BUDDY – THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY
Sunday, July 13th, 2025
Buddy Holly may have left this earth some six-and-a-half decades ago on “the day the music died”, but the 1950s rock and roll legend lives on in Long Beach in the person of dazzling quadruple-threat phenom Will Riddle in Musical Theatre West’s rousing revival of musical/tribute concert hybrid that is Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story.
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THE ANGEL NEXT DOOR
Saturday, June 14th, 2025
The stakes are sky-high when an about-to-be-published young novelist discovers that the inspiration for his debut opus may not be The Angel Next Door he’s imagined her to be in the Los Angeles Premiere of Paul Slade Smith’s latest comedic bonbon, a surefire late-spring hit for International City Theatre.
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THE VIOLIN MAKER
Tuesday, April 29th, 2025Its heart is definitely in the right place, and I can’t fault the performances elicited by director caryn desai, but I found Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum and Ronda Spinak’s downer of a Holocaust memorial play The Violin Maker too narration-and-flashbacks-heavy to fully command my attention throughout most of its two-hour running time.
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INTO THE WOODS
Monday, March 31st, 2025
Over a dozen star turns make Musical Theatre West’s staging of a Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine classic that rarity among Into The Woods revivals, a big-stage, big-talent triumph that captures the magic of the 1987 Broadway original while treating audiences to inspired new interpretations of the fairytale musical’s now iconic roles.
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DESPERATE MEASURES
Saturday, February 22nd, 2025
Take a classic Shakespeare plot, chop out all the boring and confusing parts, and transform it into a song-packed Wild West musical romcom and what you’ve got is the off-Broadway hit Desperate Measures, now cheering audiences at International City Theatre.
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JERSEY BOYS
Monday, February 17th, 2025
It’s taken over twenty years for Jersey Boys to make it from Broadway to National Tour to its Long Beach Regional Premiere, but the sensational production Musical Theatre West is now treating its audiences to makes it well worth the two-decade wait.
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MURDER ON THE LINKS
Monday, October 28th, 2024
Playwright Steven Dietz has taken Agatha Christie’s 1923 whodunnit Murder On The Links and adapted it as a rollicking, tongue-in-cheek six-actor farce that only the most diehard Christie purist could fail to love.
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THE DOUBLE V
Monday, August 26th, 2024A little-known aspect of World War II-era African-American history is brought to life in Carole Eglash-Kosoff’s entertaining, elucidating, mostly successful The Double V, an International City Theatre World Premiere.
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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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