities are legal and available – but for a price. Thus a “pee fee” is a way of life for the poor and downtrodden of Urinetown. However, one young hero, has had enough and foments a rebellion against the greedy water company; leading to a citizens for freedom revolt.

Actors love stories and plays like “Urinetown” because its cartoon-like characters gives them the opportunity to go over-the-top in performance. Leading the good people’s side is energetic and earnest Chris Fleischman as Bobby Strong, along with Trevor Carpenter, Cindy Daigneault, James Hodgson, Chalise Kunz, Emmi Partridge, Mike Shaw, Maddie Tuttle, and Amanda Winters.

On the dark side, resisting the townspeople’s demands are: Barry Inscore as Caldwell B. Cladwell, Rebecca Havely as the strong-singing, hard-nosed company payment collector Penelope Penneywise Katie Vansumeren as a conflicted Hope Cladwell who is sweet on Bobby Strong; Cathy Inscore, and Liyan Lagevardi. Dennis “Easy” Boos, the play’s sly Narrator(with nice timing)and Officer Lockstock, and his sidekick partner Cindy Ross as Officer Barrel, complete the company of players, all of whom, appear to be having a wonderful time on stage. When they’re happy entertaining the audience, the audience enjoys the show even more. It may not have been what Theatre 29 audiences were expecting to see, but they applauded enthusiastically in all the right places.

Director Daigneault leads the creative team consisting of long time Music Director Ed Will who also plays the keyboards in the show. Mandi Pushkar is the Choreographer. Costumer Designers Cindy Daigneault and Marty Neider have the appropriate grunge look for the townies, and the right look for the Corporate/Company folks. Ken Palmer designs the lights, and Justin Brakebill is the Technical Director.

“Urinetown, The Musical” performs at Theatre 29 and runs through March 25th. For reservations and ticket information call the Box Office at 760-361-4151.

DHS Sun Grow Dispensary Opening Day

Award-winning playwright Tony Padilla, and founder of Desert Ensemble Theatre, presents two of his One Act plays at the Pearl McManus theatre, in Palm Springs.

“Family Meeting”, that kicks off Act One, is billed as a drama. However, as this dysfunctional family play unfolds it’s clear that the audience is in, not only for a bumpy night of drama, but a night spiced with gallows humor, thanks to long standing, undiscussed family and parental issues which abound.

The story centers on Daniel (Alan Berry), a successful playwright and screenwriter, and family Patriarch, who has hit a bad patch and lost his writing mojo. He claims he is through with the shallowness of Hollywood and is moving back to New York and will write for the Broadway stage again.

Alan’s son Edward (Rob Hubler) is experiencing marital issues with his wife Karen (Denise Strand): They talk to one another, but they don’t listen to one another. Caught between warring parents, and the advice of an in-denial Grandfather, is their son Jason (Shawn Abramowitz), a surprisingly normal, recent college graduate, who is eager to escape the turmoil and discomfort of living at home. He has witnessed too many Albe-like “George and Martha” shouting sessions and needs to find a different environment.

“Family Meeting”, directed by Rosemary Mallett, is a talky and a wine-fuelled evening much like Albe’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” only not as dark, earthy, and scabrous. On the upside, Padilla’s dialogue is biting and witty; some of which account for the comedic but dark zingers. On the downside, there is just too much drinking of wine, for my money. It took years for actor’s not to rely on cigarettes as a solution to the vexing question of what do I do with my hands while onstage? I think wine or cocktail glasses might be the next crutch to be revisited.

Onstage drinking? Yes, absolutely when it’s intrinsic, however there is a reasonable limit as to how many times the audience can see the glasses being refilled – without seeing any ill-effects on the part of the actors – before they begin to disengage from following the story. Having said that, the ensemble cast of “Family Meeting” does, indeed, deliver nice performances. It’s just those intrusive wine glasses that keep refilling in between the dialogue that bother me. But, I digress.

In Act Two Padilla give us a 180 degree departure from dramedy to an over-the-top farce called “The Comeback”. The four member cast includes: Lee Rice as Nora, a faded reclusive actress looking to regain her previous glory days; Theresa Jewett as the ever-reliable wise-cracking Thelma, secretary to Nora; Theo Nowicky plays Count Orca, a phony psychic, out to scam Nora, and also plays Morgan, a part time house servant with a Boris Karloff accent and Steven Mc Millen as Johnny Bellini, partner-in-crime with Count Orca.

