THE EIGHT: REINDEER MONOLOGUES
Monday, December 13th, 2010
Jeff Goode’s The Eight: Reindeer Monologues has been entertaining Orange County audiences at the Chance Theater for the past seven Decembers. In my review of last year’s production, I called it “the funniest (and filthiest) Christmas show in town.” As for its plot, “one by one, Santa’s eight reindeer weigh in on the sex scandal that’s been rocking the North Pole. Is it true that Jolly Old St. Nick (aka ‘that fat fuck’) sexually molested Reindeer Number 8 (aka Vixen), or is the sexiest of The Eight merely looking for her fifteen minutes of fame?”
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A QUEER CAROL
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol gets a contemporary gay spin—and quite a good one at that—in Joe Godfrey’s A Queer Carol, now getting its Southern California Premiere at Santa Ana’s Theatre Out.
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RENT
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
Cal State Fullerton’s exceptional production of Jonathan Larson’s Rent makes it amply clear why the university’s Musical Theater program is one of the country’s most highly recommended. Performed by a uniformly outstanding cast of future stars and directed with supreme imagination and style by Kari Hayter, this is a Rent that deserves to be seen by Rent aficionados and newbies alike. For the latter, it will prove a terrific introduction to the groundbreaking rock opera which became an honest-to-goodness contemporary classic during its twelve-year New York run. For the former, it will provide proof positive that a director with a vision and a cast of Broadway-bound triple-threats can take a fourteen-year-old show and make it a fresh new theatrical experience worthy of audience cheers from start to finish.
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EQUUS
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Peter Shaffer’s Equus presents a greater than usual challenge to a university drama department choosing to undertake a production of the Tony Award-winning Best Play of 1973. Roles like those originated on Broadway by Anthony Hopkins and Peter Firth require a depth of talent and life experience that not all drama majors possess. Shaffer’s ideas about God, sex, and morality might easily whoosh over the heads of actors in their late teens and early twenties. Finally, there is the play’s much publicized nudity, doubtless an important factor in the show’s more than 1200 performances in its original Broadway run, but an element that might prove problematic in a student production.
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THE SECRET GARDEN (THE MUSICAL)
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
The Chance Theater puts its quality stamp on Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s The Secret Garden, a musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel.
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INTO THE WOODS
Thursday, November 18th, 2010
Over the past quarter century or so, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into The Woods has become one of the most performed musicals in the U.S.—in regional CLOs, on college and high school campuses, and in intimate theaters. Its first act, which magically combines some of the best loved of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and its second, which explores with considerable depth what happens after “happily ever after,” make for a show which retains its freshness and originality two decades after it first captivated Broadway audiences.
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WALT DISNEY’S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Walt Disney’s Beauty And The Beast made movie history in 1992 when it became the first full-length animated feature to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Major musical sequences like “Belle,” “Gaston,” and “Be Our Guest” felt so much like Broadway production numbers that its 1994 transfer to The Great White Way made perfect sense, leading to nine Tony nominations, three National Tours, English and foreign language productions the world round, and regional productions like the one staged by Cabrillo Music Theater in 2007. February of this year marked the start of Beauty And The Beast’s Fourth National Tour, a sensational production now making a one-week stop at Costa Mesa’s Orange County Performing Arts Center.
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BECKY SHAW
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
Gina Gionfriddo takes a fresh new look at the repercussions of blind dating, or at least of one particular blind date, in her wickedly funny, often biting, highly original Becky Shaw, now getting a terrific West Coast Premiere at South Coast Repertory.
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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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