JANE AUSTEN UNSCRIPTED
Friday, December 19th, 2008
Improv is a tricky art form. It requires an actor’s imagination, concentration, quick thinking, and the ability to maintain a straight face no matter what is being said or done. Imagine now a group of actors improvising an entire two-act play. Quite definitely a daunting task, yet this is precisely the challenge which the sensational talents behind Impro Theatre have undertaken in their smash hit Jane Austen UnScripted.
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THE LIFE
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
The pimps and hookers of pre-Disneyfied Times Square are alive and well and still doing business in the much anticipated Los Angeles premiere of Cy Coleman’s last Broadway musical, 1997’s The Life, now in a limited run on the couldn’t-be-more-fitting Hollywood Boulevard, and directed with power and pizzazz by Joe Greene.
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THE DADDY MACHINE
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Kids with same gender parents finally have a musical about their families–the absolutely delightful The Daddy Machine. Not that this hour-long musical comedy isn’t also great for kids growing up in so-called “traditional” families–or for adults of any age, gender, or sexual orientation. In fact, The Daddy Machine may just be the most entertaining family show around town these days.
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A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Jason Moyer’s fabulous gay adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is back for a return engagement with a new director (Michael A. Shepperd), a slightly tweaked book, a mostly new cast, and a whole new bigger-budgeted look and feel.
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THE BUSY WORLD IS HUSHED
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
Besides being one of the best and most intelligent new plays in quite a while, Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed couldn’t come at a more appropriate time. Following a Yes On 8 victory which was fueled largely by so-called “devout Christians,” it is refreshing indeed to see a play which presents a gay-affirming branch of Christianity, and a lead character (and person of the cloth) who not only accepts that her son is gay but actively encourages his quest for Mr. Right.
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WEST SIDE STORY
Friday, November 28th, 2008
Musical Theatre Of Los Angeles follows its much lauded 99-seat production of the mammoth Ragtime with yet another challenge—staging the Jerome Robbins-Arthur Laurents-Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim classic West Side Story with a 32-member cast and a 10-piece orchestra on a stage perhaps ¼ the size of most large theaters’. The result is an intimate yet epic production which rates an A+ for ambitiousness and a solid B for execution, and one which confirms MTLA’s promise as a young and daring new musical theater company.
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SONG OF EXTINCTION
Friday, November 7th, 2008
•A middle-aged immigrant biology teacher relives the genocide in his native Cambodia in which 2,000,000 of his countrymen lost their lives…
•A 40ish biologist obsesses over the impending extinction of a rare species of Bolivian beetle…
•A 15-year-old viola prodigy must come to grips with his mother’s terminal illness…
These are the threads which EM Lewis weaves together in her exquisitely poetic and deeply moving new play Song Of Extinction.
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LEADING LADIES
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Actors Co-op has found the perfect complement to the concurrently running drama of The Elephant Man—Ken Ludwig’s hilarious gender-bending Leading Ladies. What better way to put an end to the post-summer blues than by spending a couple hours with the oddest couple of men in drag since Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon put on lipstick and hose in Some Like It Hot? Unlike Tony and Jack, though, our two unlikely “heroines” are not on the run from the mob but rather in search of a few million dollars to be inherited if only they can convince a dying woman that they are her lone (and long lost) female relatives. Here’s how it goes:
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