A must see. All the actors were great and talented. The Candy Lady was hilarious and what a voice she has. The guitar player was so cool. This production brought out so many emotions. Laughter, sadness, anger and anguish all wrapped up together. I cannot forget the set designer. He did a great job also.

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Very good show - top-flight performances (well, the guitar sideman was not quite top shelf, but certainly respectable.) We certainly recommend this one.

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Some shows have great lighting, some shows have good sound, some even had excellent stage value. This show right here, let me tell you. This show has some really great actors. In a small theater, that makes you feel like you are sitting in Memphis. If I had to choose between this and any other show I have seen in the past month, I would see this every time. Candylady, that's all I'm going to say. If your reading this and your trying to make a choice on what to watch, this would be the selection.

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All four of us enjoyed the show and were very pleased and grateful that it has been produced hereabouts. The work itself is uneven but so very interesting and full of flava. The dialog sparkles and trips along and pretty much carries the narrative alone. It is most definitely well worth seeing.

However it would be remiss not to comment on the performance of the lead Andrea Meshel which was- sadly- generic, unformed and uninformed. The actress appears to work hard enough at it but still never found the center or soul of the character. At times this deficiency threatened to sink the whole enterprise. In all fairness though, it must be said that the part is poorly written and lackluster which is bizarre for a lead role. The author clearly poured out all inspiration into the other characters and had little left for the ho-hum I'm-gonna-make-it-big-someday-just-watch-me cliches of the lead.

We noticed that Ms Meshel is also the producer, and we thank her heartily for bringing Hoodoo Love to LA.

The rest of the cast is superb. Leading man Elijah Rock commands his role with a depth not easily found on the surface- he is a very generous performer and at least on 3/10 seemed to surprise himself with discovery along the way. This made for a captivating performance. He also has mean chops and delivers a couple of songs with style and power and grace. His male supporting counterpart Rickie Peete is equally as fine and mightily effective in humanizing a villainous role, not an easy task given the often over-the-top nature of the writing and direction here. Karen McClain's Candy Lady nearly steals every scene but she is too thoughtful an actress to actually do that. Instead she vividly colors each scene and solidly inhabits her character, never tipping over into cariacature. She also creates the single most effective musical moment in the play (girl can SANG!) with a brief solo song which, together with a duet with Mr Rock, is alone worth the price of admission.

Our advice: GO!

BTW we are a motley crew of four- ages 60, 57, 23 and 21 and here I attempt to faithfully transcribe the consensus of our commentary on the way home after the show. Just gotta keep it real.

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