THE FANTASTICKS
Sunday, September 2nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
When the best-known of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musicals ended its off-Broadway run ten years ago, the New Yorker marked its closing with (what else?) a cartoon. In it, an elderly couple sit reading the news, one of them glancing up to remark deadpan to the other, “We missed ‘The Fantasticks,’” a sly dig on folks who put off seeing a show so long that they end up missing it entirely, and in the case of The Fantasticks, that meant a record-breaking 42-year, 17,162-performance postponement.
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DADDY LONG LEGS
Monday, August 27th, 2012
A brand new cast makes PCPA Theaterfest’s production of Daddy Long Legs, Paul Gordon and John Caird’s exquisite gem of a musical, seem fresh and new, even for those like this reviewer who fell in love with it in previous engagements at the Rubicon and La Mirada. Though Jean Webster’s 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs fits squarely in the Children’s Books section of your local library or Barnes And Noble, its musical adaptation (minus hyphens) once again proves absolutely right for ages eight to eighty.
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MISS SAIGON
Monday, August 27th, 2012
Having now seen a grand total of seven major productions of Miss Saigon, I’m going to go out on a limb and say: If Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s reimagining of the 1991-2001 Broadway megasmash isn’t the very best of the bunch (which it may well be), it is certainly the freshest, grittiest, and most original staging I’ve seen since first experiencing Miss Saigon’s First National Tour at the Ahmanson way back in 1995.
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LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
Friday, August 24th, 2012
Inspired direction, imaginative choreography, splendid performances, and an in-the-round stage make Glendale Centre Theatre’s revival of the cult musical classic Little Shop Of Horrors one of the very best of the many this reviewer has seen over the past decade.
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ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, KAREN CARPENTER
Saturday, August 18th, 2012
“Dear God, don’t let New Jersey be too horrible!” prays eleven-year-old Margaret Simon, brand new to the Garden State and worried—like any girl her age finding herself in a new city—about fitting in, making new friends, and the particular challenges of being on the cusp of young womanhood. Easing Margaret’s adjustment to Jersey life are her new best friends Nancy, Gretchen, and Janie, aka the PTSes (Preteen Sensations). As for those love dreams any preteen is likely to have at night, who better to inspire them than neighborhood heartthrob Moose Freed, the first glimpse of whom makes Margaret hear, not bells, but the intro to “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” so that before you know it, Margaret and Moose are duetting the Carpenters classic, mikes in hand?
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ALTAR BOYZ
Monday, August 13th, 2012
The Altar Boyz are back, and for diehard Los Angeles fans of this fictional Christian boy band, a hop, skip, and a jump down to San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre provides the first chance in over two years to spend an hour and a half being concertized by five of the cutest, sexiest, and most praise-raising triple-threats ever to share a musical theater stage.
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A RING IN BROOKLYN
Saturday, August 11th, 2012
The Academy For New Musical Theatre follows last year’s 40 Is The New 15 with another flashback-to-the-past World Premiere musical, A Ring In Brooklyn (subtitled “a frickin’ musical”), and if their latest project gets off to an iffy start, about halfway through Act One it kicks into gear and turns out a winner.
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ASSASSINS
Sunday, August 5th, 2012
A terrifically performed and imaginatively directed revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins makes it three annual musical hits in a row for the young artists of Coeurage Theatre Company, following their inventive downscaling of The Rocky Horror Show and Ovation winner Gregory Nabours’ original song cycle The Trouble With Words.
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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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