BEIJING SPRING
Thursday, May 22nd, 2014RECOMMENDED
A sensationally talented, mostly very young cast of Asian-American triple-threats, exciting, eclectic choreography, and a story that merits retelling are the best reasons to catch East West Players’ season closer, Tim Dang and Joel Iwataki’s Beijing Spring. The musical itself, however, still needs work despite considerable revision since its 1999 World Premiere.
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I TOTALLY KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST (DONNA) SUMMER
Saturday, May 17th, 2014The wild-and-wacky (and wildly talented) folks who brought you Are You There, God? It’s Me, Karen Carpenter (in the Summer of 2012) and Prairie-oke! (in the Summer of ’13) are back with their latest summer spoof (and who cares that it’s still spring?), the aptly-named “new musical mash-up parody slasher musical” I Totally Know What You Did Last (Donna) Summer, and if its current Cavern Club Celebrity Theatre run is, like, totally sold-out, the good news is that it’s coming back in the Fall!
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HOLDING THE MAN
Sunday, May 11th, 2014The Aussies have set up shop at the Matrix Theatre as a troupe of L.A.-based actors from Down Under aptly-named the Australian Theatre Company present the Southern California Premiere of the true-life coming-of-age/coming-out/coming-to-terms-with-AIDS play Holding The Man, exciting news indeed for Angelinos in search of quality theater Ozzie-style.
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ALTAR BOYZ
Saturday, April 5th, 2014The Christian boy band known as the Altar Boyz have returned to L.A. for the first time in five years in a no-frills production that proves that even without a fancy set, pricy costumes, and surround sound, entertainment value can remain high when performances sparkle under a director as imaginative as Kristin Towers-Rowles.
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GRAND HOTEL
Friday, April 4th, 2014Broadway buffs are hereby advised. You’ve got this weekend and next to catch what may well be the only big-stage, big-cast revival you’ll ever see of the multiple Tony-winning Grand Hotel.
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DOCTOR ANONYMOUS
Tuesday, April 1st, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
The gay liberation movement may have started in earnest with the 1969 Stonewall riots, but homosexuality was still deemed a “curable” mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association in 1972 when a masked Dr. John E. Fryer addressed the annual APA conference as “Dr. H. Anonymous,” beginning his speech with the simple words “I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.”
A year later homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Inspired by Fryer’s speech, psychiatrist/playwright Guy Fredrick Glass has written Doctor Anonymous, now getting its World Premiere at the Zephyr Theatre, and though several of its actors rise above the material, neither their performances nor a topnotch production design can mask Doctor Anonymous’s many serious flaws.
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CINNAMON GIRL
Monday, March 17th, 2014
Velina Hasu Houston and Nathan Wang transport us to another time, another place, another world in their magical, mystical, marvelous new musical Cinnamon Girl, now playing at the Greenway Court Theatre.
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MY NAME IS ASHER LEV
Saturday, March 1st, 2014“Be a great painter, Asher Lev. It is the only justification for all the pain you are about to cause.”
Chaim Potok’s acclaimed 1972 novel My Name Is Asher Lev has now been transformed into a powerfully performed, deeply moving showcase for three of L.A.’s finest acting talents and one of our best directors at the award-winning Fountain Theater.
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