A Critical Overview: The Best of Theater ’89

In Kidbeat’s six years of reviewing theater for young people, the Mark Taper Forum’s Improvisational Theatre Project has usually ranked No. 1. This year, top marks go to its production of Lisa Loomer’s “Bocon!,” a potent blend of Central American mythology and stark reality, staged in dream-like style by ITP artistic director Peter C. Brosius.

The rest of the year’s best, in no particular order:

Lois Young, who earned an honorable mention in this column last year, comes out a winner with her new and improved “The Lois Young Show,” a humorous, gentle hour of music, storytelling and cuddly puppets for preschoolers.

In the Back Alley Theatre’s “Max & Zoey, Zoey & Max,” writers Dion Alden Holt and Will Holt turned observations of young grandchildren into a high-energy, musical romp through childhood fears of scary noises and illness.

On a spring day at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, children 10 and younger got a sweet taste of the Bard in Shakespeare Festival/LA’s “Shakespearience” educational touring program. It combines Elizabethan dance and music, “interviews” with historical figures, audience participation and an exquisite puppet version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The long-running “Dear Gabby” at the Santa Monica Playhouse was a surprise. Written by Chris DeCarlo and Evelyn Rudie, this off-beat musical about teen Angst , performed by a teen cast, turned out to be an articulate journey through adolescent loneliness and confusion. (The show is now touring in Japan.)

Mime and comic Gideon Potter was a discovery. His one-man “The Wonder Faire,” still running at the West End Playhouse in Van Nuys, is, if anything, too brief, but a delight. And the holidays were made brighter by the return of B.J. Turner and Bruce Cassling in their hilarious spoof “The Road to Oz,” at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Visitors made welcome stops. The Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia’s eye-catching “Just So Stories,” the New York-based Theatreworks/USA’s comic “Sherlock Holmes and the Red-Headed League” and the Great American Children’s Theatre of Wisconsin’s “Charlotte’s Web,” added weight to the Southland’s youth theater scene with solid professionalism.

And J.P. Nightingale’s fifth annual “Theatre Arts Festival for Youth” in October at the Peter Strauss Ranch in Agoura, continued to grow in stature. It treated children to a winning variety of mostly top quality performances, from ethnic music and dance, to theater and puppetry.