Theatre Preview — April 19, 2018
KUSI theatre contributor Josh Carr joined Good Morning San Diego to preview plays showing around San Diego this weekend.
NOISES OFF
Lamb’s Players Theatre
Through May 20
Each of the three acts of Noises Off contains a performance of the first act of a play within a play, a sex farce called Nothing On. Nothing On is the type of play in which young girls run about in their underwear, old men drop their trousers, and many doors continually bang open and shut
Act One is set at the technical rehearsal at the (fictional) Grand Theatre in Weston-super-Mare; It is midnight, the night before the first performance and the cast are hopelessly unready. Baffled by entrances and exits, missed cues, missed lines, and bothersome props, including several plates of sardines, they drive Lloyd, their director, into a seething rage and back several times during the run.
Act Two shows a Wednesday matinée performance one month later at the (fictional) Theatre Royal in Ashton-under-Lyne. In this act, the play is seen from backstage, providing a view that emphasises the deteriorating relationships between the cast. Romantic rivalries, lovers’ tiffs and personal quarrels lead to offstage shenanigans, onstage bedlam and the occasional attack with a fire axe.
In Act Three, we see a performance near the end of the ten-week run, at the (fictional) Municipal Theatre in Stockton-on-Tees. Relationships between the cast have soured considerably, the set is breaking down and props are winding up in the wrong hands, on the floor, and in the way. The actors remain determined at all costs to cover up the mounting chaos, but it is not long before the plot has to be abandoned entirely and the more coherent characters are obliged to take a lead in ad-libbing somehow towards some sort of end.
Much of the comedy emerges from the subtle variations in each version as character flaws play off each other off-stage to undermine on-stage performance, with a great deal of slapstick. The contrast between players’ on-stage and off-stage personalities is also a source of comic dissonance.
• Nominated for eleven Tony Awards (1 win for actress)
• Winner of two Drama Desk Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards
PETER AND THE STAR CATCHER
Lamplighters Community Theatre
Through May 13
The innovative play-with-music upends the century-old story of how a lost orphan becomes Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up. From marauding pirates and jungle tyrants to unwilling comrades and unlikely heroes, Peter and the Star Catcher, playfully explores the back story that includes how Peter became Pan, the Captain got his hook, and where Tinker Bell came from. It’s a prequel to J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy.
• After a premiere in California at the La Jolla Playhouse, the play transferred to Off-Broadway in 2011 and opened on Broadwayon April 15, 2012.
• This play concludes the Lamplighters’ 80th season as a community theatre in San Diego.
• This production is also serving as a fundraiser for Ronald McDonald House Charities of San Diego, to help families who need housing or support while their children are undergoing life threatening operations
THE WANDERERS
The Old Globe
Through May 6
Esther and Schmuli are shy young Orthodox Jews embarking on an arranged marriage, despite barely knowing each other. Abe and Julia are high-profile celebrities embarking on a dangerously flirtatious correspondence, despite being married to other people. On the surface, the lives of these two couples couldn’t be more different. But Anna Ziegler’s funny, insightful, and mysterious new drama explores the hidden connections between seemingly disparate people, drawing audiences into an intriguing puzzle and a deeply sympathetic look at modern love.
