LI’L ABNER
Monday, August 29th, 2016
They don’t write shows like Li’l Abner anymore, and not just because the 1956 musical adaptation of the Al Capp comic strip pretty much defines political incorrectness. With its Original Broadway Cast of fifty-four, only schools and community playhouses could possibly hope to produce this musical behemoth in 2016—which makes it a perfect choice for the theatrical genre known as the Concert Staged Reading, proof positive of which was evidenced at Musical Theatre West’s Daisy Maezing one-night-only Reiner Reading Series latest.
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RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN
Saturday, August 6th, 2016
San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre scores a major programming coup in offering Angelinos their first 99-seat look at Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright’s tangy examination of how much—and how little—women’s lives have changed from the pre-Betty Friedan 1950s to the post-post-Feminist today.
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DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
Monday, July 11th, 2016
Few 21st-century musicals have put the Comedy back into Musical Comedy like Best Musical Tony nominee Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, at long last getting the big-stage professional production SoCal musical theater lovers have been waiting for since its National Tour stopped at the Pantages a full decade ago, and what a production it is thanks to the Musical Comedy Pros at Musical Theatre West.
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VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE
Saturday, June 11th, 2016
Christopher Durang’s Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike has arrived at International City Theatre, the delectable 2013 Best Play Tony winner proving one of early summer’s yummiest treats.
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ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Monday, May 16th, 2016
The dynamite performances delivered by Chris Warren Gilbert and Jill Van Velzer in Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series concert staged reading of the 1978 Tony winner On The Twentieth Century are just two of the many reasons for someone, anyone, to give the Cy Coleman, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green gem the fully-staged SoCal revival it so richly deserves.
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A WALK IN THE WOODS
Saturday, May 7th, 2016
The Cold War arms race provides a provocative backdrop for the Pulitzer Prize finalist A Walk In The Woods, Lee Blessing’s dramedic look at the odd-couple friendship that develops in the late 1980s between a veteran Soviet arms negotiator and his younger American counterpart, now getting a crowd-pleasing revival at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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SISTER ACT
Monday, April 11th, 2016
The convent is alive with the sound of disco as on-the-lam nightclub chantoozie Deloris Van Cartier teaches the nuns of The Holy Order of the Little Sisters of Our Mother of Perpetual Faith a lesson in Booty-Shaking For The Lord in Sister Act, the most all-around entertaining Musical Theatre West premiere in years.
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SLEUTH
Friday, March 25th, 2016RECOMMENDED
Anthony Shaffer’s cat-and-mouse comedy mystery thriller Sleuth ran nearly three years on Broadway in the early 1970s, chalking up over 1200 performances, much of the play’s success stemming from its multiple unexpected plot twists. The terrifically acted revival now playing at Little Fish Theatre delivers on most of the surprises, but unfortunately not on the big post-intermission humdinger.
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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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