WEHO


Classic nighttime soaps, Dynasty and Melrose Place to name just two, get a hilarious gay spoofing in the Celebration Theater’s latest late night hit, WeHo, named after “the most dramatic city never to hit prime time. Some call it West Hollywood. We call it WeHo!”
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SPEECH & DEBATE


A Salem, Oregon high school teacher cruises school restrooms and gay.com to pick up 18-year-old students for sex.  Salem’s conservative mayor is rumored to up to similar shenanigans, all the while promoting an anti-gay agenda. Sounds like the basis for a stark, current-as-today’s-headlines drama, right?
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LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS


Lovers And Other Strangers is perhaps best known as the Oscar-winning 1970 movie which starred Gig Young (remember him?), Bea (then Beatrice) Arthur and Cloris Leachman (pre Maud and MTM), and featuring an unknown actress named Diane Keaton in her very first film role.  (A dollar to whoever can remember in what category Lovers And Other Strangers won its Oscar.)
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INHERIT THE WIND


Is there any play from the 1950s more relevant in 2008 than Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit The Wind?  It’s been 83 years since Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was put on trial for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in the classroom, yet only a half dozen years ago, a suburban Atlanta school board voted unanimously to allow teachers to introduce students to “different views about the origins of life”—a codeword for “creationism,” and John McCain’s choice to be Vice President of this country is a woman who says she is open to teaching “creationism” in public schools.
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SISSYSTRATA


The Celebration Theatre concludes its 25th season with a sensational Sissystrata, a visually dazzling, outrageously funny adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata a la West Hollywood.
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THE NEXT BIG THING

RECOMMENDED 
Anyone craving an evening of 80s nostalgia will find much to enjoy in The Next Big Thing, a new musical just opened at the art/Works Theatre. Like Pretty In Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Can’t Buy Me Love, The Next Big Thing features a cast of energetic, attractive teens (or more precisely 20somethings passing as teens) with dreams to fulfill, and adults who occasionally get in their way.
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THE WHO’S TOMMY


The much awaited revival of The Who’s Tommy has finally arrived in a spectacular production featuring a sensational cast and the best sound ever in L.A. theater.
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ASSASSINS


West Coast Ensemble continues its tradition of presenting some of Los Angeles’ finest intimate theater musicals (Floyd Collins, Zanna Don’t, Sunday In The Park With George) with an absolutely first-rate new staging of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins. Of the three Assassins productions I’ve seen over the past 15 months, this one features the strongest cast—an utterly sensational one at that—and benefits enormously from the imaginative direction of Richard Israel, fresh from his unanimously praised 1776.
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