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A Noise Within’s Fabulous ‘Invalid’

How the Pasadena company’s staging of Molière’s choppy late play found its shape, from its wigs on down to its bodily fluids.

BY SYLVIE DRAKE

......sound designer Robert Oriol, and set and costume designer Angela Balogh Calin now join actors and director to incorporate the production’s technical underpinnings.

Rehearsals try for fun, but it’s too early. Things are chaotic. Rehearsal-room blocking needs adjusting in order to fit the floor map of the stage. Actors make trips to the costume shop, trying out wigs and parts of costumes

.......Charged with creating set and costumes for this Invalid, the Romanian-born Calin is everywhere, sampling fabric for upholstering chairs, or launching a costume parade with an array of be-feathered hats and unfinished coats, breeches, and gowns that hint at a heightened 17th-century look. A no-nonsense lady with the appearance of a slightly disheveled sprite, a serene demeanor, and a nifty sense of humor, Calin consciously chose theatre over film years ago and never looked back. She travels wherever jobs beckon, and so far they’ve beckoned from Denver, Milwaukee, San Diego, Los Angeles, Costa Mesa—and East Pasadena.

“Because so many of us know each other well,” she confides about ANW, “you become very willing to collaborate, be flexible, and adjust. We have limited storage, limited budgets, but…it forces you to become more inventive.”

Her set for Invalid is littered with more than 200 glass jars of all shapes and sizes that contain the presumed effluvia of Argan’s body. They range from pickle-jar size to containers as big as the largest Arrowhead water bottles. Most contain mixtures of food coloring, water, and alcohol “to keep bacteria growth in check over the course of the run,” says prop master Dillon Nelson....

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CULTURAL WEEKLY

GEM OF THE OCEAN   by Sylvie Drake

...The casting of Gem is astute, as are the rest of the creative decisions. These include Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s uncluttered scenic design, Tessier’s complementary lighting and, notably, Angela Balogh Calin’s variety of period costumes with a signature patchwork-quilt dress for Aunt Ester that puts her history in perspective. All of which makes the telling and the showing swift, effective and hard to leave behind...

COOL CLEVELAND

Women rule in Cleveland Play House’s funny-but-poignant ‘Into the Breeches!’ 

  •  by Bob Abelman 

  • .....Costume designer Angela Calin not only created appropriate dresses and uniforms, but also created one surprise comic costume accessory for the ladies in the cast. (You do want to be surprised, don’t you? It’s more fun that way.)...

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Reprise 2.0 gives ‘Sweet Charity’ a good home at UCLA    by Dany Margolies

... Angela Balogh Calin’s costuming delights, particularly Charity’s cute little navy blue polka-dot number, topped by hair designer Judi Lewin’s bouncy blonde mop...

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STAGE RAW

Alice in Wonderland   by Deborah Klugman

.... Calin’s madcap costumes, in tandem with Shannon Hutchins’s wig and makeup design are truly a visual feast of the dessert variety, initially inspired by John Tenniel’s illustrations in the original editions, and further elaborated upon with fantastically vivid color.

All these elements coalesce around a gifted ensemble unfazed by the multiple changes in character and costume they are called upon to make. It’s an impressive display indeed...

       

Comedic tonic  Molière’s 1673 classic ‘The Imaginary Invalid’ proves again that laughter is the best medicine

  • Los Angeles Times

  • CHARLES McNULTY THEATER CRITIC

  • ...The eye-catching scenic design by Angela.Balogh Calin, who also did the flamboyant costumes, transforms Argan’s home into a makeshift apothecary that, were it not for the jars of urine on the floor, could easily be mistaken for a fancy perfume shop.

  • Argan is enthroned in what is essentially a highchair for an adult baby. He wants his pulse checked regularly and his enemas performed like clockwork......

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StageSceneLA 

 BURIED CHILD   by Steven Stanley

... A crackerjack design team–lighting designer Ken Booth, costume designer Angela Balogh Calin, sound designer Jeff Gardner, wig and makeup designer Shannon Hutchins, properties designer Erin Walley, and scenic designer Sibyl Wickersheimer–not only give audiences a believably run-down farmhouse and its equally run-down inhabitants but enhance Buried Child’s thematic darkness and excursions into the surreal...

The Retreat From Moscow

By Joel Hirschhorn

.....Angela Balogh Calin’s set cleverly indicates that these two intellectuals, Alice (Linda Gehringer) and Edward (Nicholas Hormann), live in a sterile environment. The background she has created are walls of words and show that no matter how much the main characters talk, they can’t communicate despite his love of books and her affection for poetry. Calin has fashioned two wide arches with upper angles shooting in opposite directions to illustrate a couple at cross-purposes.....

