IT’S CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas in Claremont without Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s annual all-new Christmas musical, and as in Christmas seasons past, this year’s It’s Christmas Every Day makes for two hours of song-and-dance-filled G-rated Christmas entertainment.
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SHE LOVES ME

A tale almost as old as time returns magically, musically to life as Chance Theater gives Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick’s She Loves Me a perfectly marvelous intimate staging just in time for the holiday season.
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INTO THE WOODS

Into The Woods is back in town again, the musical’s long-awaited film adaptation’s upcoming Christmas Day opening certain to inspire more ITW revivals than have been seen locally in years and years … and leave L.A. theatergoers scratching their heads wondering which of the bunch to see.

For this reviewer, at least, the answer is simple. Head on over to Beverly Hills’ ritzy Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts to catch the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Summer Of 2014 smash revival, now spending the holiday season indoors at the Wallis after four SRO months under the Ashland, Oregon skies.
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A CHRISTMAS CAROL

RECOMMENDED

Alan Menken & Lynn Ahrens’s gorgeous songs are the best of quite a few reasons to catch Actors Repertory Theatre Of Simi’s holiday production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol despite the disservice its multitalented hometown cast is done by some sour notes emanating from the orchestra pit.
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SERIAL KILLER BARBIE

The season’s brightest, bounciest, and most crowd-pleasing musical surprise turns out to be Colette Freedman and Nickella Moschetti’s Serial Killer Barbie, hardly the splatter fest its catchy albeit misleading title might suggest, but a show that anyone who’s gone through the 12 rounds that are Elementary, Middle, and High School can identify with and cheer.
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WINTER WONDERETTES

There may not be snow on the ground down Escondido way this month or next, but with Winter Wonderettes spending the holidays at the Welk Theatre, the marvelous (and wonderful) quartet’s trademark blend of comedy, harmony, nostalgia, and seasonal melodies turn the San Diego-adjacent resort’s year-round green grass and blue skies into the next best thing to a traditional White Christmas.
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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

From family-friendly animated funfest to powerful grown-up fare, Disney’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame has been transformed by the folks at La Jolla Playhouse into a new stage musical so darkly dramatic that Broadway’s Phantom Of The Opera seems almost light and frothy by comparison. In other words, what they’ve come up with is that rarity—a Disney musical with the proviso “Leave the kids at home.”
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MEMPHIS

Todd Adamson gives one of the year’s truly great performances as DJ Huey Calhoun opposite a sensational SoCal-debuting Lakeisha Renee Houston as star-to-be Felicia Farrell in Cabrillo Music Theatre’s Regional Premiere of Memphis, the fact-inspired tale of a Tennessee disc jockey who made history by daring to play “race music” on white radio back in the still-segregated 1950s.
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