Although the Harry Potter saga is something of an epic in the most classical sense for modern audiences, the movies are starting to fail me a little by giving peripheral plot aspects undue screentime. I’m kind of short on patience for the magical delight both we and Harry are supposed to get from watching Dumbledore restore a ransacked room to it’s original state, a la Disney’s ‘Fantasia’. You’d think after six years of living in a magical school, training to be a wizard, and fighting mano a mano with Voldemort would jade him a bit. (It’s jaded me!) And what’s more, after fixing the room and establishing no one would stay in it for longer than a week, they leave a minute later. Instead of spending time cramming the six memories of Tom Riddle that Harry explores in the book, only two are shown. And while this is the book where hormones start really raging for the teenagers, in this movie it overshadows and diminishes the dark and disruptive forces of the Death Eaters, who are threatening wizards and muggles now, indiscriminately. We never even find out why Ollivander’s Wand Shop is destroyed.

Overall, the Harry Potter movies are turning out to be the Cliff Notes of the real thing, or the Ladybird versions of a classic. As with Hermione’s Time Turner in ‘The Prisoner of Azkaban’, the curiosity towards the “Who is the Half-Blood Prince?” mystery itself was not fully captured the way it drove our attention in the book, and that leaves me with a slightly unfulfilled feeling about this movie. The next and final installment(s) of the series will be sure to provide some much needed catharsis for viewers simply by including the final chapter of the book and bringing peace to our hero, Harry. But I can’t help but hope that once this business is all over and done with, they’ll start making a movie series of the book, for real this time.

As a side note, I’m intrigued that they showed the exact location of Diagon Alley for once! I wonder if the City of Westminster will add a commemorative English Heritage blue plaque?

To see the original publication of this article on Associated Content, please click here.

It takes great cahones to play Macbeth: to begin a
Shakespearean play as the title character, strong and noble
and to end a blithering, blundering fool, slain and head
mounted on a spike. Andrew H. Leman did wonderfully. His
intonations were expressive, varied and he was majestically
complimented by McKerrin Kelly as Lady Macbeth. In her interpretation
of the role it became clear to me for the first time how brimmed
with sexual persuasiveness her character has been written with.
The words of Lady Macbeth have always seemed convincing enough,
but in Kelly’s delivery, i grasped how manipulative she could be using
her feminine guile.

The special effects were just plain great. For Geoff
Hoff at the LA Theatre Review, who clearly expected a
multimillion dollar production and who says of the three
apparitions, “One looked like nothing but an aborted fetus”,
that’s what is was meant to be, dude. The set designers truly
maximized the space, using good lighting techniques which
illuminated the face of kings behind the Stonehenge-like
pillars when I least expected a new use of the stage space to occur.

It never hurts to read a play before going to see it, but in
case your Shakespeare is rusty, Theatre Banshee has cleverly
anticipated needing to hold your hand and provided a scene by
scene synopsis at the door. They also took care in the
programs to explain their unusual choices: to use an
Aboriginal didgeridoo during scene changes, to use a set that
resembles Stonehenge. Good work, guys.

I wish I’d been sitting in the front row. The reasons, for
brevity’s sake, I’ve listed below:

* Because in the opening sword fight breaking though the smoke
machine’s mist, I’d have been right in the thick of it.
* Because then I would have been perfectly positioned to thump
the loud and innappropriate Loud Laugher in the front row who
let out a hearty chuckle at nothing in particular, periodically.
* Because I wouldn’t have had to have been subjected to the
elemental torture of sitting directly under a fan (with wet
hair, since i left the house in a hurry).

Therein lies my strongest criticism of the production, which
for someone as critical as me, is really saying something. The
theatre is small, and has two powerful fans over the heads of
the audience. I understand these are necessary for temperature
regulation, moving the smoke machine mist out of the way, etc.
But hey, I shivered under 3 coats.

I love this play, I loved this production. Go see this play.
You won’t regret it, just sit in the front rows.

Theatre Banshee is located at 3435 W. Magnolia in Burbank, CA
91505 and this play is running until April 26th with performances Fridays
at 8pm, Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm.

Ticket prices: $20.00, $15 for Students/Seniors. Goldstar
members can also get discounted tickets.

Reservations can be made online at www.theatrebanshee.org or
by phone on (818) 846-5323.

The Kiss - Francesco Hayez

After my virgin expedition into the Los Angeles theatre scene on Valentine’s Day, I went to see Romeo and Juliet at The Met Theater, downtown. After spending years seeing Shakespeare  “adapted for a modern audience” (completely unnecessarily), I was  relieved this was intended to be more traditional. That’s what made me jump at these tickets in the first place, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I’m a student of literature and therefore pretty fussy when it comes to hearing it performed. Juliet (Megan Goodchild) was lovely, and Romeo (Frederik Hamel) was suitably Mark-Hamilton-in-Star-Wars to my liking, to convey the utter teenage madness and angst the characters must have gone through to be so in love at the age of 13. It takes a particular talent to perform Shakespeare in a manner that communicates meaning, especially if the general audience isn’t going to know the vocabulary. Friar Lawrence in particular carried this off beautifully. (Actor’s name & link to follow- apologies!)Call me biased, but a projected and expressive English accent is still the best way to hear Shakespeare any day.

In fact, I want to see more of this guy. Bring him back as Richard III or Lear and show people how rivetingly powerful Shakespeare can be. Mercutio (Michael Matthys) was great, but Mercutio is hard to do wrong, really. Back to being an English student: I tend to think of him as a vulgar favorite character-of-choice for those not used to thinking of Shakespeare as crude or funny. That said, I really appreciated his delivery of the Queen Mab speech. Matthys’ performance there was well-timed, articulate and clever. It was my impression that overall, all of the actors had spent a reasonable amount of time trying to personally understand the beautiful lines, and never fell into the temptation of repeating Baz Lurhman’s R+J movie of 1996 (that had simply stellar delivery in my opinion).

The set was a cute rendition of the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London. (I know because I visited it last year before I traded in London living for sunny Californian skies thatarenotsosunnytodayboohiss, permanently.) Instead of a horoscope on the ceiling, there were simple stars on a navy background. But the thick pillars were there, and the doors, which were great because I think the entrances and exits were pretty handy for the traditional performance style. I wish they’d spent more of their budget on the balcony itself. As a central part of the rightly-named “Balcony Scene”, poor Juliet risked her life climbing up and down the scaffolding, only to have nothing to lean against to “Ay, me!” herself. I worried for her while I was supposed to be watching another scene.

I can’t rightfully say why they cut the prologue out. Perhaps they figured the audience would already know that Romeo and Juliet were doomed. But it’s such a beautiful prologue, why wouldn’t you keep it in? Nobody bit any thumbs at each other either, and I missed that. But these are my only criticisms – I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. The costumes were perfect. I loves how Juliet’s ensembles were simple, versatile (a jacket thrown over her nightdress, and she’s an instant Princess…).

I’m excited and intrigued by each adaptation of the timing of Juliet’s awakening to Romeo’s death. I’ve seen their double suicides done simultaneously, moments before Romeo kicks it (some distance outside of Romeo’s concentration on the vial of poison), moments after he’s done for – you name it. But, oh boy, this was a good one. I won’t ruin the interpretation, as that would ruin the ending for connoisseurs of the play, so suffice to say I recommend it.

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The Met is in downtown Los Angeles, with valet parking around the corner. The theater itself is not a glamorous building, but just right for a play like this. The cost of the show is $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors (and well worth it! Have I mentioned this yet? Go see it!) Altogether, this was a very fun experience for me. I would recommend it to anyone in the mood for a good night out!