AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
Saturday, January 26th, 2013
Imagine you wanted to dramatize one of science fiction writer Jules Verne’s greatest novels, one which imagined a journey around the world circa 1872 in a then unimaginable eighty days with stops in Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, and then back to London, an adventure that would include dozens of characters along the way, onboard train and ship and atop elephant, and involve a daring rescue, a visit to a Chinese opium den, an Apache attack, and one unexpected delay after another.
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110 IN THE SHADE
Monday, January 21st, 2013
Musical Theatre West’s One-Night-Only concert staged reading of 110 In The Shade, the 1963 Broadway musical adaptation of N. Richard Nash’s perennial favorite The Rainmaker, proved an entertaining, particularly well-timed treat for this reviewer, having only one week prior seen the very play which set the musical ball in motion.
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LEGS DIAMOND
Tuesday, December 4th, 2012
Legs Diamond died twice, the first time in a mob shootout on December 18, 1931, and then a second time on February 19, 1989, when the musical bearing the Prohibition-era gangster’s name died an ignominious death inside the soon-to-be-defunct-itself Mark Hellinger Theatre, the victim of too much hurried rewriting and a leading man who wasn’t quite the triple-threat the role of Legs required.
End of story, right?
Wrong, though it would have been without Michael Betts, co-producer of Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series, who fell in love with the musical’s Original Broadway Cast recording and refused to let go of a dream to bring Legs back to life, even if for One Night Only, a dream which came miraculously true on Sunday, December 2, 2012.
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PRESENT LAUGHTER
Sunday, November 11th, 2012RECOMMENDED
San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre closes its 2012 season with a sparklingly performed revival of Noël Coward’s hilariously farcical Present Laughter. If only poor sightlines didn’t leave many audience members craning for a view of the actors.
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42nd STREET
Sunday, October 28th, 2012
The audience has only just finished applauding this Broadway classic’s “Greatest Hits” overture when the curtain rises to reveal the legs—and only the legs—of thirty long-legged hoofers tap-dancing as if their Broadway careers depended on it (as they indeed do) … and the audience erupts in high-decibel cheers.
Anyone who knows musical theater can surely identify the show in question. It’s the Broadway megahit 42nd Street (3486 performances in its original run and another 1524 in its smash revival), now playing to sold-out houses at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West in a production that sets the bar spectacularly high for any other company with the chutzpah to follow in their foot-taps.
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AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’
Saturday, October 13th, 2012
The music of the Harlem Renaissance lives again in Long Beach as five sensational triple-threats perform the music of Fats Waller in International City Theatre’s snazzy revival of the 1978 Tony-winning Best Musical Ain’t Misbehavin’.
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BACH AT LEIPZIG
Saturday, September 22nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
Were I to tell you I saw a play entitled Bach At Leipzig last night, you’d probably assume that it was some sort of epic historical drama. That’s certainly what it sounds like, right?
Think again. Itamar Moses’ Bach At Leipzig turns out to be a comedy, and not just a comedy. A laugh-out-loud screwball farce written with uncommon intelligence and originality.
San Pedro’s much esteemed Little Fish Theatre now tries its hand at this hysterical historical romp, and if the element of pomp is missing (and missed), there are still good reasons to check out this very entertaining (if bare-ish bones) production.
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GHOST-WRITER
Saturday, August 25th, 2012
Wikipedia defines a “ghostwriter” as someone who “writes books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person.” Add a hyphen and a “ghost-writer” is something quite different indeed—or so we learn in Michael Hollinger’s Ghost-Writer, now getting a classy West Coast Premiere at 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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