GYPSY
Friday, September 5th, 2014RECOMMENDED
Principal performers doing pro-level work highlight One More Productions’ revival of the Broadway classic Gypsy, and despite instances of age-inappropriate casting that make it seem at times more High School Musical than Professional Production, the Arthur Laurents-Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim classic ends up a crowd-pleaser.
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PSYCHE: A MODERN ROCK OPERA
Saturday, August 30th, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
A sensational cast, phenomenal choreography, a spectacular production design, and Michael Matthews’s imaginative direction do everything possible to make the most of Cindy Shapiro’s Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera. Unfortunately, the gifted team’s best efforts can’t rescue “Psyche The Musical” from its ponderous libretto, mostly tedious tunes, and lyrics that clunk where they should soar.
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THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE
Friday, August 29th, 2014
For a Broadway hit that won six Tony awards (including Best Musical of 2002), Thoroughly Modern Millie has made relatively few Southland appearances in the intervening twelve years, just one of many reasons to celebrate the Thoroughly Modern (circa 1922) Miss’s arrival at Glendale Centre Theatre under the thoroughly marvelous co-direction of Danny Michaels and Orlando Alexander.
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OKLAHOMA!
Sunday, August 24th, 2014
Director-choreographer Dan Mojica and an exciting young cast offer Welk Theatre San Diego audiences an Oklahoma! certain to delight both blue-haired Welk regulars and the Glee generation of its late teens-early 20s ensemble, sixteen talented performers who enrich the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic with a freshness and life belying its 71 years of age.
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ONCE
Wednesday, August 20th, 2014
Sometimes execution can be everything. It certainly is in the case of Once, the multiple Tony-winning Best Musical of 2012. The story and the songs are the same as those in the film on which it is based (a movie I found quite unbearable), and yet as brought to freshly inspired life on the musical theater stage, Once The Musical turns out to be one of the best, and quite possibly the most original Broadway smashes, of the past decade.
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MY FAIR LADY
Sunday, August 17th, 2014
Moonlight Stage Productions revives the Lerner & Lowe classic My Fair Lady for a 21st-century audience with the one element that’s been mostly missing since its 1956 Broadway debut—sex appeal—and the result is a My Fair Lady that is not only every bit as captivating as the best of the past century, its Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle could give the hottest Hollywood romcom stars a run for their money any day.
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OKLAHOMA!
Thursday, August 7th, 2014
American musical theater changed for good on March 31, 1943 at the St. James Theatre in New York City when Oklahoma! opened on Broadway, and those who’d like to know (or who would simply like a reminder of) just how revolutionary Oklahoma! was way back then need only head up to Solvang for PCPA’s 71st Anniversary revival of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic—not a perfect production but one which, as directed and choreographed by Michael Jenkinson, makes it clear what a groundbreaker this seven-decade-old remains to this day.
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GODSPELL
Sunday, August 3rd, 2014
It’s not your grandparents’ Godspell anymore, just one of several reasons to catch Actors Repertory Theatre Of Simi’s revival of the 1971 Stephen Schwartz off-Broadway-to-Broadway classic as reconceived for The Great White Way in 2011 and now brought to effervescent life by an impressive young cast at the Simi Valley Performing Arts Center.
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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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