A WITHER’S TALE
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
William Shakespeare’s darkest comedy A Winter’s Tale and the soulful Seventies sound of Bill “Ain’t No Sunshine” Withers make for a perfect match in A Wither’s Tale, the latest offering by the multi-award-winning Troubadour Theater Company and one of the Troubies’ richest and best productions yet.
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CHESS IN CONCERT
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
While watching a recording of the 2008 London production of Chess In Concert at Royal Albert Hall, Musical Theatre Of Los Angeles’s Eduardo Enrikez and Bonnie McMahon were struck with a flash of divine inspiration (or out-and-out insanity)—to stage their own Chess In Concert with a 10-piece orchestra and 20-member cast in a 99-seat theater. A daunting task to say the very least, but then again so were MTLA’s revivals of Ragtime and West Side Story, just two of the Broadway mega-musicals which the creative duo had scaled down to 99-seat dimensions to critical acclaim and audience cheers.
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ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS
Sunday, August 8th, 2010
Take a couple dozen songs written by multiple Oscar winners Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, hire a couple dozen Broadway and regional theater triple-threats to perform them to Tony-winning director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s fancy footwork, string them together with a plot suggested by a 1962 Frank Sinatra flick, call the confection Robin And The 7 Hoods—and you’ve got the thoroughly enjoyable World Premiere (and possibly Broadway-bound) new musical now delighting audiences at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater.
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IN THE HEIGHTS
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
When West Side Story premiered on Broadway in 1957, one might have assumed that sometime over the following half century, another hit Broadway musical would center on Latino life in New York City, or on Latino life anywhere for that matter. It would, after all, make sense for a musical as revolutionary as West Side Story to engender others that followed its ground-breaking example, right?
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WEST SIDE STORY
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
If ever a Broadway musical deserved to be called a classic, that musical is West Side Story. What must Broadway audiences have felt as they first discovered it back in 1957? This was, after all, a Broadway whose most recent Tony-winners were My Fair Lady, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game. What must audiences who were accustomed to this sunny fare have thought about a show whose leading man and leading lady didn’t have the proverbial happy ending, and whose characters lived dismal lives in the worst parts of Manhattan and hated anyone whose differences threatened their go-nowhere existences? What must they have thought about Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy, operatic score, about Stephen Sondheim’s poetic lyrics, about Arthur Laurents’ Romeo and Juliet inspired book, and above all about Jerome Robbins’ truly revolutionary choreography? How must West Side Story have rocked the world of those Eisenhower-era 1950s New Yorkers and, even more so, of the out-of-towners who make up so much of a Broadway show’s audience?
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THE EXISTENTS
Friday, July 30th, 2010
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to witness the coming together—and ultimate breakup—of a superstar rock band like, say, Fleetwood Mac, you won’t want to miss The Existents, the new rock musical by Ty Taylor, Douglas Crawford, and Jason Wooten.
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HAIRSPRAY
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
Following over six years (and a grand total of 2642 performances) on Broadway and several Equity and non-Equity National Tours, the smash hit musical Hairspray has at last been made available to theaters across the country, and San Diego Repertory Theatre has scored big in getting the rights to its Southern California Regional Theater Premiere, making for a delightful, often outstanding production directed with assurance and flair by Sam Woodhouse and featuring actors who put their own stamp on John Waters’ memorable characters and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s tuneful songs.
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NEVERWONDERLAND
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Imagine a world in which Peter Pan and Alice are brother and sister, he off to his Neverland, she into her Wonderland, the entire tale imagined in dance—and you have some idea of Boom Kat Dance Theatre’s NeverWonderLand, as gorgeous an evening of music and visual imagery as I’ve seen since Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands.
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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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