BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
A decade and a half before Samantha “Bewitched” Darren Stephens, a gorgeous young sorceress named Gillian cast a spell over New York publisher Shep Henderson in John Van Druten’s 1950 Broadway comedy Bell, Book, And Candle, best known for its 1959 film adaptation starring James Stewart and Kim Novak. Though the original stage version made it into John Gassner’s Best American Plays series as one of 1945-1951’s seventeen best (alongside Death Of A Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Mister Roberts), Bell, Book, And Candle has pretty much disappeared from theatrical view, at least in major professional productions. That’s why its arrival at Burbank’s Colony Theater qualifies as rather an event, even more so because unlike many mid-century plays, Van Druten’s romcom holds up very well indeed, scarcely seeming sixty years of age.
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MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
A powerful government official offers to suspend a sex offender’s death sentence in exchange for a night of love-making with the convicted man’s virginal sister. Sound like a scene from a day or nighttime soap? It certainly could be, but is in fact the central conflict of William Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure, about as contemporary a play as the Bard ever wrote, even four-plus centuries after its first performance. No wonder A Noise Within’s “present time” setting in a “modern capital city” works so well in this first production of its 2010-2011 repertory season.
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70, GIRLS, 70
Monday, September 20th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
John Kander and Fred Ebb had already had considerable success with Flora The Red Menace, Cabaret, The Happy Time, and Zorba when 70, Girls, 70 made its Broadway debut in 1971. Still, not even the renown of their four previous musicals could save their latest show from a quick 35 performance demise. In fact, 70, Girls, 70 vanished so quickly into obscurity that probably only the most avid Broadway buffs are even aware of its existence—Broadway buffs and the Musical Theatre Guild, which has as one of its missions to rescue flops like 70, Girls, 70 from obscurity.
A WITHER’S TALE
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
William Shakespeare’s darkest comedy A Winter’s Tale and the soulful Seventies sound of Bill “Ain’t No Sunshine” Withers make for a perfect match in A Wither’s Tale, the latest offering by the multi-award-winning Troubadour Theater Company and one of the Troubies’ richest and best productions yet.
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FREE MAN OF COLOR
Saturday, August 14th, 2010
“Thirty-four years before the end of slavery, I stood before my graduating class and wondered about my soul.”
The speaker is John Newton Templeton, a young ex-slave and the first man of color to attend Ohio University—over three decades before the Emancipation Proclamation.
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THE HASTY HEART
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
John Patrick’s The Hasty Heart is that theatrical rarity—a comedy-drama that is as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking, a life-affirming story about impending death that is, amazingly, oximoronically, a feel-good tearjerker.
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CHiPs THE MUSICAL
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
The zanies who call themselves the Troubadour Theater Company are back with CHiPs The Musical, the award-winning ensemble’s first show not based on the hits of a major recording artist or group. Instead, the Troubies’ takeoff on the late-‘70s/early-‘80s action TV series has catchy original music composed by Henry Phillips, with Rick Batalla taking care of book and lyrics. In all other respects however, CHiPs The Musical is exactly the madness and merriment we’ve come to expect from Troubies’ Artistic Director Matt Walker and company.
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THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor, Will Rogers packed a whole lot of living into his fifty-five years. He circled the world three times, made over seventy movies, wrote thousands upon thousands of nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, became internationally famous, and even ran once for President of the United States, if only in jest.
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