A Critical Overview: The Best of Theater ’89

The solo performance genre flowered in ‘89, particularly when the material created a dramatic world instead of a single personality.

The best one-person production I saw was Chazz Palminteri’s “A Bronx Tale,” with Palminteri mercurially shifting guises among a dozen neighborhood characters in a tour de force that opened at the West Coast Ensemble and moved to Theatre West.

Other exceptional one-person shows included Kim Miyori’s imprisoned Madame Mao in “Madame Mao’s Memories” (Theatre/Theater), Michael Kearns’ vivid gallery of AIDS outcasts in “Intimacies” (Highways), and the late Jackson Hughes’ startling facial and vocal transformations in his trance-channeling riot, “Our Man in Nirvana” (Theatre/Theater).

A simultaneous pair of Clifford Odets’ revivals sang with palpable ferocity: “Awake and Sing” (Actors’ Forum), with a smoldering performance by Lisa Zebro--and “Waiting for Lefty” under Paul Brennan’s burnished direction at the Company of Angels’ new Silver Lake home.

Strong ensemble work also propelled the all-woman and frisky “Down Payments” (Inner City Cultural Center), Thornton Wilder’s Yule treat, “The Long Christmas Dinner” (Pacific Theatre Ensemble), and “Breaker Morant,” whose crisp rhythms underscore the promise of a new repertory company, CalRep, based at Cal State Long Beach.

Distinctive and provocative playwrights included Ron Ribman, for his TV-tabloid stunner, “Buck” (Heliotrope), and Robert Hummer, whose starched ode to a burnt-out pot generation, “Place” (Cast Theatre), featured a jangly performance by James Oseland.

The powerful “Dinky Dau” at Theatre/Theater ushered in an angry soul-searching voice in playwright John Shearin, who starred in his two-character play that showed the continuing force of dramas about Vietnam.

Jerry Mayer tapped a vein in his shipboard comedy, “Aspirins and Elephants,” into its sixth month at the Santa Monica Playhouse. The most buoyant piece I saw all year was Sandra Deer’s Southern-drenched, reading-of-the-will comedy, “So Long on Lonely Street” (International City Theatre), enlivened by Holgie Forrester and Ron Boussom as an avaricious couple.

Gay theater was best represented with a rigorous drama about gay bashing, “Steel Kiss,” by Canadian playwright Robin Fulford (Celebration Theatre), with the same actors playing gay and straight characters. James Victor’s tough guy in the park was especially electrifying.

A pair of musical revivals were delights: “The Student Prince,” a wedding cake of a show (Long Beach Civic Light Opera), and Manley Marks’ Dogpatch farce, “Mustard,” with the sprightly hoofing of Wesley Mann and Christopher Holder (Tamarind).

Finally, I saw one fine example of non-traditonal casting: Asian-American Jeanne Sakata, as a Norwegian wife (“The Lady from the Sea,” Fountain Theatre).