Author Archive
USS PINAFORE
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
From its title, you might guess that Crown City Theatre’s USS Pinafore was simply an Americanized version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s classic comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore—but you’d be wrong. What adapter/director Jon Mullich has up his sleeve is something considerably more outer spacey than that—a cleverly written transformation of the British warship Pinafore into the Starship Pinafore. Yes, that’s Starship, à la Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise.
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CAROUSEL
Saturday, May 29th, 2010
If all you knew about Rodgers and Hammerstein was The Sound Of Music, you might expect an R&H show called Carousel with its big production numbers like “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” to be all “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” especially considering its 1945 Broadway debut, over a decade before shows started getting dark and dramatic with Bernstein and Sondheim’s West Side Story.
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THE LION KING
Friday, May 28th, 2010
The arrival of the Broadway National Tour of Disney’s The Lion King for a three-week engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is something to roar about. It’s not every day that one of Broadway’s longest running hits (over 5000 performances and counting) arrives in town. It’s not every day that a show that filled Hollywood’s Pantages for over 950 performances back in 2000-2003 makes a return visit. And don’t hold your breath waiting for some Southern California regional theater or CLO to put on their own production. With its humungous cast of fifty plus performers, over 200 puppets, and roles that require cast members portraying giraffes to saunter across the stageon four stilt legs, you can be darn sure that a big budget National Tour or sit-down production is the only way you’ll be able to see The Lion King … ever. Thus, although it’s not a case of now or never, it’s certainly now or a long time from now. If ever a production could be called a must-see for musical theater lovers of any age, it’s the one playing at OCPAC.
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BOOM
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
From the way Jules and Jo “meet cute” in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom, now playing at Pasadena’s Furious Theatre Company, you’d think you were in for the kind of romcom that’s made stars of Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, and Reece Witherspoon, any one of whom could have played Jo at one point in their careers opposite a young Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, or Mark Ruffalo.
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BEHIND THE GATES
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010RECOMMENDED
Bethany Lieberman’s adoptive parents are at their wits’ end. The privileged seventeen-year-old has turned to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll to the point that she now sees Mom and Dad as the devil incarnate. Fearing that their child, born to a crack-addicted mother, may possibly be beyond saving, Susan and Jerry Lieberman ship Bethany off to Israel, kicking and screaming.
What the Liebermans are hoping for is a miracle. What they get is the same kind of nightmare Sally Field faced in Not Without My Daughter.
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MADAGASCAR
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010
A young man disappears, and five years later remains missing with nary a clue of his possible whereabouts.
JT Rogers’ Madagascar looks at the effect of this disappearance on three of the people closest to him. Densely written, told almost entirely through monologs, Madagascar is a smart play that requires smarts from its audience.
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THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE
Friday, May 21st, 2010
A hit musical’s becoming available for production by regional theaters can be a bonanza for CLOs in search of something fresh and new. After all, how many times can a theater stage a Rodgers & Hammerstein show or one by Jerry Herman, Kander & Ebb, or Lerner & Loewe before audiences start begging for something different? At the same time, theater reviewers may suddenly find themselves invited to see the same new show again and again ad nauseum. I don’t know how others feel about seeing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee more than once, but for this reviewer at least, no matter how many Bees I’m invited to review, I simply “Cain’t Say No.” I love The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and will jump at just about every chance to see a new group of actors put their own stamps on the sensational roles Rebecca Feldman has conceived for them.
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SARAH, SARAH
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
“How often do you see a comedy that’s not only consistently hilarious but is also a work of real substance, a play that makes you both laugh and think at the same time? Not often, I’d venture to guess.”
Thus began my review of Daniel Goldfarb’s Modern Orthodox a little under three years ago, and the same can be said of the playwright’s Sarah, Sarah, now delighting audiences as part of West Coast Jewish Theatre’s 2009-10 season.
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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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