FROU-FROU: A MENAGERIE OF SORTS
Monday, March 3rd, 2025
If Tennessee Williams were alive today, he might have written Frou-Frou: A Menagerie of Sorts, John Anthony Loffredo’s deliciously daring queer riff on Williams’ A Glass Menagerie, with a little bit of A Streetcar Named Desire testosterone (and some extended full-frontal male nudity) thrown in for seductive measure.
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MACBETH
Friday, February 21st, 2025
Transposing William Shakespeare’s Macbeth from the bleak moors of Scotland to the sultry streets of New Orleans is just the first of director Andi Chapman’s multiple strokes of genius in re-envisioning The Scottish Play to all-around stunning effect at A Noise Within.
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A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Sunday, December 22nd, 2024
Frederick Stuart’s reinventive star turn as Ebenezer Scrooge tops the reasons why my third time seeing A Noise Within’s A Christmas Carol felt like experiencing this holiday spectacular for the very first time.
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LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
Tuesday, November 19th, 2024Pasadena Playhouse’s five-year-long winning streak of Broadway musical revivals comes to a crashing halt with Sam Pinkleton’s ill-conceived take on the 1980s Jerry Herman-Harvey Fierstein classic La Cage Aux Folles.
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AUGUST WILSON’S THE PIANO LESSON
Monday, October 21st, 2024
To sell or not to sell. That is the question at the heart of the Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, an October gift from A Noise Within to the playwright’s many fans, and even for those like this reviewer who’d prefer it if Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle decalogy didn’t run a hefty three hours each, this is easily one of his most entertaining and powerful works.
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GUYS AND DOLLS
Friday, October 18th, 2024
Damon Runyon’s picturesque band of New York denizens continue to delight audiences almost seventy-five years after their Broadway debut in Altadena Music Theatre’s lively outdoor revival of the 1950 Broadway classic Guys And Dolls.
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THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
Saturday, September 14th, 2024
It’s hard to imagine a finer revival of Thornton Wilder’s 20th-century American classic The Skin Of Our Teeth than the one now enrapturing audiences at A Noise Within.
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CYRANO DE BERGERAC
Tuesday, September 10th, 2024
The translation’s the thing, but far from the only thing that makes Pasadena Playhouse’s dazzling staging of Martin Crimp’s “free adaptation” of Edmond Rostand’s French classic Cyrano de Bergerac the latest Pasadena Playhouse winner.
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