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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ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER
Monday, July 23rd, 2012
A title that rings a bell for older musical theater buffs, but one that might not be familiar to anyone under a certain age. A score by songwriters whose better known shows keep getting revived and revived, but not this one. Songs that became hits even though the musical they came from did not. A book that, as they say, “needs work.”
It’s precisely for musicals like 1965’s On A Clear Day You Can See Forever that the “concert staged reading” was designed.
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MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT
Monday, July 2nd, 2012
It’s taken eight long years for Monty Python’s Spamalot to go from its preview engagement in Chicago to its Regional Premiere at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West, but in the case of the one-of-a-kind Spamalot, the resulting production proves well worth the wait. Using the original Broadway sets, costumes, and choreography (but in all other respects building its production “from the ground up”), MTW gives Los Angeles-area audiences abundant reasons to celebrate Spamalot’s long-awaited arrival.
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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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