SHIRLEY VALENTINE
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
Chick flick fans of a certain age may recall British actress Pauline Collins’ Oscar-nominated performance as Shirley Valentine in the 1989 movie of the same name. If you’re like me, you sat entranced watching 40something Liverpool housewife Shirley leave the drudgery of her day-to-day existence for a life-altering holiday in Greece, her traveling companion not her inattentive, unappreciative lug of a husband but contest-winning best friend Jane—who promptly abandons Shirley upon arrival. Befriended by an English couple whose xenophobia proves too much to take, Shirley takes off into the night and into arms of a handsome Greek named Costas.
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SHREK THE MUSICAL
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
Forget any preconceived notions you may harbor about Shrek The Musical being just another animated movie-turned-Broadway musical or a show designed only for tiny tots. With book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rabbit Hole) and music by multiple award-winning Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change, Thoroughly Modern Millie), Shrek The Musical is a smart, funny, tuneful musical treat whose fresh new non-Equity tour, now playing at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, puts it at the top of my list of favorite recent Broadway hits.
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HOW THE WORLD BEGAN
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Ask a big city Blue State high school science teacher and a rural Bible Belt high school student how the world began and you’ll probably get two quite different answers. Put this teacher and this student in the same classroom in small town Kansas and sparks are likely to fly.
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PSYCHO BEACH PARTY
Monday, October 3rd, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
No one sends up popular film genres with a campier (i.e. gayer) sensibility than Charles Busch, whether it’s the “Oriental” melodramas of Hollywood’s Golden Era in Shanghai Moon, or those ’50s/’60s Ross Hunter soap operas in Die! Mommy! Die!, or WWII “Women In Peril” thrillers in The Lady In Question, or the red-baiting propaganda films of the late ’40s/early ’50s in Red Scare On Sunset.
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UP
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011
The recent spate of It Gets Better videos could easily have been made with the teenage protagonists of Bridget Carpenter’s Up in mind. Fifteen-year-old Mikey, though not gay, is “different” enough to get pushed around and called “faggot.” As for Mikey’s new friend Maria, the six-months-pregnant sixteen-year-old was sent packing when her “drunk bitch” of a mom found out her little girl had gotten herself knocked up.
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
Pride And Prejudice. Is there anyone who isn’t familiar with Jane Austen’s romantic classic in one form or another? True, not everyone has read the novel (and that includes this reviewer), but between the 1980 and ’95 TV adaptations, the 1940 and 2005 movie versions, and the innumerable romcoms (novels, plays, films, TV series, etc.) which have taken Austen’s tale as inspiration, there’s hardly one of us who won’t feel at least a spark of recognition while watching P&P’s latest adaptation at South Coast Repertory, all the way from Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s scrappy first meeting to the blissful happy ending we know awaits them.
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WEST SIDE STORY
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
As any Broadway buff will tell you, there’s Broadway pre-West Side Story, and everything else since then.
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RENT
Friday, September 2nd, 2011RECOMMENDED
After more than a dozen years’ wait for the rights to produce Jonathan Larson’s Rent, it’s no wonder that droves of regional, university, and community theaters have been jumping at the chance to stage the smash Broadway musical. Rent’s grungy look back at the young denizens of an AIDS-riddled late-‘80s New York City doesn’t require fancy sets or costumes and its edgy themes and youthful cast of characters give it undeniable appeal to up-and-coming performers, making it seem, at least on the surface, not all that tough a show to put on.
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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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