THE ADDAMS FAMILY

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

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

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.

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LES MISÉRABLES

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

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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MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET

It takes you thrillingly by surprise, that first glance at Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins onstage together, and from then on the excitement never lags in Million Dollar Quartet, Tony-nominated as Best Musical of 2010 and now touring the country, its latest stop at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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