BRIGHT STAR

There’s no brighter star lighting up L.A. stages this month and next than the dazzling Carmen Cusack, reprising her Tony-nominated star turn as Alice Murphy in Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star, a musical so stunningly staged and gorgeous to the ear that it’s easy to go easy on its Stella Dallas/Imitation Of Life-style soap.
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JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT

Ingenious direction and equally innovative choreography are just two reasons not to miss 5-Star Theatricals’ excitingly performed revival of Sirs Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, 100 minutes of pure, unadulterated, family-friendly music and fun up Thousand Oaks way.
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YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

Inspired casting choices and Broadway-caliber production values make the latest from 3-D Theatricals the all-around best of the six Young Frankenstein’s I’ve seen in the seven years since its National Tour arrived first brought Transylvania to L.A.
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THE VIEW UPSTAIRS

The thirty-four gay bar patrons who lost their lives in the 1973 arson attack on New Orleans’ UpStairs Lounge deserve far better than Max Vernon’s corny, clichéd The View UpStairs, now getting its West Coast Premiere at Celebration Theatre, and so do its crème-de-la-crème cast and creative team.
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NEXT TO NORMAL

Maxine Phoenix gives Broadway divas decades her senior a run for their money as Diana Goodman in USC Musical Repertory’s impressive intimate staging of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning Next To Normal, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s moving musical look at the effects of mental illness on an all-American family.
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ONCE

Take one of the best (and quite possibly the most original) Broadway smashes of the past decade, cast it with some of SoCal’s most gifted actor-singer-musicians, give it a fresh new staging that may actually improve on the Broadway original, and you’ve got Once, as thrilling a South Coast Repertory season opener as any musical theater lover could wish for.
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FOOTLOOSE THE BROADWAY MUSICAL

Glendale Centre Theatre once again proves itself best-in-town in musicals-in-the-round with Footloose The Broadway Musical and Chaz Feuerstine’s triple-threat star turn in the role that helped make Kevin Bacon a household name.
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SUNSET BOULEVARD

Valerie Perri reprises her Scenie-winning Musical Theater Performance Of The Year as silent screen legend Norma Desmond in Moonlight Stage Production’s stunning revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, directed (and musically staged) to mesmerizing effect by Larry Raben.
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