BILLY ELLIOT
Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
Musicals don’t get much bigger or more spectacular than the international smash Billy Elliot, a nearly three-hour song-and-dance extravaganza that never forgets that it is, at heart, the intimate story of a boy who, in the words of Gene Kelly, has simply “Gotta Dance.”
L.A./Orange County audiences now have the next two weeks to experience the laughter, the tears, the thrills, and the sheer joy that is Billy, winner of ten 2009 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, and in a Broadway first, a Best Leading Actor Tony awarded to all three Broadway Billys.
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WICKED
Friday, February 22nd, 2013
There are Broadway hits, Broadway smashes, Broadway mega-smashes, and then there is Wicked. Rapidly approaching 4000 performances at the Gershwin Theatre after nearly ten years on the Great White Way… North American and International productions and tours galore… And not one but two major National Tours currently visiting cities throughout North America. The Second National Tour* stopped at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts two years ago, and now it’s the First National Tour making a four-week visit to Costa Mesa in a production that Wicked fans and newbies will not want to miss. Quite simply put, for song, dance, story, spectacle, and emotional impact, Wicked is in a class all by itself.
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WAR HORSE
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
Simply put, War Horse is a theatrical experience unlike any other you have ever witnessed. A spectacular, breathtaking work of art that does things usually reserved only for the movies, it had this reviewer gasping in awe and blubbering like a baby. Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like it before.
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THE ADDAMS FAMILY
Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
Talk about The Addams Family and the oldest among us will recall the darkly humorous single-panel cartoons that appeared in the New Yorker from 1938 on. Boomers will instantly flash back to the black-and-white mid-1960s sitcom of the same name, and their children will remember either the ‘73 or ‘92 animated Addams Family series, or the ’91 film adaptation (or either of its two sequels). And that’s not counting The New Addams Family (the late ‘90s remake of the original TV series) or an Addams family video game and even an Addams family pinball machine.
Still, it wasn’t until two years ago that Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandma, Wednesday, Pugsley, and Cousin It made their Broadway debut in the 725-performance The Addams Family, and it is that Drama Desk and Drama League Award-winning musical that has arrived at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts in its hilarious, crowd-pleasingly revised First National Tour.
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MEMPHIS
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012
December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. November 6, 2012: Barack Obama is reelected to the Presidency of the United States. What a difference 57 years make!
November 6, 2012 happens also to have been the Opening Night of the National Tour of Memphis, the Tony-winning Best Musical set in the same decade Rosa Parks made her historic stand for racial equality, a serendipitous coincidence given that Memphis is the fictional but fact-inspired tale of Huey Calhoun, a Memphis DJ who made history in his own way by daring to play “race music” on mainstream, i.e. white radio. That particularly groundbreaking step, and Calhoun’s then illegal romance with a young singer he meets on his first visit to a “colored” nightclub, are at the heart of one of the most powerful—and most tuneful and exuberant—musicals Broadway has seen in many a year.
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LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s La Cage Aux Folles is back, with 1960s heartthrob George Hamilton as nightclub manager George and Broadway’s Christopher Sieber as the fabulously flamboyant Albin, the star of George’s drag show and the love of his life.
LES MISÉRABLES
Thursday, June 14th, 2012
Cameron Mackintosh’s New 25th Anniversary Production Of Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, now playing at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, is not only the most gorgeous Les Miz you’ve ever seen, it’s one of the most gorgeous productions ever, so perfectly realized that it may make you wonder who ever thought this show needed the revolving stage of the London/Broadway original. Then again, designers back in 1985, when Les Misérables opened in London’s West End, could hardly have imagined the technical advances that make this revolutionary return to Victor Hugo-land a reality.
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AMERICAN IDIOT
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
Green Day’s American Idiot has arrived in the OC for a head-bangingly exciting one-week engagement at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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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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