BAREFOOT IN THE PARK
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Neil Simon’s Barefoot In The Park may be 45 years old, but you’d never know it from the fresh and consistently funny revival it’s getting at Glendale Centre Theatre. Corie Bratter’s powder blue Princess telephone with its rotary dial may be a relic of the sixties, and there’s not a computer or plasma TV in sight, but Simon’s gifts as the master of the one-line gag aren’t even a tad dated in this, only his 2nd Broadway comedy.
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IT’S A STEVIE WONDERFUL LIFE
Saturday, December 13th, 2008RECOMMENDED
The Troubadour Theater Company is back with its Christmas season favorite It’s A Stevie Wonderful Life, a spoof of the Hollywood holiday film classic interspersed with Stevie Wonder hits, often with lyrics rewritten to fit the movie’s plot. Though I found the troupe’s recent As U2 Like It a more entertaining and polished production, Stevie Wonderful does have many bright and funny moments, especially for fans of the original film.
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SHANGHAI MOON
Saturday, November 15th, 2008
Those who adhere to strict standards of political correctness should not, I repeat NOT see Shanghai Moon, Charles Busch’s spoof of the “Oriental” melodramas of Hollywood’s Golden Era. All others will have a devilishly good time reliving the forbidden passions of such “classics” as Lady From Chungking, Daughter Of Shanghai, King Of Chinatown, Shanghai Express, and Daughter Of The Dragon, all of them starring the immortal Anna May Wong. After all, as the program cover states, “There is enchantment when East meets West under the Shanghai Moon.”
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THE MOST HAPPY FELLA
Monday, November 10th, 2008
Musical Theatre Guild once again astounds with their “Concert Staged Reading” of Frank Loesser’s 1956 Broadway musical drama The Most Happy Fella, their most vocally challenging project since Elmer Rice-Kurt Weill-Langston Hughes’ Street Scene nearly two years ago.
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CHARLES DICKENS’ OLIVER TWIST
Sunday, November 9th, 2008
Say the words Oliver Twist and the first thing that pops into mind may be a song—“Food Glorious Food,” “Where Is Love,” “You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two,” “Who Will Buy”… Lionel Bart’s songs are so inextricably linked to Charles Dickens’ original story that it’s hard to imagine an Oliver Twist without them, yet British writer-director Neil Bartlett has dared to do so in his 2004 adaptation (“in twenty-four scenes with several songs and tableaux”) entitled Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, now getting a magical L.A. premiere at A Noise Within.
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SIX DANCE LESSONS IN SIX WEEKS
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Prim and proper uptight elderly Southern belle meets free-spirited foul-mouthed gay jokester for Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks in Richard Alfieri’s touching Broadway comedy, now getting a spiffy revival at Burbank’s Falcon Theatre.
MARY’S WEDDING
Saturday, October 25th, 2008RECOMMENDED
It is 1920 and the night before Mary’s wedding. Dreams take her back several years to the night of a thunderstorm, the night when the young Englishwoman first set eyes on Charlie, a strapping young Canadian farmer and horseman, and the love of her life.
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LOVE’S OLD SWEET SONG
Friday, October 24th, 2008
The Syzygy Theatre Group joins in the International Centennial Celebration of William Saroyan with an captivating production of one of the Armenian-American writer’s lesser known works, 1940’s Love’s Old Sweet Song. Like Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, Love’s Old Sweet song is both sentimental and idealistic, and all the more wonderful for being so. Like the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks, it involves mistaken identities, culture clashes between haves and have-nots, some fast-talking, witty repartee, and ridiculous, farcical situations. It is this blend of the screwball and the sentimental that makes Love’s Old Sweet Song such a magical piece of theater.
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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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