Evan Henerson

Monsieur de Bergerac, tu es vraiment fou! Yes, you are bonkers…crazy in your cockamamie loyalty, in your obsessive need to live – and die – entirely by the terms of your own ultra-romantic playbook.

Bang, bang, bang! That report you are hearing from the cozy to the point of claustrophobic Henry Murray Stage atop the Matrix Theatre is

From the second we enter the Morgan-Wixon, ushered in by black cowl-clad members of the Cult of Bat Boy; from the moment we see that pointy-eared effigy strung up to the rafters, we’re primed for two plus hours of four alarm horror camp.

As the song says, September has ended, meaning – the occasional lingering triple digit temps aside – summer really has come and passed, and the time for Center Theatre Group's flagship space to wake up.

Barely six months since braving Wilson's KING HEDLEY II, the company and director Gregg T. Daniel are back an impactful - if leisurely – PIANO LESSON. Where HEDLEY was grim, this one is ghostly, rueful and full of music.

Is there some sort of formula for roping in both fans of a hit movie and stage hounds, to catch lightning in a new medium? Judging by what the musical's book writer Bob Gale, director John Rando and the musical team must have been thinking, the answer is you slavishly remake the movie on stage.

They're clowns, tramps, philosophers, nihilists. They are turnip-gathering, hat-passing hobos, shabby in their rumpled dignity.

Wigs…check. Oversize props…CHECK, Band…check again. Video… yup. Winter Warlock…c'mon! Cinematic nostalgia? Innovation? Needle-sharp spoofery?

To the annals of arresting “never meet your heroes” stories, we can add Shem Bitterman 's THE CIVIL TWILIGHT, a play which could also fall into the category of cautionary “never meet your fans” tales.

The production’s thrifty staging directed by Judith Hendra for Topanga Actors Company feels stagnant instead of urgent, indifferent where it could have been thought-provoking.