Author Archive
LIGHTS OUT: NAT “KING” COLE
Saturday, February 16th, 2019
The impending live broadcast of the 42nd and final episode of network TV’s first black-hosted variety show becomes an existential nightmare for its celebrated star in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor’s Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, a Geffen Playhouse West Coast premiere not without its problems but one well worth catching, and not just for the drama-song-and-dance showcase it provides its triple-threat star Dulé Hill.
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WITNESS UGANDA
Thursday, February 14th, 2019
A gay black NYU student heads off to Africa to help build a school only to come back transformed for life in Witness Uganda, Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews’ off-Broadway “Documentary Musical” thrillingly performed and excitingly restaged for L.A. audiences at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts.
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RAGTIME
Tuesday, February 12th, 2019
A nation where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and immigrants are told to get out and stay out. Ragtime may take place a century ago, but the epic 1998 Broadway musical has never been more relevant than it is today, and thanks to director David Lee and a glorious cast and design team, its 2019 Pasadena Playhouse revival blows the seven other Ragtimes this reviewer has seen out of the water, and then some.
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OLIVER!
Monday, February 11th, 2019
Lionel Bart’s Oliver! is back in town in its first major L.A. production in over ten years and what a joy it is to re-experience (or to discover for the first time) Broadway’s Greatest Dickens Musical at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West.
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THE MOUNTAINTOP
Saturday, February 9th, 2019
America’s greatest civil rights leader spends the last night of his life with a sultry, saucy motel maid in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, a concept likely to rile those who prefer to remember Dr. Martin Luther King as a sin-and-vice-free saint, but one that makes for gripping, thought-provoking dramatic sparks at the Garry Marshall Theatre just in time for Black History Month 2019.
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MAN OF GOD
Friday, February 8th, 2019
The discovery of a spy cam pointing up from inside the hotel bathroom toilet of four Korean-American teens on a mission trip to Thailand sets in motion a wild and unexpected chain of events in Anna Moench’s Man Of God, an East West Players World Premiere as funny, dramatic, and edge-of-your-seat gripping as it is a timely reminder that there are no age restrictions where the #metoo movement is concerned.
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MATTHEW BOURNE’S CINDERELLA
Thursday, February 7th, 2019
The world’s favorite step-daughter once again meets her Prince Charming (but this time the man in question is an injured WWII pilot, the setting is London circa The Blitz, and their romantic tale-as-old-as-time is told entirely in dance as only Sir Matthew Bourne can choreograph it) in the thrillingly performed, apty retitled Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella (Music By Prokoviev), now paying a return visit to the Ahmanson Theatre twenty years after it first captivated L.A.
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COME FROM AWAY
Wednesday, February 6th, 2019
Heroism, humanity, and heart triumph over terror in Come From Away, the 2017 Broadway Tony winner that turns the most unlikely of subject matters into the most feel-good of musicals. (That it’s also the best-directed, most powerfully performed show now touring the country is icing on the cake.)
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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