GLORY DAYS
Saturday, August 9th, 2025
Four high school besties discover that life after graduation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in Nick Blaemire and James Gardiner’s engaging slice-of-teen-life musical Glory Days, a terrific (and terrifically entertaining) talent showcase for a quartet of up-and-coming triple threats at the Broadwater Black Box Theatre.
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THE FANTASTICKS
Sunday, August 3rd, 2025The ups and downs of first love are explored to engaging, tuneful effect in the Ruskin Group Theatre’s 65th-anniversary revival of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s The Fantasticks, though for me at least, the world’s longest-running musical begins somewhat to outstay its welcome at around the two-hour point.
SOME LIKE IT HOT
Thursday, July 31st, 2025
Not everybody things hot, but it’s hard to imagine any Broadway musical lover not being smitten by the quadruple-Tony-winning stage adaptation of the Billy Wilder movie classic Some Like It Hot now playing at the Hollywood Pantages, a song-and-dance-and-laugh-packed entertainment bonanza with an updated sensibility where race and gender are concerned.
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JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Saturday, July 26th, 2025
Highlands Theatre follows last summer’s rip-roaring revival of The Music Man with another guaranteed crowd-pleaser for adults and kids of any age, the international musical smash Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Monday, July 21st, 2025
Brilliantly innovative direction, stunningly original choreography, a baker’s dozen revelatory performances, and a Broadway-caliber production design guarantee Southland audiences as outstanding a Spring Awakening as any musical theater lover could ever hope to see.
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THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
Monday, July 21st, 2025A pair of magnetic, gorgeously sung lead performances bring out the best in Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman’s The Bridges of Madison County. The makeshift production design it’s been given by Chromolume Theatre Company and some occasionally clunky staging not so much.
FROZEN
Tuesday, July 15th, 2025Five fabulous lead performances elevate 5-Star Theatrical’s big-cast production of Disney’s Frozen, though probably not enough to be worth shelling out big bucks for a ticket given its rather lackluster production design and hundreds of chatty, fidgety preschool audience members not old enough to sit still for two hours.
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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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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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