Author Archive
PUSH
Monday, October 13th, 2008
In Las Vegas, a “push” happens when a dealer and a player tie. It’s not the same as losing, but tell that to the player who’s only broken even.
Playwright Kristen Lazarian explores a marital “push” in her provocative new drama Push, getting its Los Angeles premiere at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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LEADING LADIES
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Actors Co-op has found the perfect complement to the concurrently running drama of The Elephant Man—Ken Ludwig’s hilarious gender-bending Leading Ladies. What better way to put an end to the post-summer blues than by spending a couple hours with the oddest couple of men in drag since Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon put on lipstick and hose in Some Like It Hot? Unlike Tony and Jack, though, our two unlikely “heroines” are not on the run from the mob but rather in search of a few million dollars to be inherited if only they can convince a dying woman that they are her lone (and long lost) female relatives. Here’s how it goes:
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GIRL’S ROOM
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Take West Side Story’s original Maria and A Chorus Line’s original Cassie and star them together in 2008 and you have, as Girl’s Room’s publicity proclaims, two veritable Broadway legends sharing the same stage for the first time, and more than enough reason to catch Joni Fritz’s ingratiating dramedy during its limited engagement at the El Portal.
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PORCELAIN
Friday, October 10th, 2008
BRUTAL TOILET-SEX MURDER IN BETHNAL GREEN!
British tabloids trumpet the news of a vicious murder in a public lavatory in East London. John Lee, a nineteen-year-old Londoner of Asian descent, is accused of cold-bloodedly shooting William Hope, his twenty-six-year old Caucasian lover, six times at close range. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
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BAT BOY THE MUSICAL
Thursday, October 9th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
In the eleven years since Bat Boy: The Musical began its life here in L.A. at the Actors’ Gang Theatre, it has gone on to be produced Off-Broadway, in London’s West End, at the Edinburgh Festival and in dozens of regional and international productions. The original L.A. production received four Ovation Awards, and Off-Broadway it won both the Lucille Lortel Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award as Best Musical. The revised London script is now getting its first local staging in a production which I wish I could say is worthy of the material.
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M BUTTERFLY
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
David Henry Hwang was inspired to write the Tony Award-winning M Butterfly by the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not-worthy real-life case of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a Chinese Opera performer, never once suspecting that the love of his life was a man pretending to be a woman. It was only when charged with treason (for having passed on sensitive political information to his “mister-ess”) that the diplomat found out that his “she” was in fact a “he.”
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EARTH SUCKS
Sunday, October 5th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
–How do you explain gravity?
–Earth sucks.
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SOUTH PACIFIC
Friday, October 3rd, 2008RECOMMENDED
It’s been nearly 50 years since the last of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals debuted on Broadway, yet the team’s work remains as popular as ever. Carousel (1945) and The Sound Of Music (1959) continue to be CLO staples, as does The King And I (on Broadway in 1951, 1960, 1977, 1985, and 1996, and soon to open in Thousand Oaks). Last season Downey Civic Light Opera revived the team’s first joint effort, Oklahoma (1943), in an absolutely terrific production (and two more local CLO’s have Oklahoma scheduled over the coming year). And the current Broadway revival of R&H’s 1949 smash South Pacific recently won seven Tonys.
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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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