A CINDERELLA CHRISTMAS
Saturday, December 10th, 2016
There’s only one place in town where you can see Disney Channel teen idols, a ‘70s/‘80s TV diva, ugly stepsisters in drag, a gender-bending fairy godmother, a pygmy horse, magic effects and transformations galore, and some terrifically danced production numbers; hear over a dozen Top-40 hits (and more one-liners than a Henny Youngman set); and perhaps most excitingly, get to cheer the heroes and boo the villains—and that’s at the Pasadena Playhouse, once again treating L.A. audiences to the British tradition known as “Panto” with this year’s A Cinderella Christmas, the fifth annual Panto At The Playhouse.
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MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
Wednesday, December 7th, 2016
Broadway couldn’t do it any better than the breathtaking revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along now playing at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts, not unless they too could get recent Tony nominee Michael Arden on board to direct with the same originality and flair he brought to last season’s Spring Awakening or come up with a cast as spectacular as the one at the Wallis.
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WHEN JAZZ HAD THE BLUES
Sunday, November 27th, 2016
He was the love of Lena Horne’s life. He ghostwrote and/or arranged many of Duke Ellington’s Greatest Hits. He lived an openly gay life three full decades before Stonewall. He was Billy Strayhorn, and if the name doesn’t ring a bell, playwright Carole Eglash-Kosoff aims to rectify that with her elucidating, engrossing, enormously entertaining World Premiere musical drama When Jazz Had The Blues.
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HAIRSPRAY
Saturday, November 26th, 2016
Hairspray is back in town, and just in time to provide an honest-to-goodness live alternative to NBC’s upcoming Hairspray Live. More importantly, thanks to some sparkling lead and featured performances, Cupcake Theater’s mid-sized revival proves a surefire crowd pleaser for audiences from nine to ninety.
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MAMMA MIA!
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016
Mamma Mia!, the jukebox musical that started it all, has come back to Costa Mesa in its Final Farewell Tour, its return to the Segerstrom Center For The Arts offering the Broadway mega-smash’s mega-multitude of fans not only two dozen of ABBA’s Greatest Hits but one of Thanksgiving week’s Greatest Reasons to give thanks.
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THE DROWSY CHAPERONE
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016
A fresh new crop of Cal State Fullerton musical theater majors breathe fresh new life into Broadway’s 2006 Valentine to musical theater, The Drowsy Chaperone, winner of 5 Tony Awards and a CSUF crowd-pleaser if there ever was one.
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PARADE
Saturday, November 19th, 2016
The UCI Claire Trevor School Of The Arts’ Department Of Drama opens its 2016-2017 season with a powerful, superbly performed big-stage revival of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Parade.
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URINETOWN
Sunday, November 6th, 2016
Annie, Cabaret, Dreamgirls, Grease, Hair, Mame, Pippin, Rent. One-word-titled Broadway smashes go all the way back to the birth of the modern American musical. (Showboat or Oklahoma!, you take your pick.) Still, there’s never quite been a modern American musical like Urinetown, proof positive of which can be marveled at in director Kari Hayter’s exhilarating intimate-stage revival, the latest from L.A.’s “Pay What You Want” Coeurage Theatre Company.
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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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