THE FANTASTICKS
Saturday, June 22nd, 2013
The Sierra Madre Playhouse revives the world’s longest-running musical The Fantasticks in a production so perfectly cast, so beautifully performed, so imaginatively directed, and so gorgeous to look at that I finally understand why the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical chalked up 17,162 performances over its 42-year off-Broadway run.
THE FULL MONTY
Monday, May 20th, 2013
Those out-of-work Buffalo factory workers have taken their Chippendales-style strip show to Candlelight Dinner Theater, and the result is the San Gabriel Valley musical theater event of the season.
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GOD’S MAN IN TEXAS
Saturday, April 27th, 2013
“And I am telling you, I’m not going!”
No, it’s not Effie White belting out a showstopper in Dreamgirls, but the spoken words of Dr. Philip Gottschall, an 81-year-old Texas megapreacher unwilling to give up the pulpit of a church he’s built up to a congregation of 30,000 and counting, and it’s not Deena Jones who’s in Eve Harrington mode, but 40something San Antonio pastor Jeremiah Mears, whom fully half of the pastoral search committee would like to see replace their aging leader. As for the other half, the status quo is fine, just fine.
Playwright David Rambo pits preacher against preacher in God’s Man In Texas, the latest offering from the newly re-energized Sierra Madre Playhouse, and if being forced to listen to considerable sermonizing by the kind of Christian fundamentalists who have recently made it their mission to “protect the sanctity of marriage” proved tough going in Act One, once Rambo’s central concern became evident in the play’s thoroughly compelling second act, this reviewer came to realize that any Act One discomfort was personal, and no reflection on what ends up one humdinger of a play.
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CABARET
Thursday, April 18th, 2013
The “Great War” had ended and Berlin was uncontested as Europe’s nightlife capital, a city of booze and drugs and sex of just about every permutation, that is until Nazism began to cast its dark shadow over the entire continent … and the world exploded.
Director-choreographer Cate Caplin captures Berlin at its most glitzy and at its most grim as Inland Valley Repertory Theatre presents the 1966 Broadway classic Cabaret, its 50th production, a revival sparked by a pair of stellar performances and choreography as imaginative and ably-executed as you’d see in many an Equity production.
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SWEET CHARITY
Tuesday, April 9th, 2013
Director Neil Dale and choreographer Janet Renslow make a triumphant return to Candlelight Dinner Theatre for the Neil Simon-Cy Coleman-Dorothy Field musical comedy classic Sweet Charity, giving San Gabriel Valley-Inland Empire audiences the best Candlelight show I’ve seen since the duo’s innovative, multiple-Scenie-winning Miss Saigon.
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ALL MY SONS
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013RECOMMENDED
It takes guts for a community theater to challenge audiences accustomed to light comedic fare with a drama as stark as Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Heck, it takes guts for any theater company to stage what may well be the greatest play of the 20th Century and do it justice.
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BORN YESTERDAY
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Folks had best not try to pull the wool over Billie Dawn’s eyes or they’ll soon discover she wasn’t Born Yesterday—or at least that’s what some Washington D.C. politicos find out the hard way in Born Yesterday, Garson Kanin’s Broadway classic and a terrific season opener for Claremont’s Inland Valley Repertory Theatre.
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THE SOUND OF MUSIC
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013RECOMMENDED
Candlelight Dinner Theater continues its 2013 season with the Rodgers And Hammerstein classic The Sound Of Music, giving audiences in search of wholesome family entertainment an entertaining production blessed by the best Maria von Trapp this side of Julie Andrews.
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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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