SISTER ACT


Sister Mary Clarence, the nun formerly known as nightclub chantoose Deloris Van Cartier, has come to town, news that can only mean that the sensational Sister Act is celebrating musical comedy mass at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts. (read more)

SHREK THE MUSICAL


3-D Theatricals follows its phenomenal revival of Jason Robert Brown’s deep, dark, fact-based Parade with its polar opposite, the bright, breezy, and entirely fanciful Shrek The Musical, in its own way every bit as triumphant as its extraordinary predecessor.
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BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON


Rowdy, outrageous, exhilarating, brash, and entertaining as all get-out—Chance Theater’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is all this and more, a slice of American history as told by a wild and crazy bunch of punk rockers that will have you cheering … and send you straight to Wikipedia to separate fact from fiction re our 7th President, “Old Hickory” himself.

Created by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson had its 2008 premiere at L.A.’s Kirk Douglas Theater before heading first to off-Broadway, then to Broadway, and now back to Southern California where director Kari Hayter, choreographer Kelly Todd, musical director Robyn Wallace, and a cast of some of SoCal’s most exciting triple-threats have joined forces to create the Orange County Musical Theater Event of the Summer ‘13.
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CATCH ME IF YOU CAN


Charismatic conman Frank Abagnale, Jr. is up to his old tricks again, but this time he’s doing it “Live In Living Color” as the Segerstrom Center For The Arts presents the National Tour of Catch Me If You Can, the Broadway musical adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s popular 2002 biopic, and a wow of a show it is, filled with one catchy tune after another, plenty of pizzazzy production numbers, a castful of sensational performances, and a surprising dollop of heart.
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SPRING AWAKENING


An extraordinarily talented team of students and faculty, including Broadway hoofer-turned-choreographer extraordinaire Andrew Palermo, have joined forces to create a Spring Awakening so fresh and original, my guess is that book writer-lyricist Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik might have a hard time choosing between the Broadway production and UC Irvine’s thoroughly original re-envisioning of their ground-breaking 2007 Tony-winning Best Musical.
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THE NIGHT FAIRY


Newbery Medal-winner Laura Amy Schlitz’s children’s book The Night Fairy comes to magical life on the stage of the Julianne Argyros Stage at South Coast Repertory, the latest in their popular Theatre For Young Audiences series, and a crowd-pleaser for children of all ages.
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THE FANTASTICKS


Sometimes it takes magic to make magic, or at least such is the case with South Coast Repertory’s exhilarating, eye-popping new staging of The Fantasticks, a revival that even those who’d put the record-breaking off-Broadway smash on their list of least-favorite musicals can enjoy. (I know, as I am one of them.)
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PARADE


3-D Theatricals commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of the death of thirteen-year-old Georgia factory worker Mary Phagan, along with the kangaroo court that subsequently found Jewish Northerner Leo Frank guilty of her murder and the lynch mob that ultimately robbed Frank of his own life, in its all-around phenomenal T.J. Dawson-directed revival of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Parade.
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