THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE
Saturday, October 4th, 2014
A bunch of up-and-coming musical theater performers have joined forces as Yutopian Entertainment to do what up-and-coming musical theater performers do best—put on a show (in this case William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), and the show they have put on ends up easily rivaling the best of the now dozen Spelling Bees I’ve attended so far.
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BRONIES: THE MUSICAL
Sunday, September 28th, 2014
The charming musical-in-the-rough that was Bronies: The Musical at this past summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival has since been polished into the sparklingly rainbow-hued gem now getting its official World Premiere Production at the Third Street Theatre. Simply put, Bronies: The Musical is the feel-best show in town.
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CABARET
Friday, September 26th, 2014
It takes a combination of inspiration and chutzpah to reinvent a 58-year-old musical theater classic that’s been reinvented time and time again—but director Gary Lamb has done just that with Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, his creative touches adding up to the best of the five intimate Cabarets I’ve seen and one of the top two or three of the ten productions I’ve experienced in all.
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KISS ME KATE
Thursday, September 25th, 2014
A stellar, (almost) all-African-American cast breathe new life into the 1948 William Shakespeare-meets-Cole Porter classic Kiss Me Kate, an innovative Pasadena Playhouse revival that works to perfection for all but about ten minutes of its thrillingly reinvigorated two acts.
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MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT
Monday, September 22nd, 2014
Rare is the musical that can delight and satisfy both Broadway buffs and those who would never be caught dead at My Fair Lady, The Sound Of Music, or heaven forbid, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Monty Python’s Spamalot is that rare Broadway show, and therefore a supremely savvy follow-up to Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s recent Smokey Joe’s Café. That it happens to be served up in an all-around splendid production is like whipped cream on one of Executive Chef Juan Alvarado’s scrumptious desserts.
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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
Sunday, September 21st, 2014
Following its pitch-perfect intimate staging of Broadway’s 110 In The Shade, Hollywood’s Actors Co-op returns just four months later with a visit to the 19th Century London Musical Hall in their charmingly cheeky, crowd-pleasing revival of Rupert Holmes’ 1985 Tony-winning The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Friday, September 19th, 2014
See Deaf West Theatre’s Spring Awakening. See it if you’ve never seen Spring Awakening before. See it if like this reviewer you’ve seen nearly a dozen Spring Awakenings in all. Just do it, because you won’t see direction more brilliant nor a cast more gifted nor a production more awe-inspiring than the Spring Awakening now being staged by Deaf West.
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CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Sunday, September 14th, 2014
Moonlight Stages closes its Summer 2014 season with the Southern California Regional Premiere of Catch Me If You Can, and if the musical adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s popular 2002 biopic “underperformed” during its less than half-a-year on Broadway, you’d be hard-pressed to figure out why it wasn’t a humungous smash from the sensational goings-on down in Vista under the inspired direction of Larry Raben.
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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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