Special Gal (LAArtsOnline.com)

Patti Lupone performs at The Wallis

Special Gal!

By Ken Werther

Three Sisters, The Robber Bridegroom, Evita, Les Misérables, The Cradle Will Rock, Anything Goes, Sunset Boulevard, Master Class, Sweeney Todd, Company, Gypsy, Noises Off, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown… this is Patti LuPone! And that’s just onstage. And not even a complete list. She is a two-time Tony Award-winner; a two-time Grammy Award-winner; and in 2006, LuPone was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. One would think there couldn’t be much more to say about this American entertainment icon’s prolific career. But one would be wrong.

There is also television (Life Goes On, The Song Spinner, Frasier, Touched by an Angel, Will & Grace, Ugly Betty, 30 Rock, Glee, American Horror Story, Girls). There are also movies (Witness, Driving Miss Daisy, State and Main, Parker). And all of these lists are just a sampling. In 2007, she starred alongside Audra McDonald in the Los Angeles Opera production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. LuPone has been compared to international chanteuses like Lotte Lenya, Marlene Dietrich, and Edith Piaf.

And now, LuPone brings her new concert Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda… played that part to the Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills for only two performances. I’ve had the privilege of experiencing this legend-in-her-own-time performer in action and I can sum it up in one word: Go!

Patti LuPone plays the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd in Beverly Hills, on February 12 and 13.

Glorious Edna! (LAArtsOnline.com)

Dame Edna plays the Ahmanson Theatre

Glorious Edna!

By Ken Werther
Graphics Courtesy of CTG

Batten down the hatches, possums — here comes the comic genius of Dame Edna one last time! Having previously visited the Ahmanson Theatre in 2006 and 2009, the one and only Dame Edna Everage is on her way back to Los Angeles to cap a spectacular 50-year career of celebrated sold-out performances around the world. Arguably Australia’s greatest entertainment export, she will not go out with a whimper…no one is safe from the Dame’s wicked tongue!

In 1955, actor Barry Humphries created the remarkable Mrs. Edna Everage, a purple-rinsed Melbourne housewife now known around the world as the gigastar Dame Edna. She has appeared on stage in theatrical tours of Europe, the United States (including Broadway), and the Middle East, and she has also appeared regularly on television in Australia, Europe, the UK, and the U.S. According to her official bio, Dame Edna is the Founder and Governor of Friends of the Prostate and the creator of The World Prostate Olympics. (You might want to read that last part again.)

Spending a couple of hours with Dame Edna’s take-no-prisoners comedy is a theatre experience like no other. I had the incredible honor of working with her at the Ahmanson in 2006, and I cannot remember ever laughing as much or as hard. Ever! So head downtown for a dose of the most original and relentless comedy to be found anywhere on this planet (and possibly other planets as well)!

Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye plays at the Ahmanson Theatre, located at 135 N. Grand Ave, through March 15.

“What the Butler Saw” (LAArtsOnline.com)

www.laartsonline.com/theatre/
By Ken Werther
Graphics Courtesy of CTG

Twisting plot lines, mistaken identities, slamming doors, blackmail, sexual innuendo, subversive wit, and an outrageous lack of appropriateness… you’re talking my kind of entertainment! Joe Orton’s full-throttle farce What the Butler Saw is the last play written by England’s legendary playwright before his untimely death in 1967 at age 34. Center Theatre Group brings us this comic masterpiece as the last production of the Mark Taper Forum’s 2014 season.

The original production of What the Butler Saw opened in London on March 5, 1969. The play, a timeless tale of sex and repression in a culture gone mad, was decried at the time as scandalous for its character’s raging libidos and rampant mockery of morality. In spite of a small body of work that also included television and radio plays, Joe Orton emerged as one of the seminal playwrights of the 20th century—a direct successor to Oscar Wilde, William Congreve, and Noel Coward. Orton’s other well-known plays are Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, which were presented in repertory, directed by John Tillinger, at the Mark Taper Forum in 1987. Tillinger, a leading interpreter of Orton’s work, returns to direct the savagely funny Butler.

For me, there is nothing more delicious in the theatre than a great farce impeccably directed and performed, and it doesn’t happen often enough. This play is one of the best. I’ve got my tickets and I’m ready to laugh!

What the Butler Saw runs November 12 – December 21 at the Mark Taper Forum.