A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
Friday, May 18th, 2012
East West Players continues its love affair with Stephen Sondheim with a fresh, new Asian-Pacific Islander take on A Little Night Music, one which follows in the footsteps of past EWP-SS collaborations begun back in 1979 with Pacific Overtures. Company, Follies, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Into The Woods, Marry Me A Little, Merrily We Roll Along, Passion, and Sweeney Todd have all gotten East West Players makeovers since then, and now Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1973 adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night at last makes its East West debut.
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A CHORUS LINE
Monday, May 14th, 2012
Before 1975, most Broadway theatergoers probably hadn’t given much thought to “the chorus,” those anonymous singers and dancers who backed up the stars that locals and out-of-towners were paying big bucks to see. For most, these chorus boys and girls were simply the nameless/faceless citizens of River City, Iowa, or Covent Garden, London, or Anatevka, Russia.
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THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
Racism in the early 20th Century South may seem an unlikely subject for a Broadway musical—let alone two—yet wonder of wonders, just as Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Parade draws to a close at San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre comes the West Coast Premiere of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s The Scottsboro Boys at the Old Globe, and as was the case with its predecessor, this is indeed cause for celebration.
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PIPPIN
Monday, May 7th, 2012
Picture a hundred thirty or so dancing, glow-in-the-dark fingertips spiraling and swirling around on an otherwise pitch-black stage as the orchestra launches into “Magic To Do” and you’ll have some idea of just how fresh and new the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center revival of Pippin is. Then again, few musicals lend themselves to as many different interpretations as the Stephen Schwartz classic. Reprise did it sexy and Chicago-esque some years back, East West Players took an Asian hip-hop approach to the material, and Deaf West at the Taper featured not one but two Pippins, one deaf and one hearing. SCVAC describes their Pippin as taking place in the “intriguing and wacky world of Steampunk Carnivale,” and an exciting new interpretation it is.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Friday, May 4th, 2012
Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s Spring Awakening has awakened once again, this time as a showcase for a group of very talented, mostly college-age performers and a director whose vision has already impressed this reviewer on more than one occasion.
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THE FIX
Saturday, April 28th, 2012
When Senator Reed Chandler dies in flagrante delicto, his Spiderwoman of a widow and his embittered, crippled brother connive to make the Senator’s handsome but dim son the next President of the United States.
No, this isn’t an upcoming Meryl Streep flick or nighttime network series created to coincide with this election year, though it well could be. It is instead the setup that John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe use to open their highly topical and equally entertaining musical The Fix, now getting its official West Coast Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre (though Angelino theater buffs will recall its Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only concert staged reading our last big national election year).
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MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
It takes you thrillingly by surprise, that first glance at Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins onstage together, and from then on the excitement never lags in Million Dollar Quartet, Tony-nominated as Best Musical of 2010 and now touring the country, its latest stop at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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CLOUDLANDS
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
Adam Gwon and Octavio Solis might well have subtitled Cloudlands, their World Premiere chamber musical now playing at South Coast Repertory, An American Musical Greek Tragedy, not all that bad an idea considering how much darker its story turns out to be than the airy romance its one-word title suggests. Regardless, if the idea of divinely preordained doom seems apter subject matter for Euripides or Sophocles (had the two tragedians teamed to write a musical with elements of both Medea and Oedipus), so it might be without Gwon’s gorgeous, haunting melodies to propel the tale of a suicidal San Franciscan teen whose depression is compounded by the discovery that Mom has been cheating on Dad.
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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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