RII
Thursday, October 10th, 2013
William Shakespeare. The Theatre @ Boston Court. Two names you wouldn’t normally expect to see in the same sentence let alone in the first paragraph of a review. But wonder of wonders, Boston Court is currently wowing an audience of Shakespeare buffs and T@BC regulars with its very own version of Richard II, one they’ve redubbed RII if only to let the world know that, just as Boston Court isn’t your grandparents’ theater, this isn’t your grandparents’ Richard II—not by a long shot.
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SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ
Monday, September 23rd, 2013
“Kansas City,” “Yakety Yak,” “Love Potion No. 9,” and “On Broadway” are just four of the 1950s rock and pop hits now being performed to cheers and not one but two standing ovations as the Pasadena Playhouse revives the 1995 Broadway smash Smokey Joe’s Café, featuring forty of the greatest hits of rock-and-roll songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
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THE BEAUX’ STRATAGEM
Friday, April 26th, 2013
Frank Galati’s 1990 stage adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath, Sarah Ruhl’s 2003 take on Eurydice, and now Ken Ludwig and Thornton Wilder’s 2006 adaptation of The Beaux Stratagem… Has A Noise Within ever had as contemporary (and 2013 audience-friendly) a season as the three plays now in rep at their Pasadena digs?
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AMERICAN MISFIT
Friday, April 19th, 2013RECOMMENDED
America’s first ever serial killers come back to surreal life in American Misfit, Dan Dietz’s overreaching yet frequently entertaining historical dramedy with music, now playing at The Theatre @ Boston Court under Michael Michetti’s imaginative direction.
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EURYDICE
Sunday, March 17th, 2013
A Noise Within continues its Spring 2013 season, one with a decidedly more modern spin than is usual at California’s Home For The Classics, with Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s magical, mystical, poetic retelling of the Orpheus myth from the point of view of his bride.
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THE GRAPES OF WRATH
Monday, February 25th, 2013
For a textbook example of how to turn an epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into a Tony-winning play, and then make it one of the most powerful—and breathtakingly theatrical—productions around town, head on over to Pasadena to catch the gritty magic that director Michael Michetti has conjured up at A Noise Within.
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CHESS
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
After their phenomenal concert staged reading of Titanic The Musical, a production I dubbed “one of Musical Theatre Guild’s crowning achievements,” you might think that the triple-threats of MTG would want to take it easy for the rest of the 2012-2013 season.
Not so, as last night’s titanic staging of Chess (In Concert) at Glendale’s Alex Theatre made abundantly clear, and for those who missed this phenomenal achievement, you have but one more chance to catch it this coming Sunday afternoon in Thousand Oaks.
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FALLEN ANGELS
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
The Pasadena Playhouse has come up with a surefire recipe for crowd-pleasing comedy. Start with a script by a master playwright, hire a cast of crackerjack comedic whizzes, surround them with a production that looks as smashing as Broadway’s best, and above all, entrust the entire project to director Art Manke, who has taken an early Noël Coward gem and turned it into a hilarious hit that would do Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance proud.
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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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