A CATERED AFFAIR
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
While it may be true that no musical is too big for Broadway, Spider Man being a case in point, it’s equally true that some musicals are simply too small, too intimate, too “chamber” to make it on the Great White Way, one more reason to celebrate Musical Theatre Guild for bringing these delicate gems back to life, if only for an evening or afternoon of musical theater bliss.
Such is the case with 2008’s A Catered Affair, which despite its pedigree (music and lyrics by John Bucchino and book by Harvey Fierstein, based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal and a teleplay Paddy Chayefsky) and a cast which included Tom Wopat, Faith Prinze, and Fierstein, closed on Broadway after a mere 143 performances and previews.
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BILLY & RAY
Sunday, April 7th, 2013
Back in 1944, Hollywood’s “Hays Code” made it perfectly clear. If you wanted to make a movie, your film had better not show any of the following: “brutality and possible gruesomeness, technique of committing murder by whatever method, sympathy for criminals, …“ The list of no-nos went on and on.
So how, then, did Paramount Pictures manage in 1944 to make a movie out of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, a film in which insurance salesman Fred MacMurray and housewife Barbara Stanwyck plot and execute the murder of her husband—and make it look like an accident so as to cash in on hubby’s insurance policy’s “double indemnity” clause, one which guarantees double the payout in case of accidental death?
Mike Bencivenga’s World Premiere play Billy & Ray not only explains how co-screenwriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler found ingenious ways to hoodwink Hays Code czar Joseph Breen into letting them include all of the abovementioned taboos in their movie, under Garry Marshall’s pitch-perfect direction, it does so in the most entertaining of ways.
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CRAZY FOR YOU
Saturday, March 9th, 2013
The Tony-winning Best Musical of 1992 has arrived at Glendale Centre Theatre in an in-the-round production so all-a-round terrific, you’d have to be crazy not to be crazy about Crazy For You. With its ever so talented pair of triple-threat leads, splendid supporting performances, a fabulous song-and-dance ensemble executing some of the most inventive choreography around, and costumes you’d expect to see on a Broadway stage, Crazy For You is is one of GCT’s best.
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RIGHT TOGETHER, LEFT TOGETHER
Friday, March 1st, 2013
Longtime friends reunite in New York City for the wedding of Taylor and Zac in Will Collyer & Pamela Eberhardt’s highly promising new musical Right Together, Left Together … if only an impending hurricane and the tiny matter of Zac’s possible same-sex leanings don’t get in the way.
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CAVALIA ODYSSÉO
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
When was the last time you saw a production which featured 18 equestrians, 23 acrobats and aerialists, and 67 horses (22 stallions and 45 geldings) performing live under a 10-story-high big-top tent smack dab in the center of beautiful downtown Burbank?
Well, if you’re the editor of StageSceneLA, the answer to the above question is “Not until last night,” when the spectacularly one-of-a-kind Cavalia Odysséo opened to a standing-room-only audience dazzled again and again by its myriad of wonders.
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I’LL BE BACK BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
Things do considerably more than merely go bump in the night when Greg and Jan Sanderson leave the big city for life in a haunted country farmhouse in I’ll Be Back Before Midnight, Peter Colley’s Gaslight-meets-Deathtrap suspense thriller now getting a shriek-a-minute Los Angeles Premiere at Burbank’s Colony Theatre.
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YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
Saturday, January 19th, 2013
Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Sally, and Snoopy celebrate the life of a boy named Charlie Brown in the crowd-pleasing musical You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, now being given a positively irresistible guest production at North Hollywood’s intimate Theatre Banshee.
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HEAVEN CAN WAIT
Friday, January 11th, 2013
Jennifer Garner did it in 13 Going On 30. Robert Downey Jr. did it in Chances Are. Ellen Barkin did it in Switch. Warren Beatty did it in Heaven Can Wait, and before him Robert Montgomery in Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
What all these movie stars did was suddenly find themselves occupying someone else’s body in that ever popular genre—the body-switch flick.
Glendale native Tommy Kearney now returns to his home turf in Glendale Centre Theatre’s tiptop revival of Harry Segall’s 1930s body-switch gem Heaven Can Wait, adapted for the screen as both Here Comes Mr. Jordan and Heaven Can Wait, and if for no other reason than to see Kearney’s star-making performance as pugilist Joe Pendleton, this is one production comedy lovers won’t want to miss.
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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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