OUR MOTHER’S BRIEF AFFAIR
Sunday, April 12th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Seth and Abby are adult twins whose mother has kept a secret from them most of their lives. When the two siblings were in their early teens, Anna had a brief affair. It’s only now, with the twins entering their forties, that the truth has come out. Or is it the truth? Anna is an Alzheimer’s patient, and the tale she tells may be actual memory, or imagination, or a combination of both.
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SWEET CHARITY
Friday, March 13th, 2009RECOMMENDED
It’s been far too long since a major production of the 1966 Broadway hit Sweet Charity has been mounted locally. Thus, it’s a pleasure to announce Charity’s arrival at the Curtis Theatre in Brea. Though not at CLO level, this non-Equity production offers many pleasures, not the least of which are its bouncy, hummable songs, including now well-known standards like “Big Spender,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” “Where Am I Going?”… The list of Cy Coleman-Dorothy Field hits goes on and on.
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MAKIN’ HAY
Friday, February 27th, 2009RECOMMENDED
There’s no 99-seat theater company with a better track record for musicals than Actor’s Co-op. Past productions of She Loves Me, Damn Yankees, Into The Woods, The Most Happy Fella, and last season’s brilliant 1776 are textbook examples of how to shrink a big stage, big cast Broadway show down to intimate theater dimensions without losing any of the original’s magic and allure. This season, the Co-op has taken on the challenge of presenting a world premiere musical.
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FINIAN’S RAINBOW
Monday, February 23rd, 2009RECOMMENDED
Brigadoon and Finian’s Rainbow both opened on Broadway in 1947. Both had successful runs, Brigadoon playing 581 performances, Finian’s Rainbow beating it with 725. Both were jam packed with hit songs. From Brigadoon, you’ve probably heard the title song, Almost Like Being In Love, Come To Me, Bend to Me, and The Heather on the Hill. Finian’s Rainbow hits include How Are Things in Glocca Morra?, Look to the Rainbow, Old Devil Moon, and If This Isn’t Love. Both shows featured Irish lead characters, and each became a major movie musical, Brigadoon starring Gene Kelly and Finian’s Rainbow starring Fred Astaire. Broadway musicals don’t have better credits than these.
VIOLET SHARP
Monday, February 16th, 2009RECOMMENDED
On the evening of March 1, 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the Lindberghs’ New Jersey home. Lindbergh, Sr., who had achieved international fame as the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, herself an accomplished aviatrix, ended up paying the $50,000 ransom demanded by the unknown kidnapper(s) only to have their son’s decomposed body discovered just miles from their home on May 12. A little over four years after the kidnapping, a German named Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the crime, protesting his innocence till the end.
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SURVIVING SEX
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009RECOMMENDED
David Landsberg’s Surviving Sex is a frequently funny (albeit almost totally implausible) look at men’s and women’s relationships seen through the eyes of the nebbish-next-door, aka Stan.
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CANDIDA
Saturday, February 7th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Candida, George Bernard Shaw’s romantic comedy classic, has just opened at the Colony Theatre, and it’s hard to imagine a better production than the one directed by Kathleen F. Conlin.
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TAKING STEPS
Friday, February 6th, 2009RECOMMENDED
With over seventy plays under his belt, Alan Ayckbourn is one of the most prolific (and successful) playwrights ever. He’s also one of the funniest and most original. It’s said that each of his plays has a gimmick. The Norman Conquests trilogy are three separate plays, each with the same set of characters, each taking place on the same weekend, each in a different part of a English country home. Amazingly, each play tells a complete story and can be seen in any order without the need to see either of the others. How The Other Half Loves superimposes two neighboring houses on the same set, so that characters standing within touching distance are often in two completely different locations. Taking Steps, currently at the Odyssey Theater, has a somewhat similar conceit. It places all three stories of a London home (“The Pines”) at the same stage level with a pair of staircases (one of them spiral) on which actors “ascend” or “descend” without ever moving up or down even an inch. With characters slamming doors and barely missing running into each other, this British farce is amusing indeed.
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