THE FULL MONTY
Saturday, September 8th, 2012
Richard Israel’s intimate staging of the 2001 Broadway hit The Full Monty is so perfect on just about every level that a visit to the Third Street Theatre ought to be required of anyone aiming to produce, direct, appear in, musical direct, or design a 99-seat-plan musical—or by anyone who’s ever foolishly asserted that L.A. doesn’t know how to “do theater.”
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THE COMPANY MEN
Tuesday, September 4th, 2012
With their snazzy business suits and skinny neckties, they might seem at first glance to be a quartet of ad execs straight out of TV’s Mad Men. Place them onstage in front of mikes and backed by a four-piece rock band and they turn into the hot new singing group The Company Men, now wowing audiences in a limited series of Sunday appearances at the Key Club on world famous Sunset Strip.
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THE FANTASTICKS
Sunday, September 2nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
When the best-known of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musicals ended its off-Broadway run ten years ago, the New Yorker marked its closing with (what else?) a cartoon. In it, an elderly couple sit reading the news, one of them glancing up to remark deadpan to the other, “We missed ‘The Fantasticks,’” a sly dig on folks who put off seeing a show so long that they end up missing it entirely, and in the case of The Fantasticks, that meant a record-breaking 42-year, 17,162-performance postponement.
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HEARTS LIKE FISTS
Monday, August 6th, 2012
Someone in a major American metropolis has been murdering post-coital couples, injecting them with a poisonous serum as they lie entwined in each other’s arms, leaving police baffled and the city’s lovers scared out of their minds.
Fortunately, as any comic book fan knows, serial murders like these are the reason super heroes exist, or in the case of Adam Szymkowicz’s World Premiere comedy-fantasy Hearts Like Fists, super heroines.
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ASSASSINS
Sunday, August 5th, 2012
A terrifically performed and imaginatively directed revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins makes it three annual musical hits in a row for the young artists of Coeurage Theatre Company, following their inventive downscaling of The Rocky Horror Show and Ovation winner Gregory Nabours’ original song cycle The Trouble With Words.
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THE RETURN TO MORALITY
Saturday, August 4th, 2012
With the United States presidential election just three months away, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for The Production Company to present the Los Angeles premiere of Jamie Pachino’s political satire The Return To Morality, imaginatively directed by Mark L. Taylor and terrifically performed by Alias’s Kevin Weisman and five of L.A.’s finest supporting players.
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ALL YOUR HARD WORK
Friday, July 27th, 2012
A decade or so ago, Jim and Mary-Ellen were college lovers, though perhaps not exclusively. Both seemed headed toward success, he in business, she in journalism. Now Jim is racking up those frequent flyer miles, doing business in fifteen cities in ten states, married, the father of a young child, and the owner of a “starter” house he was able to purchase with a $50,000 cash down payment. Mary-Ellen, on the other hand, works 12-hour shifts at Urban Outfitters, lives in a cramped studio apartment, and is just about the only person she knows without a spouse and children, though you could hardly call her celibate …or a teetotaler.
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MELVIN ROBERT: THE SECOND ACT
Tuesday, July 17th, 2012
Triple-threat Melvin Robert fulfilled a childhood dream when in 2009 he dazzled audiences as Tom Collins in the Los Angeles Regional Premiere of Jonathan Larson’s Rent, a performance about which I wrote: “His rendition of the ‘I’ll Cover You’ reprise [is] one of the evening’s most gut-wrenching and beautifully performed moments.” Robert won an Outstanding Featured Performance Scenie for his powerful work opposite Jai Rodriguez in that production, and a second for Best Ensemble Cast for the Moonlight Stages production of Miss Saigon the following year.
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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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