The onstage silliness, directed by playwright Padilla, is the stuff of classic farce. Padilla’s cast deliver echoes of characters that inhabited “Sunset Boulevard”, “All About Eve”, “Arsenic and Old Lace” plus a few other plays and movies. Farce isn’t an easy art form to pull off. As long as the actors believe in what they are doing and stay in the moment, the audience will buy it.

“Two by Tony” isn’t going to challenge your gray matter in a search for deep insights. It will however, entertain you if you just go with the flow. The production performs on March 20, 21, 22. For ticket and reservation information call 760-565-2476.

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Moscow’s Basmanny district court has arrested five people in connection with the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent opposition figure, who was gunned down last week.

Two judges are reviewing the charges against the five people brought before the court by the prosecutors on Sunday.

Two of them are Zaur Dadaev and Anzor Gubashev, who were identified as key suspects in the killing of Nemtsov after their detention on Saturday.

The prosecutors asked the court to arrest the duo by April 28, the current deadline for the investigation, saying that otherwise they may flee or interfere with the investigation.

According to the judge, who ordered Dadaev’s arrest as requested by the prosecution, he confessed his involvement to the police. The accused didn’t comment on this during the court session.

Gubashev pleaded not guilty to the crimes he is charged with.

The other individuals, who may have had a hand in the crime, are Gubashev’s brother Shagit and two identified as Ramzat Bakhaev and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov. The request for their arrest has been reviewed separately by another judge.

“The suspects denied their ties to the crime, but we have evidence of their guilt. It includes forensic evidence and eyewitness accounts,”an investigator told the court.

The trio denied their involvement, with Eskerkhanov claiming to have an alibi. But the judge ordered their arrests as well.

Eskerkhanov and Bakhaev have been remanded until May 8 and Shagit Gubashev – until May 7.

Nemtsov was killed by a gunman a few meters from the Moscow Kremlin, triggering a flurry of condemnations and calls for a swift investigation. The assassination happened two days ahead of an opposition rally, which Nemtsov helped to organize.

While political motive is considered the most likely in the killing, the investigators said they were considering other scenarios, including a business or personal conflict. Likely political motives behind the killing according to the investigators include a provocation aimed at destabilizing the situation in Russia, possibly by Ukrainian radicals, and revenge by Islamists for Nemtsov’s support of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo following an extremist attack.

America has produced many talented playwrights over the decades. But the names of three playwriting giants continually jump to the head of the line: America’s only Nobel Laureate in Literature Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, the champion of Southern women and the culture of the south, and Arthur Miller, the chronicler of the common man in the country’s largest city, New York. There’s rarely been a playwright with a better ear for dialogue of New York’s hustle and bustle urban lifestyle than Miller with Paddy Chayefsky coming in a close second.

“The Price”, masterfully directed by Garry Hynes, and magnificently performed by an inspired quartet of some of the theatre’s finest journeyman actors, makes for a riveting evening of thought-provoking and insightful explorations of Miller’s most mature work of barter and life assessment.

Director Hynes has her cast which include: Kate Burton, John Bedford Lloyd, Alan Mandell, and Sam Robards performing on the stage of the Mark Taper Forum; with everyone at the top of their games.

Miller’s engrossing story about the choices we all make while traveling on the road of life is set in New York City in the 1960’s. Victor Franz (a terrific Sam Robards) is a 50 year-old, twenty-eight year veteran New York City police sergeant; contemplating retirement. He is also looking backward and inward assessing the efficacy of decisions and choices which he and his wife Esther (Kate Burton in a winning turn) made back when Victor’s family was comfortable and upper class. First, Victor’s mother dies sending his father into a depressive state, then the collapse of Wall Street, and the banking failures and disasters of 1929 drove the final nail into the elder Franz’s coffin.

The building where the Franz family lived is being demolished. The furniture that has been stored in the attic for years must be either sold at an estate sale or thrown away. Once again “choices” have to be made. Victor and his brother Walter a conflicted, but highly successful New York surgeon (slickly played by John Bedford Lloyd) haven’t seen or talked to each other in sixteen years. Victor makes another choice: that of selling off the collection of lives lived in his family’s apartment and splitting the sale money with his estranged brother.

Into this intense and electrically charge situation comes Gregory Solomon a pixie-ish, savvy and wise 89 year-old licensed Estate broker, who will determine “the price” of what the heirs – Victor and Walter – will receive as the vestiges of the Franz family.

