Author Archive
THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
It’s mid-December 1939 and all Atlanta is atwitter with excitement over the tonight’s gala premiere of Gone With The Wind. Christmas trees are being decorated all across the city including at the home of Adolph Freitag. What, you ask? Freitag doesn’t sound like a Christian name. You’re absolutely right. “Take down that star!” Beulah “Boo” Levy orders her daughter Lala. “Jewish Christmas trees don’t have stars!”
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ADAM BAUM AND THE JEW MOVIE
Sunday, June 8th, 2008
In Modern Orthodox, Daniel Goldfarb hilariously contrasted two extremes of modern Judaism. In Adam Baum And The Jew Movie, he writes an equally laugh-filled comedy about the legendary Jewish studio heads who created decades of Jew-free movies in Hollywood.
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IN ON IT
Sunday, June 8th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
In Daniel MacIvor’s In On It, two actors perform on a bare black stage, their sole “props” being a pair of chairs and a gray suit jacket. Who are these two men? Are they actors? Writers? Students in an acting class? They seem to be preparing a play or movie about someone named Ray who was involved in an accident. At various times, both performers (named “This One” and “That One”) don the jacket to become Ray, or doff it to portray one of the other characters in Ray’s life. Other scenes between the two men, a gay couple, have them discussing their work in progress. Still others seem to be flashbacks from their past.
DOG SEES GOD
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
The teenagers in Dog Sees God: Confessions Of A Teenage Blockhead could come straight out of American Pie or Mean Girls, but they bear an uncanny resemblance to a celebrated bunch of comic strip kids.
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IMAGINE
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
The best children’s theater, like the best Disney classics, is theater that’s not just for kids. South Coast Repertory knows this well, and the latest entry of its “Theatre For Young Audiences” series is sure to delight not only children … but also the grownups they bring along.
A VERY BRADY MUSICAL
Friday, June 6th, 2008The Brady Bunch is (are?) alive and well and on stage at Theatre West in the brand new A Very Brady Musical. With music and lyrics by Hope and Laurence Juber and book by Lloyd J. Schwartz and Hope Juber, A Very Brady Musical mixes multiple plots with catchy songs to create a mostly entertaining evening of tuneful entertainment.
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shAme
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
When reminiscing about their high school years, most adults can probably recall having studied Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter at some point or other. An imdb check shows over a dozen film or TV adaptations including 1995’s, which starred an improbably cast Demi Moore as Puritan adulteress Hester Prynne. The classic melodrama even made it to Broadway a century ago. Never before, however, has it been set to music, or at least not until composer songwriter Mark Governor decided to turn it into a rock opera now making its Hollywood club debut.
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TRACERS
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
With over 4000 Americans killed in Iraq since the United States declared its “war on terror” in the Middle East, now seems a particularly appropriate time to remember the Vietnam War and its more than 47,000 American casualties (not to mention the over 300,000 wounded in action).
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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