The Snow QUEEN
Sunday, December 14th, 2014It wouldn’t be December at the Falcon Theater without the Troubadour Theater Company’s latest holiday treat, and this year’s The Snow QUEEN is not only one of their most entertaining extravaganzas to date, it’s one of the most musical Troubies musicals in years.
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HANDLE WITH CARE
Sunday, November 9th, 2014The more romantic your soul, the more likely you will be to fall in love with the West Coast Premiere of Handle With Care at Burbank’s Colony Theatre. Cynics may carp, but if you’re anything like this reviewer, Jason Odell Williams’ cross-cultural romcom will have you believing in soul mates and destiny all the way up to its uber-romantic finale.
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MAN OF LA MANCHA
Friday, November 7th, 2014Several outstanding performances including a best-yet star turn by Marc Ginsburg in the title role make Glendale Centre Theatre’s Man Of La Mancha revival a fine introduction (or return visit) to the Tony-winning Best Musical of 1966, though the in-the-round setting does somewhat impede the atmospheric look that has made past La Manchas such production design dazzlers.
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A Or B?
Saturday, October 25th, 2014Sometimes the course a life takes can depend on something as inconsequential as a cell phone service provider, or so Abby and Ben discover in Ken Levine’s fascinating and funny romantic comedy A Or B?, now getting its World Premiere at the Falcon Theatre.
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THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE
Saturday, October 4th, 2014A bunch of up-and-coming musical theater performers have joined forces as Yutopian Entertainment to do what up-and-coming musical theater performers do best—put on a show (in this case William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), and the show they have put on ends up easily rivaling the best of the now dozen Spelling Bees I’ve attended so far.
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WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS
Friday, September 12th, 2014The 1973 election of Maynard Jackson as Atlanta’s first African-American mayor is merely the backdrop for Pearl Cleage’s What I Learned In Paris, a romantic roundelay Noël Coward could have confectioned, its made-for-each-other exes J.P. and Evie giving Private Lives’ Elliot and Amanda a run for their money, albeit with a good deal more soul.
Following its 2012 World Premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, Cleage’s entertaining if overlong comedy now arrives at Burbank’s Colony Theatre with some sparkling performances and an often fascinating look back at the heady changes wrought by the previous two decades’ Civil Rights crusade and the then burgeoning Feminist Movement.
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THE WESTERN UNSCRIPTED
Saturday, September 6th, 2014They’ve improvised Shakespeare. They’ve improvised Film Noir and The Twilight Zone. They’ve improvised Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Chekhov. They’ve even had the chutzpah to improvise Stephen Sondheim, music, lyrics, and all. And now the improv geniuses who call themselves Impro Theatre are back for business at the Falcon Theatre with their latest (and one of their very best) confections to date—improvising a full-length “feature film” live onstage in that most quintessential of American movie genres: The Western UnScripted.
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THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE
Friday, August 29th, 2014For a Broadway hit that won six Tony awards (including Best Musical of 2002), Thoroughly Modern Millie has made relatively few Southland appearances in the intervening twelve years, just one of many reasons to celebrate the Thoroughly Modern (circa 1922) Miss’s arrival at Glendale Centre Theatre under the thoroughly marvelous co-direction of Danny Michaels and Orlando Alexander.
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