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 Pericles, Prince of Tyre: Theater Review

 by Myron Meisel

)... As imaginatively realized within the established stage vocabulary by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, the swashbuckling maintains a certain quaint Elizabethan earnestness, cheeky without any distancing tongue-in-cheek. Indeed, though the structure may be unwieldy, the brisk pile-on of events has aged richly into something of a startlingly modern tone of epic theater storytelling, so knowingly archaic it feels somehow up-to-date, with fluid motion and pell-mell forward thrust. The color and fabrics of the costumes by Angela Balogh Calin (especially some breathtaking greens) lend an abstract tactility one might associate with a musical. 

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On Theater: Enjoy ‘Bountiful’ journey on SCR stage

Reviewed by Tom Titus 

Benson, co-founder of SCR with David Emmes back in 1964, has long been the theater’s premier director and this production is among his finest. Foote’s lifelong affection for plain, down-to-earth people is magnified in Benson’s craftsmanship of character.

The play’s multiple settings, by Thomas Buderwitz, are impressive in their minute detail, particularly the final scene in which Carrie’s old homestead is presented in all its ramshackle glory. Angela Balogh Calin’s costumes and the lighting designs of Donna and Tom Ruzika complete a picture approaching perfection.

Come take “The Trip to Bountiful.” It’s an engrossing journey with extraordinary performances that rank among the year’s most noteworthy achievements at South Coast Repertory.

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Theatre Review: ‘Shakespeare in Love’ at Alliance

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017 by MANNING HARRIS1

.More kudos: Angela Balogh Calin’s glorious set and costumes; Ken Yunker’s expert lighting design; and McCree O’Kelley’s choreography. 

Nothing Sacred

Call them Yippies or punks or anarchists or nihilists, every age suffers those whose life mission is to tear down institutions and violate traditions. 

By Bob Verini

...Even the lush costumes advance the dramatic tension, Angela Balogh Calin’s designs so perfectly capturing each character’s social standing that every confrontation between members of different classes begins before either actor has uttered a word.

Play’s many such clashes are deftly orchestrated by director Martin Benson, though toward the end, as the weary characters scatter across the Kirsanov estate and all seem to become introspective simultaneously, Benson cannot keep the energy from flagging and aud from feeling the running time...

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StageScene LA -

THE WHIPPING MAN

Reviewed by Steven Stanley

Scenic designer Tom Buderwitz’s magnificently detailed set, one which reveals the every iota of the ruin wreaked by four years of war on a once proud, elegant South, has been lit to evocative perfection by Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz. (Keeping Buderwitz’s design hidden until the curtain rises is an inspired directorial choice.) Michael Roth’s thrilling original music and electrifying soundscape and Angela Balogh Calin’s meticulously weathered costumes are as topnotch as designs get, with special snaps for John’s gradually dandified garb.

Collected Stories’: a tale of literary one-upmanship

...Angela Balogh Calin’s costumes are a barometer for the women’s ever-shifting relationship. Tom Buderwitz’s design for Ruth’s home is ultrareal, from the plethora of books to the stacks of papers, dozens of photos and mementos and such touches as a skylight, hallway and creaky front door. ..

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'Shakespeare in Love' sparkles with passion of the heart and for the arts

By MATTHEW J. PALM

..Much of Norman and Stoppard’s dialogue makes the transition to the stage and is even more charming when delivered by the gung-ho Shakes cast, clad in Angela Calin’s eye-catching costumes. Richard Garner directs with the right light-hearted touch. There’s no need to hammer home the ideas of love, sacrifice, even artistic immortality when it’s all playing out so beautifully on the faces of the actors...

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  A View From The Bridge             BY ROB STEVENS  

...Chris Parry's moody lighting, Angela Balogh Calin's perfect period costumes, and Karl Fredrik Lundeberg's original music and sound design add to the top-notch quality of this production...

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM    by Lynne Heffley

...Leaping, tumbling physicality, erotic notes and fantastical fairy costumes add dash to A Noise Within’s new staging of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” based on the 45-minute version that the company created to complement the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Mendelssohn concert at the Hollywood Bowl this summer.

Costume designer Angela Balogh Calin contributes quirky-sexy ensembles that include Oberon’s floor-length fur coat and leather boots, Titania’s tufted red gown, the early 19th century elegance of the human court and the arresting fairy motley...

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