'ENORMOUS WINGS' OFFERS CHARMING FLIGHTS OF FANCY.Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic THERE IS MAGIC both afoot and aloft in ``A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,'' the latest family-friendly performance by Center Theatre Group through its Performing for Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. Youth program. Also, as befits a fable, there is a lesson to be learned. Count on director Andrew Tsao to bring home a tale that will be a visual banquet on several different levels. For ``A Very Old Man,'' he's working with playwright Nilo Cruz Nilo Cruz is an Cuban-American playwright, the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1960, Cruz immigrated to the "Little Havana" area of Miami in 1970 on a Freedom Flight, and eventually became a US citizen. (``Anna in the Tropics''), who has adapted a short story written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gar·cí·a Már·quez , Gabriel Born 1928. Colombian-born writer known especially for his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). He won the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. . Tsao's design team at the Kirk Douglas Theatre The Kirk Douglas Theatre is located in Culver City, California and in 2004, was acquired by the famed Center Theatre Group. The theatre is the most intimate of the groups 3 stages and seats 317 patrons at max occupancy. - across the board, beginning with lighting designer Shaun Fillion - is top-notch as well. A worn man (not really so old-looking, here) drops from the sky into a Caribbean village. He does, indeed, have a pair of enormous wings, which - perhaps from the journey - have become grimy grim·y adj. grim·i·er, grim·i·est Covered or smudged with grime. See Synonyms at dirty. grim  i·ly adv. , tangled with debris and somewhat lacking in feathers. He speaks through his eyes, a language those with insight can understand perfectly. Momo (played by Matthew Yang Kim) and Fefe (Lena Gwendolyn Hill), the brother and sister who rescue him, decide to nurse him back to health and teach him to fly. They name him, fittingly, Afar. The villagers, however, have other plans. Convinced Afar is an angel, they'll use him as a sideshow See Windows SideShow. attraction or - hopefully - to perform miracles. They need a lot of help, after all. One has a sick baby, another has been crying for 10 years, another has mislaid mis·lay tr.v. mis·laid , mis·lay·ing, mis·lays 1. To put in a place that is afterward forgotten: I have mislaid my hat. 2. her bag of prayers. Silent, pliable Afar (Damien D. Lewis, delivering an eloquent performance without uttering a word) does what he's told, but the real miracles will only happen when this angel - if seraph he truly is - returns to the sky. Tsao, the artistic director of the Studio City-based R37 Theatre Company (which reimagines Shakespeare's plays William Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. His plays are traditionally divided into the genres of tragedy, history, and comedy. through blends of music, video, text and physicality), plays out Afar's tale in a landscape straight out of the imagination. Adults convincingly play children. Allison Leach's costumes are rich in fancy and delights. The centerpiece of Yael Pardess' scenery is a blueish blue·ish adj. Variant of bluish. Adj. 1. blueish - of the color intermediate between green and violet; having a color similar to that of a clear unclouded sky; "October's bright blue weather"- Helen Hunt Jackson; "a blue ramplike cliff with a circular opening. Fillion lights the effort with somber hues, and he is responsible for the exciting projection designs that make the flight effects possible. Toward the play's climax, the proceedings take a somewhat sinister turn. Impatient for Afar's miracles to come to pass, the villagers attend a performance by another freak-show attraction: a multiarmed, web-spinning entity known as the Spider Woman who does tricks and answers questions under the whip of a despotic carnival barker (Christopher Michael Christopher Lee Michael is an American actor, director, writer, who is most famous for portraying Captain Michaels on 7th Heaven. He appeared in over 45 episides throughout the show's 243 episode run. His roles as an actor are mainly police officers. Rivera). As it turns out, the Spider Woman's fate proves the spur that Momo and Fefe's father, Pelayo (Liam Craig Liam Craig (born 27 December 1986) in Edinburgh, is a professional footballer currently playing for Falkirk. Craig began his career at Ipswich Town and skippered the youth side to victory in the 2005 FA Youth Cup final. ), needs in order to make an important decision about Afar. Dreya Weber, a trained aerialist, is convincingly frightening as the creature who yearns dangerously for her freedom. She's just as good - albeit unrecognizable in a very different Leach costume - as a human embodiment of the moon, La Luna. A frequent sitcom director who also has worked with Shakespeare Festival/ LA, Tsao's visual savvy serves this tale expertly, and it will be exciting to see what he - via or apart from R37- comes up with next. Credit also the ever-reaching P.L.A.Y. program for serving up daring and occasionally edgy fare that both the young and the slightly older can dream along with. Evan Henerson, (818) 713-3651 evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS - Three stars Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. When: 7 p.m. Friday, 2 and 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Dec. 18. Tickets: $20 to $40. Call (213) 628-2772. In a nutshell: Come fly with a magical fable from the pen of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: When a worn man (Damien D. Lewis) drops from the sky, the villagers name him Afar and believe he's an angel capable of miracles in ``A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.'' |
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