CARNIVAL
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014
Bob Merrill and Michael Stewart’s 1961 hit Carnival may have run a healthy 719 performances on Broadway, but unlike its fellow early-’60s Tony winners The Sound of Music, Gypsy, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed .., Funny/Forum, and Oliver!, regional revivals of Carnival have been few and far between, hence its inclusion in Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series as a one-night-only concert staged reading, one that reminded those in attendance on Sunday that even forgotten Broadway gems have much to offer.
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THE MUSIC MAN
Tuesday, February 18th, 2014
Musical Theatre West takes one of the truly great 20th Century musicals and gives it a splendid 21st Century revival, one that would be even more splendid with an age-appropriate leading man.
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CALL ME MADAM
Tuesday, January 28th, 2014
Musical theater lovers can once again thank Ken and Dottie Reiner and Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series for bringing back to life a musical theater gem grown too obscure to inspire a fully staged production. (After all, given the choice of the two Tony-winning musicals of 1951, Guys And Dolls and Call Me Madam, which one would you choose to program as part of an upcoming season?)
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LET’S MISBEHAVE: THE MUSIC AND LYRICS OF COLE PORTER
Saturday, January 25th, 2014
Take three of Southern California’s most talented musical theater performers, then add three-dozen or so Cole Porter songs linked together by an ingenious book, and you’ve got Patrick Young and Karin Bowersock’s Let’s Misbehave, a brand spanking new Cole Porter musical now getting a sparkling California Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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LITTLE ME
Wednesday, November 27th, 2013
It takes directorial brilliance (and balls) to take a Broadway show with a cast of thirty-six playing more than three dozen roles and stage it with a mere nine performers and no set design other than one comfy armchair and pull it off, but pull it off director David Lamoureux and his cast of nine did on Sunday as Musical Theatre West opened its Reiner Reading Series’ fourth season with the 1962 Broadway gem Little Me.
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YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
Musical Theatre West opens its 61st consecutive season with a sensational remounting of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, one of the few musicals you can feel safe in inviting even your most Broadway-musical-phobic friends to for a monstrous good time.
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Cirque Du Soleil TOTEM
Wednesday, October 16th, 2013
Port Of Los Angeles Berth 46 is the place to be from now through November 10, and it’s not because some majestic ocean liner or USS Battleship has arrived at Los Angeles Harbor. Non, messieurs-dames. The big news down San Pedro way is that the world-famous Cirque Du Soleil has pitched its blue-and-yellow bigtop (aka “Le Grand Chapiteau”) there, treating Angelinos to its latest spéctacle, and ooh-la-la is this spéctacke spéctaculaire!
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DON’T DRESS FOR DINNER
Saturday, October 12th, 2013
Let’s say you’re a married man. Let’s say you’re a married man with a mistress. Let’s say you’d like nothing more than to spend a romantic weekend with said mistress in the renovated farmhouse you call home. You’d send the wife off for a visit with Mommy and invite your best friend over to throw the missus off the scent, right?
Right … but what if your wife and that best of friends happened to be secret lovers and she thought your chum’s weekend visit would be the perfect opportunity for the two of them to engage in a bit of extramarital hanky-panky? She’d make a quick phone call to cancel plans with mother, and before you knew it, there’d be two sets of adulterous lovers under the same roof with the Cordon Bleu cook you’d hired to cater the weekend making it Five’s A Crowd.
If you think this sounds like the perfect set-up for a door-slamming, mistaken identity-filled French farce, you’d be absolutely right, since this is precisely how Marc “Boeing-Boeing” Camoletti sets up Don’t Dress For Dinner, the hilarious (and pitch-perfect) latest from Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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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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