AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS
Saturday, December 10th, 2011
Amahl And The Night Visitors’ return to the Pasadena Playhouse stage for one weekend only is red-letter news indeed, for opera fans and newbies alike regardless of age. Once again impeccably directed by Stephanie Vlahos and performed by a stellar cast headed by Suzanna Guzman and Caleb Glickman, the Gian Carlo Menotti one-act is a one-of-a-kind holiday treasure.
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DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
A beautiful young woman marries an elderly widower only to find herself irresistibly attracted to his twenty-five-year-old son, with whom she begins a torrid affair behind her septuagenarian hubby’s back. Wishing to insure that the old man’s property remains tied to wife rather than son, the ingenious beauty connives to conceive a child with her lover and pass it off as her aged spouse’s. Murder ensues.
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BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
That thrilling period in African American history known as the Harlem Renaissance has only recently been cut short by the onset of the Great Depression when first we meet the fascinating characters created by Pearl Cleage in Blues For An Alabama Sky, the Atlanta-based playwright’s meaty period drama which Sheldon Epps has brought to the Pasadena Playhouse in a richly exciting production under his own inspired direction.
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TWELFTH NIGHT
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
Even if you think you’ve seen enough Twelfth Nights to last you a lifetime, leave it to A Noise Within to put a fresh new spin on Shakespeare’s classic tale of gender-switching and mistaken identity. As for those seeing their very first Twelfth Night, ANW’s Caribbean-set retelling proves as entertaining an introduction to it as any lover of the Bard could desire.
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THE DINOSAUR WITHIN
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
An aging, wheelchair-bound 1960s movie goddess longs for a return to past glories. Her greatest fan, a young Australian aborigine hoping to break into the movie biz in Hollywood, still mourns the death of his two older brothers to suicide. A newspaper reporter remains incapable of recovering from the disappearance of his ten-year-old son years before.
The lives of these three disparate characters intersect in both “The Dreamtime” and “The Dream Factory” in John Walch’s powerful, engrossing, deeply moving The Dinosaur Within, now getting its most major production to date at Pasadena’s Theatre @ Boston Court under the inspired direction of Michael Michetti.
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SOUTH STREET
Monday, September 26th, 2011RECOMMENDED
A phenomenal cast of Broadway and regional theater triple threats open the Pasadena Playhouse’s 2011-2012 season with South Street: A New Musical Comedy, directed by the multitalented Roger Castellano and choreographed by the always terrific Dana Solimando. If only the World Premiere musical matched their talents.
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TWIST: AN AMERICAN MUSICAL
Sunday, June 26th, 2011
Simply put, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of Twist: An American Musical are as breathtakingly thrilling as any I’ve ever experienced inside a theater. An honest-to-goodness overture previews some of the tunes we’ll be hearing, and how exciting it feels to have this mostly lost tradition revived. Then comes “Back By Demand,” the kind of dazzling tap extravaganza one might have seen at Harlem’s legendary Prohibition-era Cotton Club, though here it is set in Louisiana’s Big Easy, aka New Orleans, and the applause it inspires seems to go on forever.
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HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND
Sunday, May 1st, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Theatre @ Boston Court’s Southern California Premiere of Fin Kennedy’s How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found has so much going for it, I wish I could say I enjoyed it more. Performances are superb, beginning with a tour de force star turn by Brad Culver. Direction by Nancy Keystone is imaginative and even inspired at times. Design elements, particularly John Zalewski’s striking sound design, are way up at the level of excellence theatergoers have come to expect @ Boston Court. The play was the first ever to win the prestigious John Whiting Award before being staged. British critics were ecstatic at the play’s World Premiere and I expect the Boston Court production will garner equal praise. And yet I failed to be engaged by its story or characters and in the end (and this is something I rarely say), I would have been happier accepting a different press invitation this past Sunday afternoon.
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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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