SOUTH PACIFIC
Sunday, January 6th, 2013
A pair of stellar lead performances are but two of a multitude of reasons not to miss the Welk Theatre’s thrillingly intimate mid-sized revival of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic South Pacific down Escondido way.
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IRVING BERLIN’S WHITE CHRISTMAS
Monday, December 17th, 2012
There may not be snow on the ground in San Diego this (or any) year, but this Christmas will indeed be White—for the next week at least—thanks to the folks at San Diego Musical Theatre, who are bringing the live stage adaptation of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas to L.A.’s neighbor to the South. With ever imaginative director Todd Nielson at the helm, and a quartet of stellar triple-threats in the leading roles, SDMT’s Irving Berlin’s White Christmas delivers plenty of holiday entertainment.
SCROOGE IN ROUGE
Sunday, December 16th, 2012
Ebenezer Scrooge is back for another Christmas in San Diego, and should this news provoke a “Seen that, done that” groan from A Christmas Caroled-out holiday theatergoers, let me clarify. The Scrooge in question is the leading lady of Diversionary Theatre’s musical comedy smash Scrooge In Rouge, returning to Diversionary for the first time since its Scenie-winning 2008 debut, once again the holiday season’s campiest, craziest, most laugh-out-loud Christmas show—and not just for LGBT audiences.
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WHEN LAST WE FLEW
Monday, November 19th, 2012
Playwright Harrison David Rivers and Diversionary Theatre score a pair of coups, the former in having his award-winning* when last we flew get its West Coast Premiere at San Diego’s esteemed LGBT theater, the latter in giving Rivers’ mystical, magical dramedy its first major, fully-staged production since its limited-run debut at the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival. The result is one of the best (and most unique) coming of age stories I’ve seen onstage.
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GOOD PEOPLE
Thursday, October 18th, 2012
When a well-known politician recently made some off-the-cuff remarks about a certain 47% of Americans he essentially considers free-loading bums, one American who’d surely have a word or two to say to him would be Margaret Walsh, the protagonist of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, currently America’s most-produced play—and a great one at that, as its San Diego premiere at the Old Globe Theatre makes abundantly clear.
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SWEENEY TODD
Tuesday, September 25th, 2012
The sexual heat is on in Sweeney Todd, and if that sounds like an impossibility to those who’ve only seen Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett played by actors well into their forties, fifties, or even older, then just wait till you feel the heat ignited by Robert J. Townsend and Bets Malone in Moonlight Stage Productions’ ground-breaking revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical smash, brilliantly directed by Steven Glaudini.
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ALLEGIANCE
Tuesday, September 25th, 2012
Imagine you were told by the country in which you were born and raised that you had only a few days to sell your home and all your possessions, minus of what you could carry with you. Imagine that you were then transported hundreds of miles away and forced to live in cramped barracks where you would swelter during the summer and freeze during the winter, month after month, year after year. Imagine what kind of country that would be and how you would feel about the land you had believed with all your heart was your own.
To those Americans who take comfort in the certainty that “It couldn’t happen here,” an extraordinary World Premiere musical called Allegiance reveals that it not only could, it did happen here, and a mere seventy years ago when almost 70,000 American citizens and another 40,000 who called America home were imprisoned in internment camps for most of World War II simply because of their race.
A truly dark chapter in our country’s history, but one from which composer-lyricist Jay Kuo and book writers Marc Acito, Kuo, and Lorenzo Thione have created a musical that educates, moves, and entertains, particularly as performed by a stellar cast under the inspired direction of Stafford Arima at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.
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PIPPIN
Monday, September 17th, 2012
Few musicals lend themselves to as many different interpretations as the Stephen Schwartz classic Pippin. Reprise did it sexy and Chicago-esque some years back; East West Players took an Asian hip-hop approach to the material; Deaf West at the Taper featured not one but two Pippins, one deaf and one hearing; and the recently reviewed Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center revival set Pippin in the world of “Steampunk Carnivale.”
Now, Scenie-winning San Diego Director Of The Year James Vasquez puts his own personal stamp on Pippin for San Diego’s LGBT Diversionary Theater, and trust me, you may have seen Pippin before, even many times before, but you’ve never seen a Pippin like this one.
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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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