If you want to see some actors having a really good time, check out Aaron Craven and Craig Erickson in Speed-the-Plow.
The top picks for this weekend are wildly different: Speed-the-Plow at Studio 16 and Saint Joan at the Stanley.
In the monumental Saint Joan, an all-star cast led by Meg Roe, Dean Gibson, Scott Bellis, and Tom McBeath, tells the story of the Maid of Orléans. Director Kim Collier keeps George Bernard Shaw’s script visceral and fast-based. Pam Johnson designed the huge, machine-like set.
Saint Joan ends this weekend, November 23, so catch it while you can. It’s at the Stanley.
And just down the street from the Stanley, at Studio 16, a small company called Mitch and Murray Productions is knocking it out of the park with David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow.
Mamet’s exhilaratingly rhythmic script is about striving—and longing—in Hollywood. Everybody in the three-person cast, including Kayla Deorksen, is strong, but Mamet gives the best lines to the men, who are excellently played by Aaron Craven and Craig Erickson. Erickson is a terrific actor and this is the best thing I’ve seen him do.
The set and lighting, by David Roberts and Gerald King, are LA warm and stylin’.
Speed-The-Plow runs until November 29.
But wait! There’s more!
At Studio 58, the moving story and exquisite ensemble playing make One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest worth seeing. It’s up until November 30.
And, over at Pacific Theatre, Ins Choi’s quirky solo meditation on Christian values, Subway Stations of the Cross, will invite you to open your heart to its compassionate content and your ears to its language. But it’s only up until the 23rd.
Busy season. Embarrassment of riches. Yay.
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