NUTTIN’ BUT HUTTON
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
The Blonde Bombshell. Annie Oakley. Fred Astaire’s Let’s Dance Co-Star. The Incendiary Blonde. Texas Guinan. Paramount Pictures’ Biggest Star. The Perils Of Pauline’s Pauline. Blossom Dearie. Dean Martin’s “Hetty Button.”
Miss Betty Hutton was all of the above, either in real or onscreen life, and Diane Vincent pays tribute to her Greatest Hits in the terrific new World Premiere Musical/Musical Revue Nuttin’ But Hutton, now delighting audiences at North Hollywood’s NoHo Arts Center under the direction of the ever inventive Larry Raben.
(read more)
MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
Saturday, March 16th, 2013
Daughter Discovers Mom To Be Millionaire Madam
No, this isn’t a headline story in The National Inquirer or on TMZ, nor is it the latest reality TV show or nighttime soap. In fact, the mother and daughter in question are from over a century back (when you only needed $40,000 to be a millionaire) and the two lead characters in George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Can you say “ahead of its time?”
Shaw’s 1893 ground-breaker makes an exciting return to Los Angeles as The Antaeus Company premieres another if its couldn’t-be-better revivals starring the incomparable Anne Gee Byrd in the title role. Who could ask for anything more?
(read more)
MY BIG GAY ITALIAN WEDDING
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
The place is Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where Tony Manero discoed the night away in Saturday Night Fever and where women still live by the credo, “The higher the hair, the closer to God.” The time is the present, meaning that the gay boys of South Brooklyn no longer have to pretend to be straight, and can even tie the legal knot when they meet Mr. Right. What better time could there be for a 20something Italian-American ragazzo like our hero Anthony Pinnunziato to pop the question to his Polish-American sweetie Andrew Polinski? Now all he has to do is convince his traditional Mamma and Papa to give the happy same-sex couple their blessing.
Playwright Anthony Wilkinson thus sets the comedic wheels in motion in his off-Broadway hit My Big Gay Italian Wedding, now getting a hilarious West Coast Premiere in an exuberantly acted albeit barebones production under the peppy direction of Paul Storiale.
(read more)
LADYHOUSE BLUES
Sunday, March 3rd, 2013
Four years had passed since the Equal Rights Amendment was sent to the states to be ratified and three since Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land when Kevin O’Morrison’s Ladyhouse Blues first sent mid-1970s audiences back to 1919, a year after the end of World War I and the watershed year the Senate ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote just as the 1920s began to roar.
Andak Stage Company now revives Ladyhouse Blues under the impeccable direction of Anne McNaughton, offering L.A. audiences an all-around splendid production, one that transports us back nearly a century to the end of a decade in which the times, were (as Bob Dylan was to put it forty-five years later) most definitely “a-‘changin’.”
COMPANY
Friday, February 15th, 2013
“Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!”
As any musical theater buff can tell you, the person whose phone is ringing and whose door is chiming and who is welcoming company into his Manhattan pad is none other than Robert, aka Bobby, aka Bob, aka Bobbo, aka Robby, aka Bobby Baby, aka Robert Darling, aka Bobby Honey, the bachelor lead of Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Tony-winning Best Musical of 1970, now getting its first L.A. production in what seems like eons—and a pretty darned terrific one at that—at North Hollywood’s Crown City Theatre.
(read more)
AND THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND
Sunday, February 3rd, 2013
Cabaret, “All That Jazz,” Chicago, “Maybe This Time,” “The Money Song,” Kiss Of The Spider Woman, “My Coloring Book,” “New York, New York” … When you hear the names Kander & Ebb, the list of hit shows and songs goes on and on, so much so that by the year 1991, the time had come for a musical revue saluting John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Greatest Hits, and the Drama Desk Award-winning And The World Goes ‘Round (conceived by Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman, and David Thompson) was born.
Though now officially licensed as The World Goes Round, the revue’s latest revival at the NoHo Arts Center gives it back its original ‘91 title, a decision fully in keeping with this sensational, back-to-its-roots staging of one of the most entertaining, tune-packed song cycles in musical theater history.
THE GAYEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER
Tuesday, January 1st, 2013
Though it’s now too late for L.A. theatergoers to catch this holiday season’s return engagement of Joe Marshall’s The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever!, this reviewer did manage to squeeze in the final performance of this hilarious (and much improved for 2012) December gem.
(read more)
SHERLOCK’S LAST CASE
Monday, December 24th, 2012
The world’s most famous detective pays North Hollywood a visit as The Group Rep presents Charles Marowitz’s delightful Sherlock’s Last Case as their end-of-year offering. Though not the inspired staging Actor’s Co-op gave us a few years back, director Larry Eisenberg and a talented cast offer Angelinos a crowd-pleasing comedy at a time when most L.A. stages are dark for the holidays.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2025 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY