WHITE CHRISTMAS
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Christmas has arrived early this year in beautiful downtown Fullerton as FCLO Music Theatre presents the stage adaptation of the 1954 movie classic White Christmas. Those who wonder if that’s jumping the gun a tad have only to visit their neighborhood shopping mall to see that the holiday season is already upon us. Besides, with Irving Berlin hits like “Blue Skies,” “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing, “Sisters,” and “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” appropriate for any month of the year, a plot that isn’t all that “Christmas-centric,” and choreography that entertains equally in October or December, White Christmas is an appealing Fall CLO offering.
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MOONLIGHT AND MAGNOLIAS
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
Hollywood legend has it that movie mogul David O. Selznick shut himself, director Victor Fleming, and script doctor Ben Hecht inside his office for five straight days, the three men subsisting entirely on a diet of bananas and peanuts, as Hecht rewrote the entire script of Gone With The Wind, a book he’d never read.
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THE HAPPY ONES
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
It’s 1975 in sunny Garden Grove, California, and Walter Wells is one of The Happy Ones. With his own business, a home in the suburbs, and a wife and two young children, things couldn’t be better for Walter, a man living the quintessential American Dream. “Beautiful women. Beautiful children. Great neighbors. Fantastic jobs. Gorgeous weather.” Walter and his fellow Garden Grovians could hardly imagine a world any different from the one in which they live such perfect lives.
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THE SEAGULL
Saturday, September 26th, 2009RECOMMENDED
The award-winning Chance Theater takes on Chekhov’s The Seagull with admirable results, the production featuring excellent performances, astute direction, and a gorgeous design. Then again, what else would you expect from Orange County’s finest intimate theater?
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
You won’t find a more tuneful, sophisticated or better performed show around town than South Coast Repertory’s beautifully staged revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Putting It Together.
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MY WAY: A MUSICAL TRIBUTE TO FRANK SINATRA
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
“Frank Sinatra recorded 1500 songs, and tonight we’re going to sing every single one of them,” jokes Jason Watson at the beginning of My Way: A Musical Tribute To Frank Sinatra. Though a complete retrospective of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ discography would doubtless take (in Watson’s words) “the next eight days,” My Way does a terrific job of showcasing Sinatra’s best-known hits (and a few of his rather more obscure songs as well), making it one of the most entertaining “jukebox” musical revues ever.
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HAIR
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
It was mid-1968. LBJ was still President, with Richard Nixon’s election and seven more years of war in Vietnam yet to come. Already, though, there were “tribes” of young people in their teens and twenties whose dissatisfaction with an America riddled with racism, poverty, sexism, sexual repression, and political corruption led them to create the hippie movement of the 60s. More than anything else, though, these “new American patriots,” as they saw themselves, were in revolt against a war they believed to be unjust, unnecessary, and un-American.
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THE LAST FIVE YEARS
Friday, June 5th, 2009
One of the best things about live theater is being able to see favorite plays and musicals revived with new actors tackling iconic roles, new directors putting their stamp on familiar material, and new design teams giving old shows new looks. This rarely happens in movies and TV, where the word remake is often synonymous with “Sacrilege!”
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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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