Solomon, a charming philosopher-broker is played by real-life 87 year-old, scene-stealing actor Alan Mandell , who with a twinkle in his eye and a Yiddish-inflected accent is a formidable customer when it comes to bargaining. He relishes the moments between Victor and himself when determining a price for the furniture. Where Solomon is garrulous. Victor is impatient to close the deal. Walter evidently, has decided not to attend the sale meeting and Victor is anxious to settle this part of the estate issues and move on. And then Walter shows up.

“The Price” which debuted in 1968 received both praise and criticism. As a result it’s not produced very often which is a shame. The criticism is undeserved in my opinion. Perhaps, different productions or directors saw the text through different lenses. I’ve seen five different productions, and for me the current show now on the boards of the Mark Taper Forum is a production that best brings clarity and resonance to Miller’s study of one American family’s problems and issues during the 60’s.

Kate Burton as Esther Franz carefully walks the fine line between portraying Esther as a money grabbing shrew, or a long suffering wife drifting away from her husband. It’s a nicely nuanced performance. Bedford Lloyd’s Walter has the just the right amount of smugness and superiority required by all self-absorbed entitlement-oriented people. Robards’s Victor shines and solidly holds his own in his highly charged scenes with Walter. Mandell as Solomon, the wily estate broker is an actor who knows how to pause, enthrall, and capture an audience with skill and charm. It’s an exquisite gem of a performance. The entire production is an exhilarating display of individual brilliance within an ensemble setting, which now, in 2015, soundly resonates as performed under the gifted direction of Garry Hynes.

The technical credits at the Taper are always first rate. The creative team led by director Hynes, delivers an apartment full of odd mementos, old furniture, relics of items that the younger Victor and Walter once used, various books lamps, and bric-a-brack plus a splendid looking Harp (that has a cracked sounding board according Gregory Solomon), all courtesy of Set Designer Matt Saunders and the Taper prop shop.

The Lighting Design by James F. Ingalls, produces the right amount of lighting to create the various moods and just the right amount of light to appreciate the costume designs of Terese Wadden. The sound design is by the ever reliable Cricket S. Myers.

“The Price” is an impressive production performing at the Mark Taper Forum and runs through March 22, 2015.

For those of you who are too young either to have seen or enjoyed America’s early entertainment art form (and that includes me), you now have a window of opportunity to enjoy that “old but new” entertainment experience – Vaudeville as it was performed back in the early 20th century.

The Indio Performing Arts Center (IPAC) production of a “Handful of Nickels & Dimes” now on the stage of IPAC returns the audience back one hundred years in time. A time before radio and television variety shows, to a time when live actors and musicians performed all sorts of comedy and slapstick skits, magic shows, juggling and acrobatic acts, and musical numbers.

Vaudeville, as it was known back then, along with its performers, was in the vanguard of an art form that would ultimately morph into the Broadway musical theatre.  When TV came along, TV variety shows and TV sitcoms followed the successful formula of early Vaudeville; adding modern technology to its presentation formats.

Professional performers Jeanette Knight and Michael Seneca were eager share some of the best routines of that era with today’s audiences.  They gathered a group of their professional friends and all put their heads together coming up with a show called “Handful of Nickels & Dimes” that pays homage to the early days of American show business.

Burlesque, was hilarious, bawdy and skit-oriented; quickly becoming home to the naughty ‘double-entendre’. Vaudeville, its more dignified cousin, was the home of the star and headliner variety of performers, like Fanny Brice, performed at IPAC by Knight. Also, a tribute to Burns and Allen, is performed by Knight and Seneca who wonderfully morph into George and Gracie, and the Ziegfeld Follies that features celebrity actor/director Justin Blake as Follies Headliner Will Rogers, and many more.

The show boasting a company of seven performers, who sing, tell jokes and re-create some of the famous numbers and gags from Vaudeville’s golden era include: Jeanette Knight, Michael Seneca, Dean Apple, Justin Blake, Cat Lyn Day, Stephen Kaufmann, Dean Apple, and special guest star Yve Evans, named Monterey Jazz Festival’s musician of the year in 2008.  These talented performers are all award-winning familiar faces, many having performed in venues throughout the Coachella Valley over the years.

