Characters

There may be no more willfully a misunderstood country by the United States right now than Iran. The infrequent looks we do get inside Iran usually emphasize angry mobs screaming, ?Death to America.? Now, the animated film ?Persepolis? pulls back the Islamic veil to reveal a country populated with individuals, not frenzied caricatures. Based upon a pair of graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, the Oscar-nominated ?Persepolis? is a beautiful, funny and often haunting tale. Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, the biographical film follows Satrapi from childhood into her 20s. The film is, among many other things, the story of a spirited young woman coming of age. The fact that it occurs during the tumultuous Iranian revolution is almost beside the point.

Broadway veteran Christina Saffran Ashford is used to playing the leading lady, but next week she will be taking on the role of a more unconventional character in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, “Aspects of Love.” Ashford, a Burbank resident, will be performing in the Musical Theatre Guild’s production on Monday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.“Aspects of Love” is a love story set in France about a passionate affair that involves the romantic entanglements of five characters.

While crooner Bing Crosby wasn’t present when Christ was born, he is one of several offbeat characters in Westminster Presbyterian Church’s “Nativity! The Musical.” This is the third year that writer-director team Greg and Melissa Baldwin is producing the show, which tells a moving version of the birth of Christ with several wacky embellishments, organizers said. “It’s an irreverent look at something very reverent,” said David Brandt, who portrays Crosby.

“Dear Brutus,” the latest production at A Noise Within, is a magical, funny and uplifting work by playwright J.M. Barrie, most famous for penning “Peter Pan.” Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott has staged an enchanting adaptation of this little-known gem. From the moment you walk into the theater, the spell is cast. The set is reminiscent of a lovely Edwardian garden and sitting room with warmly lit party lights strung around and a resplendent chandelier to top it off. The classical music piped in is ethereal.

Billed as a coming-of-age, slice-of-life dramedy, “The Spot,” Blackhole Theatre’s world premiere play at The Banshee in Burbank, is in dire need of playwriting and directing assistance. Author Danny LeGare, who also serves as the director, producer and lead actor, may be wearing too many hats. His 90-minute one-act is light on conflict. The result is a show full of uninteresting characters sitting around talking about things that never engage the audience. You see, it’s just another day at The Spot, a neighborhood watering hole, owned and operated by four generations of the Carver family.

Rubén Procopio’s maquettes of beloved Disney characters, such as Belle and Ariel, stand side-by-side under the watchful gaze of painted dragons, hand-drawn mermaids and other mythical creatures at a new exhibit at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale. Procopio’s small-scale statues are a part of the “Visions: The World of Fantasy Art” exhibit and on loan from the Glendale-based Animation Research Library of the Disney Animation Studios. More accurately called maquettes, the statues, ranging between 4 to 20 inches tall, are initially made from polyform or “sculpy” and cast in polyurethane using silicone molds, said Procopio, a resident of Burbank.

This isn't actually the first time around the bases for "Rounding Third," a two-man show about life, love and Little League baseball, currently earning new fans at Burbank's own Colony Theatre. Here in California, "Rounding Third" spent its 2003 season at the Laguna Playhouse with the same director (Andrew Barnicle) and one of the same cast members before hitting the road to Off-Broadway. All of which explains how a good script can look like a great script when a winning production team adopts the show.

Two local filmmakers have a vision for an animated film loosely based on Armenian legends, but just making a trailer to sell it to prospective investors will be a financial stretch for them. So two local artists are helping them raise money. Hayasa Pictures' director Hayk Manukyan, of Burbank, and Glendale producer Henri Hovhanessyan want to produce "David of Sassoon." The filmmakers have received donations of about $10,000 to begin production on the trailer, but need $40,000 more to complete it, they said.

There is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when two people are seated side-by-side, traveling together. There's no logical explanation for it, but humans tend to speak openly and meaningfully to complete strangers on airplanes, and perhaps more so on longer train rides. Such is the premise, at least, in a new play at the Alliance Theater in Burbank titled "Westward Expansion." Playwright and teen-novel author Cecil Castellucci has used the clever device of having two such conversations go on at the same time.