DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
Sunday, June 13th, 2010RECOMMENDED
The Relevant Stage, which bills itself as San Pedro’s Musical Theatre Company, has come a long way since Bat Boy, its freshman offering of a year and a half ago. Though its current production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels qualifies more as high-end community theater than as a fully professional staging of the Tony Award-winning hit, there are enough good to excellent performances (plus the show’s terrific songs and absolutely hilarious book) to make this an entertaining two and a half hours of wild and crazy fun.
THE WILD PARTY
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Don’t expect to see Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party on any of our CLO stages any time soon. The adults-only nature of the 2000 off-Broadway hit make it an unlikely choice for family-friendly subscription-based CLO seasons. That’s why UC Irvine’s current big-stage, live-orchestra production has real event status. Unlike MTG’s memorable book-in-hand staged reading in 2004 or numerous fine intimate theater productions which have followed, UC Irvine’s staging is lushly staged and backed by a nine-piece pit orchestra. That it also features a cast every bit as talented as those performing in professional productions around town makes it a must-see for Wild Party lovers and newbies alike.
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USS PINAFORE
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
From its title, you might guess that Crown City Theatre’s USS Pinafore was simply an Americanized version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s classic comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore—but you’d be wrong. What adapter/director Jon Mullich has up his sleeve is something considerably more outer spacey than that—a cleverly written transformation of the British warship Pinafore into the Starship Pinafore. Yes, that’s Starship, à la Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise.
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CAROUSEL
Saturday, May 29th, 2010
If all you knew about Rodgers and Hammerstein was The Sound Of Music, you might expect an R&H show called Carousel with its big production numbers like “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” to be all “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” especially considering its 1945 Broadway debut, over a decade before shows started getting dark and dramatic with Bernstein and Sondheim’s West Side Story.
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THE LION KING
Friday, May 28th, 2010
The arrival of the Broadway National Tour of Disney’s The Lion King for a three-week engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is something to roar about. It’s not every day that one of Broadway’s longest running hits (over 5000 performances and counting) arrives in town. It’s not every day that a show that filled Hollywood’s Pantages for over 950 performances back in 2000-2003 makes a return visit. And don’t hold your breath waiting for some Southern California regional theater or CLO to put on their own production. With its humungous cast of fifty plus performers, over 200 puppets, and roles that require cast members portraying giraffes to saunter across the stageon four stilt legs, you can be darn sure that a big budget National Tour or sit-down production is the only way you’ll be able to see The Lion King … ever. Thus, although it’s not a case of now or never, it’s certainly now or a long time from now. If ever a production could be called a must-see for musical theater lovers of any age, it’s the one playing at OCPAC.
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THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE
Friday, May 21st, 2010
A hit musical’s becoming available for production by regional theaters can be a bonanza for CLOs in search of something fresh and new. After all, how many times can a theater stage a Rodgers & Hammerstein show or one by Jerry Herman, Kander & Ebb, or Lerner & Loewe before audiences start begging for something different? At the same time, theater reviewers may suddenly find themselves invited to see the same new show again and again ad nauseum. I don’t know how others feel about seeing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee more than once, but for this reviewer at least, no matter how many Bees I’m invited to review, I simply “Cain’t Say No.” I love The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and will jump at just about every chance to see a new group of actors put their own stamps on the sensational roles Rebecca Feldman has conceived for them.
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BRIGADOON
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Before My Fair Lady, before Gigi and Paint Your Wagon and Camelot, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe had their first big Broadway hit in 1947 with Brigadoon. Thrice revived since then on the Great White Way, Brigadoon has gone on to become a regional theater favorite, and though it will never eclipse Lerner & Loewe’s masterpiece (you know which one that is), it does have its own old-fashioned charms as well as songs like “Almost Like Being in Love” that have gone on to become standards.
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MOSCOW
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Three gay men find themselves trapped in an empty theater that may be heaven, hell, or somewhere in-between (with only Chekhov’s The Three Sisters as their companion) in Nick Salamone and Maury R. McIntyre’s engaging, touching chamber musical Moscow, now playing at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre.
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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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