One of the highlights of the evening features the incomparable music styling of Eve Evans who brings to life the voice and music of the great Bessie Smith with such renditions as “If You Don’t, I Know Who Will” and the saucy “Handy Man”.  “Make Some One Happy” from the Broadway show “Little Me”; “Second Hand Rose from the Ziefeld Follies show of 1921”; and a poignant styling of “My Man” that is pure poetry, along with. “Black and Blue” by Linda Hopkins and Ruth Brown both of whom are favorites of Evans which, thankfully, usually find their way into her performances..  The duet with Blake of “Let’s Fall in Love” by the great Harold Arlen, and Frank Loesser’s classic 1944 “Baby Its Cold Outside” hit the spot.  My personal Evans favorite is a cheeky, double-entendre number called “The Chair” which, ironically is in keeping with the overall double-entendre theme of the production.

A “Handful of Nickels & Dimes” is a delightful and entertaining evening in the theatre.  The , show performs at the Indio Performing Arts Center (IPAC), located at 45-175 Fargo St., Indio.  For tickets and reservation information call the Box Office at 760-775- 5200.  The show runs through March 22, 2015. The curtain is 7:00 pm.

Neil Simon, one of America’s most prolific and successful playwrights, has all but disappeared from the radar screens of patrons, and from the stages of professional and regional theatres across the country.   Simon like other playwrights of his generation over the last fifteen years, have been caught in the crossfire of changing audience demographics.

The Millennial Generation, roughly individuals 18 and 29 and those 30 to 40, are now the ages producers hope to woo into becoming regular theatre-goers. So far, that age demographic has resisted the siren call. They’re too busy staring into their hands and the screens of their ubiquitous I-Phones. It’s a bit of a pity too, because they’re missing out on some pretty relevant and entertaining live theatre performances. The last time I checked “love” was still the key word that motivates all human behavior – and that would include the raging hormones, culture-resistant, younger set.

The North Coast Repertory Theatre is doing its part in getting the message out to their subscribers and patrons in general, that Neil Simon is not only alive and doing well, but is still very relevant to audiences of all ages. “Chapter Two”, Simon’s “autobiographical” play is based on events from his own life journey.

The charming story set in New York City, revolves around the recently widowed George Schneider (warmly and winningly played by playhouse Artistic Director David Ellenstein and his cross-town neighbor, the recently divorced Jennie MacLaine (a lovely Jacquelyn Ritz). Neither of these bruised souls is eager to enter the dating wars that are being cooked up and choreographed by others who think they’re doing the right thing being matchmakers. With George, it’s his brother Leo (terrifically played Louis Lotorto), and with Jennie, it’s her Texas-accented, ditzy friend Faye (played by (Mhari Sandoval).

Their journey of meeting, dating and forming a relationship is chock full of, now classic, Neil Simon dialogue and comedy situations. Simon is a master of the plot and sentence-ending zinger. He sends his comedic dialogue probes into the heart of the harried lives of middle-class urban America, and like Rumplestiltskin spins those narrative threads into gold.

Very few actors can direct themselves – the job is way too difficult and complicated just directing others – so it’s a wise choice by Actor Ellenstein to share co-directorship of this wonderfully entertaining play with Christopher Williams.

What makes this Simon gem so winning is the splendid ensemble performers. Ritz as Jennie, is very fetching and appealing as George’s new, about-to-become the second love of his life. She is one very cool lady who knows how to control her emotions in those give and takes scenes with Ellenstein (her NFL playing ex-husband Gus, must have been a real jerk to let her get away). Lotorto’s libidinous Leo, is a study on how to play an unfaithful husband and loyal wisecracking brother, yet still have the audience love you as a character. And the same goes for Jennie’s kooky friend Faye as played by Sandoval. She may like her cocktails a lot, but her loyalty to Jennie is never in question. It’s a charming comedy for grown-ups that will resonates with many in the audience.

The clever and creative directorial touches of co-director Williams – during all of George’s scenes – allows Ellenstein to deliver a winning and finely nuanced performance as George.   The on-stage chemistry between George and Jennie becomes just the icing on this snappy comedy cake.

In the technical department, it’s difficult to find a better set designer and lighting designer team that go together like ham and eggs, than Marty Burnett and Matt Novotny, respectively. Burnett’s set features two apartments side by side, precisely lighted, so no light bleeds into the other apartment, yet gives all the light needed to see and appreciate the playing areas, as well as the costumes of Alina Bokovikova.

“Chapter Two” is a delightful production that performs at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach, CA, through March 29, 2015.