XANADU
Monday, October 21st, 2013
Xanadu has arrived at Cal State Fullerton’s Little Theater, proving once again that for big-stage professional-caliber musical theater, just about the only thing separating CSUF productions from those at Musical Theatre West or 3-D Theatricals is the uniformly young age of their talented casts. Case in point: Douglas Carter Beane’s 2005 Broadway treat.
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FAST COMPANY
Thursday, October 17th, 2013
The Rag, the Spanish Prisoner, the Pig-in-a-Poke, the Badger Game, and the Glim Dropper are just five of the games that H, Blue, and Francis learned at their mother Mable’s knee—which will give you an idea of just what kind of family the three siblings grew up in in Carla Ching’s exhilarating World Premiere comedy Fast Company, the latest from South Coast Repertory.
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LEGALLY BLONDE
Monday, October 14th, 2013
3-D Theatricals gets everything right in its end-of-season staging of Legally Blonde The Musical. With director David F.M. Vaughn assuredly in charge, this is the very best production I’ve seen of one of Broadway’s best-crafted hits of the past ten years.
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TIME STANDS STILL
Saturday, October 5th, 2013
A wounded photo-journalist’s return home from the war zone proves even more challenging than a life lived on the edge in Donald Margulies’ intelligent, perceptive, often funny, always compelling Time Stands Still, now getting a superb Orange County Premiere at Anaheim’s Chance Theater with crackerjack director Marya Mazor assuredly at the helm.
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ANYTHING GOES
Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
No 1930s musical has achieved the enduring popularity of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. A grand total of five Broadway, off-Broadway, and West End revivals, a pair of movie adaptations, a TV special, and more national and international productions than even the most dedicated Porter aficionado could possibly count.
For those who wonder why Anything Goes just keeps on ticking, there’s no more compelling evidence than the National Tour of its 2011 Broadway revival now spending the week at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, a Broadway tour that guarantees SoCal audiences one show-stopping number after another in an Anything Goes that tops any other production of it you might happen to have seen.
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Monday, September 9th, 2013
What better way for South Coast Repertory to open its 50th Anniversary season than with what many consider the finest play of the 20th Century, Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Death Of A Salesman, and to do so with a twist—by casting the Lomans as an African-American family.
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FUNNY GIRL
Sunday, September 8th, 2013
In the forty-nine years since Funny Girl debuted on Broadway, this musical biography of Fanny Brice has pretty much faded into obscurity despite its eight Tony nominations, and if regional revivals have been few and far between, blame that on a leading role that’s a bear to cast, a book that’s been aptly dubbed problematic, and absolutely no Funny Girl sets or costumes available for rent.
3-D Theatricals solves two of these three problems in its sensational from-the-ground-up revival, and though Isobel Lennart’s book remains more than a bit of a hodgepodge, Nicole Parker’s absolutely stellar lead performance, Michael Matthews’ inspired direction, and brand new Broadway-caliber sets and costumes by Stephen Gifford and Cheryl Sheldon make this revival another 3-D-T winner.
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BRITISHMANIA
Wednesday, August 14th, 2013RECOMMENDED
Though the production is bare-bones (and “John,” “Paul,” “George,” and “Ringo” probably look most Beatle-like when seen from the Laguna Playhouse back row), there’s no denying that the multitalented stars of BritishMania sound so much like The Beatles as they sing and play their way through two hours of ‘60s British pop that if you’re anything like this reviewer, this nostalgic trip back in time will end up worth a drive down to Laguna Beach.
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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