Author Archive
PARADE
Thursday, March 17th, 2016
It takes guts and chutzpah to write a musical about a hundred-year-old anti-Semitism-fueled lynching that remains today one of the most horrific miscarriages of justice in United States history, but this is precisely what Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry pulled off in 1998’s Tony-winning Parade, now being given a Cal State Northridge revival that easily rivals the best our top SoCal regional theaters have to offer.
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GOING TO A PLACE WHERE YOU ALREADY ARE
Wednesday, March 16th, 2016
Questions of life and death and what awaits beyond lie at the heart of Bekah Brunstetter’s heartstrings-tugging Going to a Place where you Already Are, a South Coast Repertory World Premiere you will be talking and thinking about long after its final scene.
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OKLAHOMA!
Monday, March 14th, 2016
Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre follows its excellent Guys And Dolls revival with an equally fine production of another mid-20th-century classic, the one that started it all, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Oklahoma!
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YOU NEVER CAN TELL
Sunday, March 13th, 2016
The words “frothy romp” may not be the first to pop into a theatergoer’s head when describing a George Bernard Shaw comedy, but this is precisely what the author of Man And Superman, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and Saint Joan confectioned back in 1897 when he wrote You Never Can Tell (his “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” response to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest), evidence of which can currently be savored at A Noise Within’s ever so frothy, ever so rompy revival of this lesser-known Shaw gem.
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CLOUD 9
Saturday, March 12th, 2016
Nearly four decades have passed since Cloud 9 made its West End debut, but Caryl Churchill’s comedic examination of gender and sexuality remains every bit as entertaining, as contemporary, and as downright mind-blowing in 2016 as it was in 1979, particularly as given vibrant new life by The Antaeus Company in a “partner-cast” staging that would give any Broadway revival a run for its money, albeit on a far more intimate (and infinitely more affordable) scale.
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LOUIS & KEELY: ‘LIVE’ AT THE SAHARA
Thursday, March 10th, 2016
Louis & Keely: ‘Live’ At The Sahara is back, but if you think the current Laguna Playhouse might be just a carbon copy of the original 2008 Sacred Fools production, or its much-tweaked 2009 Geffen Playhouse transfer, or even of the 2015 Chicago production that transfered to the Geffen over New Years, think again. Louis Prima and Keely Smith are indeed back, but fresh and new and more crowd-pleasingly sensational than ever.
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THE MONGOOSE
Monday, March 7th, 2016NOT RECOMMENDED
Acting, direction, and design are all Grade A in The Mongoose, but what on earth prompted The Road Theatre Company to give Will Arbery’s head-scratcher of a script the go-ahead?
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