DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
Thursday, April 16th, 2015
Glendale Centre Theatre offers musical theater lovers a mid-week treat with the 2005 Tony Best Musical nominee Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, giving its audiences one of Broadway’s (and GCT’s) most laugh-out-loud hilarious shows ever.
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RECORDED IN HOLLYWOOD: THE MUSICAL
Monday, April 13th, 2015
When you think about history-making 20th-century African-American music impresarios, Berry Gordy and Quincy Jones and perhaps two or three other names probably top the list. A less likely name to spring to mind is that of John Grayton Dolphin, an omission that Recorded In Hollywood: The (World Premiere) Musical sets out to rectify … and does so so crowd-pleasingly under Denise Dowse’s pizzazzy direction that it could easily end up giving the Broadway smash Memphis a run for its money.
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LES MISÉRABLES
Sunday, April 12th, 2015
A twenty-year wait for the rights to the international phenomenon that is Boublil And Schönberg’s Les Misérables pays off at long last for Musical Theatre West in an absolutely spectacular big-stage, big-cast, big-budget production that gives Broadway a run for its money.
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SWEENEY TODD
Saturday, April 11th, 2015
A cast of eighteen, ten of them members of Actors’ Equity, bring Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street to thrilling life on the intimate stage of North Hollywood’s Monroe Forum Theatre, a powerful reminder that should Equity’s 99-seat plan bite the dust per AEA’s wishes, productions of this size, scope, and caliber may soon be a much-mourned memory of our Los Angeles theater past.
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GREASE
Friday, April 3rd, 2015
You know from the great-big boy-band/girl-group/cast-of-thirty title-song production number that opens USC’s revival of the Broadway/Hollywood smash Grease that you’re in for something out of the ordinary, and here’s the even better news. USC’s big-stage production turns out to be by far the most exciting of the eight Grease revivals I’ve seen.
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CARRIE: THE MUSICAL
Friday, March 20th, 2015
The La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts at long last gives Stephen King’s tormented telekinetic teen Carrietta N. White the smash hit musical her fans have been waiting for since Carrie: The Musical’s 1988 Broadway debut became, according to The New York Times, “the most expensive quick flop in Broadway history.”
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NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Wednesday, March 18th, 2015
Take a classic George and Ira Gershwin musical, rewrite the book, add a whole bunch of Gershwin hits not in the original, and what have you got? Well, until recently the answer would have been “The New Gershwin Musical Comedy” Crazy For You, right?
Since 2012, however, there have been two correct answers to the above question, 1992’s Crazy For You having recently been joined by Nice Work If You Can Get It (which bills itself simply as “A New Musical Comedy”), the latter now getting its very first L.A.-adjacent production as its First National Tour makes its 30th-and-final stop at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts—and to quote from one of the show’s lesser known ditties, it’s simply “delishious!”
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CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Monday, March 16th, 2015
Actors Repertory Theatre Of Simi gives its audiences the best big-scale musical I’ve seen at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center in their sensationally entertaining mid-sized staging of Broadway’s 2011 Best Musical Tony nominee Catch Me If You Can, a production that requires no allowances to be made “for community theater.” This is topnotch work from start to finish, and a production any professional theater would be proud to call its own.
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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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