THE 1940s RADIO HOUR
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Anyone under the age of seventy may find it hard to believe there was home entertainment before television, but in the 1930s and ‘40s radio ruled the airwaves with variety shows which brought the voices of stars like Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and Betty Grable into living rooms across America.
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MOONLIGHT AND MAGNOLIAS
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Diehard Gone With The Wind fans may well have seen the 1939 classic 1939 times, but few may be aware of the five days movie mogul David O. Selznick shut himself, director Victor Fleming, and script doctor Ben Hecht inside his office, the three men subsisting entirely on a diet of bananas and peanuts, as Hecht rewrote the entire script of Gone With The Wind, a book he’d never read. Or at least that’s how Hollywood scuttlebutt would have it.
Playwright Ron Hutchinson imagines what might have transpired behind those closed doors in his hit comedy Moonlight And Magnolias, now making its Hermosa Beach Playhouse debut in a delightfully fresh new production. Once again HBP Artistic Director Stephanie A. Coltrin proves herself one of the most reliable directors in town, eliciting splendid performances from Patrick Vest (Selznick), Cylan Brown (Fleming), Joel Bryant (Hecht), and Nicole Wessel (Selznick’s harried secretary Miss Poppenghul). Moonlight And Magnolias is a show which will entertain and elucidate anyone who’s ever seen GWTW, and that’s just about everyone on the planet, right?
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SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
Friday, September 24th, 2010
1920s matinee idol Don Lockwood is once again “walkin’ down the lane with a happy refrain” as the Norris Center For The Performing Arts presents the live stage adaptation of the MGM musical Singin’ In The Rain in an all-around terrific production sure to delight theater and movie buffs of all ages.
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BEEHIVE
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Beehive: a) a structure housing a colony of bees; b) a hairstyle for women, popular around 1960, in which the hair is arranged in a high rounded shape on top of the head; c) a fabulous musical revue featuring the greatest hits of the top girl singers and girl groups of the swingin’, turbulent 1960s.
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DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
Sunday, June 13th, 2010RECOMMENDED
The Relevant Stage, which bills itself as San Pedro’s Musical Theatre Company, has come a long way since Bat Boy, its freshman offering of a year and a half ago. Though its current production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels qualifies more as high-end community theater than as a fully professional staging of the Tony Award-winning hit, there are enough good to excellent performances (plus the show’s terrific songs and absolutely hilarious book) to make this an entertaining two and a half hours of wild and crazy fun.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
You don’t have to be a Shakespeare lover to love the Hermosa Beach Playhouse production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gorgeous to look at and sparklingly performed by a talented cast who make Elizabethan English sound refreshingly modern, this Stephanie A. Coltrin-directed Midsummer Night’s Dream enchants and tickles the funny bone in equal measure.
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JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
It’s taken me twenty-eight years to see my first production of 1982’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (and even longer if you count the show’s pre-Broadway incarnations), and now, having finally experienced the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical on the great big stage of the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, it’s rainbow clear to me why the Joseph has become an international phenomenon. The show is one hundred minutes of pure, unadulterated, Technicolor music and fun.
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RENT
Friday, March 19th, 2010
Following their outstanding 2009 revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, The El Camino College Theatre Department has made Jonathan Larson’s Rent this year’s annual musical theater production, and the result is a thoroughly professional, often exciting staging of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning hit.
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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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