DANGEROUS CORNER
Monday, October 8th, 2012RECOMMENDED
“Director’s concept” is a tricky business. When inspired, it can enhance a writer’s intentions and allow audiences to see a play or musical in new, exciting ways. When misguided, it can detract from a production’s effectiveness and distract an audience from a clear perception of what the playwright is trying to say. The latter proves to be the case in Crown City Theatre Company’s revival of J.B. Priestley’s 1932 drama Dangerous Corner, though fortunately not fatally so.
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BACH AT LEIPZIG
Saturday, September 22nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
Were I to tell you I saw a play entitled Bach At Leipzig last night, you’d probably assume that it was some sort of epic historical drama. That’s certainly what it sounds like, right?
Think again. Itamar Moses’ Bach At Leipzig turns out to be a comedy, and not just a comedy. A laugh-out-loud screwball farce written with uncommon intelligence and originality.
San Pedro’s much esteemed Little Fish Theatre now tries its hand at this hysterical historical romp, and if the element of pomp is missing (and missed), there are still good reasons to check out this very entertaining (if bare-ish bones) production.
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DAMN YANKEES
Monday, September 17th, 2012RECOMMENDED
Simi Valley Performing Arts Center hit the jackpot earlier this year with productions of the Broadway hits Hairspray and Pippin that rivaled those of bigger-stage, bigger-budget companies like Thousand Oaks’ Cabrillo Music Theatre and Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West. Their latest, a revival of the 1950s Broadway smash Damn Yankees, while not in the same league as its predecessors, does offer sufficient pleasures to recommend it to Simi Valley audiences (with a couple of reservations).
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EPIC PROPORTIONS
Tuesday, September 11th, 2012RECOMMENDED
If ever there were a play more suited to North Hollywood’s Avery Schreiber Theatre than Broadway’s Helen Hayes (where it flopped back in 1999), that play is Larry Coen & David Crane’s Epic Proportions, an entertaining small-scale spoof of those cheesy Biblical epics that were once part of Hollywood’s bread and butter. (Or should that be dates and hummus?)
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THE FANTASTICKS
Sunday, September 2nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
When the best-known of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musicals ended its off-Broadway run ten years ago, the New Yorker marked its closing with (what else?) a cartoon. In it, an elderly couple sit reading the news, one of them glancing up to remark deadpan to the other, “We missed ‘The Fantasticks,’” a sly dig on folks who put off seeing a show so long that they end up missing it entirely, and in the case of The Fantasticks, that meant a record-breaking 42-year, 17,162-performance postponement.
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MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
Sunday, July 22nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
Director Linda Kerns, choreographer Heather Castillo, and a terrifically talented cast make the most of Cabrillo Music Theatre’s summer offering, a revival of the short-lived 1989 Broadway adaptation of the 1944 MGM movie musical Meet Me In St. Louis. Though the material being brought to life doesn’t hold up nearly as well as our rose-colored memories of the Judy Garland classic would like it to, the resulting production has much to recommend in it.
THE EXORCIST
Saturday, July 14th, 2012RECOMMENDED
It takes chutzpah to adapt a horror movie classic for the stage, especially one as iconic as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, one of the highest grossing films ever. Nominated for ten Oscars (and winning two for Adapted Screenplay and for Sound), The Exorcist not only spawned two sequels and a prequel, it was named Scariest Film Of All Time by Entertainment Weekly and Movies.com.
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THE CRUCIBLE
Saturday, June 16th, 2012RECOMMENDED
When Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was written in 1953, it was considered an allegory for the McCarthy “witch hunts,” Communism taking the place Satan occupied in the original Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Today, as religious fundamentalists of various creeds use blind belief in dogma as a way to persecute those they disagree with, The Crucible stands stronger than ever as an indictment of religious fanaticism gone amok, making this election year a particularly fitting time to revive the Miller classic, one of a number of reasons to check out the production now playing at Hollywood’s Lillian Theatre.
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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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