A CHORUS LINE
Monday, March 12th, 2012
The first musical to explore the intimate stories of Broadway’s “gypsies,” 1975’s A Chorus Line forever changed the face of musical theater by revealing the hopes, fears, challenges, and dreams of a dozen and a half young dancers in dialog and song, in addition to dealing with issues of race and sexuality alongside big, flashy production numbers choreographed by the legendary Michael Bennett.
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TWENTIETH CENTURY
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Screwball comedy is in expert hands as the Sierra Madre Playhouse revives Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s Twentieth Century, tweaked by Ken Ludwig to give the 1930s piece a 21st Century sensibility while maintaining all the classic elements of screwball.
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THE LAST FIVE YEARS
Saturday, September 17th, 2011
One of the most exciting things about live theater is being able to see favorite plays and musicals revived with new actors tackling iconic roles, new directors putting their stamp on familiar material, and new design teams giving old shows new looks.
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GOOD NEWS
Sunday, September 11th, 2011RECOMMENDED
For the past ninety years, Whittier Community Theatre has been offering amateur thespians the opportunity to trod the boards while still maintaining their day jobs—to the delight of these eager and often very talented performers and of the audiences who get to see friends and family showing off their triple threats.
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CHICAGO
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
When a Broadway musical settles in for a long run on the Great White Way, it’s a pretty sure bet that your local big city CLO won’t be producing its own regional production for a good long while. That’s why you’re unlikely to see Musical Theatre West or Civic Light Opera Of South Bay Cities presenting Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys, The Lion King, Phantom Of The Opera, or Wicked anytime soon. That’s also why Inland Valley Repertory Theatre’s production of Chicago is big news indeed.
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ARCADIA
Saturday, June 19th, 2010RECOMMENDED
The venerable Sierra Madre Playhouse challenges its subscribers and theatergoing regulars with something quite different in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, an intellectual comedy whose characters discuss physics, thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, and chaos theory—as well as others of a slightly less scientific bent.
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SECRETS OF A SOCCER MOM
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
You don’t have to be the mother of a budding soccer star to enjoy Stillspeaking Theatre’s latest offering. Still, San Marino’s professional theater couldn’t have picked a better play for the community which surrounds it than Kathleen Clark’s Secrets Of A Soccer Mom. My guess is that the carpool set will love it. After all, even this single male reviewer with no particular interest in raising children, playing soccer, or watching children play soccer had a fine time getting to know its three title characters.
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CITY OF ANGELS
Saturday, September 12th, 2009RECOMMENDED
For a theater company to have been in continuous operation for a record eighty-eight years, it must be doing something right. Whittier Community Theatre certainly is, and their latest production, City Of Angels, the Tony-winning Best Musical of 1989, is a perfect example of why WCT is the oldest non-profit amateur theater west of the Mississippi.
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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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