OKLAHOMA!
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Los Angeles has been treating Rodgers And Hammerstein’s Oklahoma to quite a fabulous extended 65th Anniversary party these past two years, with three major productions already reviewed on these pages. It’s now Civic Light Opera Of South Bay Cities’ turn to work its musical magic on R&H’s very first collaboration, and given their illustrious track record, it’s no surprise that this Stephanie A. Coltrin-directed revival is an all-around winner, precisely the kind of production an Oklahoma!-caliber classic deserves.
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A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
Friday, September 18th, 2009
In the days before Stephen Sondheim got serious with his 1970s hits Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, and Sweeney Todd, way back in the pre-Beatles early 60s, the soon-to-be multiple Tony Award-winner wrote A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Even now, forty-seven years later, this early Sondheim hit remains the perfect choice for those who complain that Sondheim is “too dark” or that his melodies are inaccessible. A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is hilarious farcical fun, with no higher goal than to present “something for everyone, a comedy tonight.”
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CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
The Tennessee Williams estate is very particular about whom it grants right to Mr. Williams’ plays. Justly concerned about protecting the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s reputation, the estate won’t let just any theater company stage the Williams oeuvre, particularly the two plays which won him the Pulitzer—A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Other than A Noise Within’s 2000 production and the Geffen’s in 2005, I can’t recall a local staging of Cat, nor can I recall its being produced by a 99-seat theater. Thus, The Neighborhood Playhouse’s just-opened revival of the 1955 classic is a major Southland theatrical event.
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THE GREEN ROOM
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
There’s some exciting news for High School Musical fans who’ve moved on to higher education. College Musical has arrived! Well, in actual fact the show in question is entitled The Green Room, but in many ways it’s like a PG-13 post-graduation spin-off of the über popular Disney franchise. Like HSM, this enjoyable world premiere features young, ready-for-their-close-up triple-threats who spend more time singing, dancing, and pairing up than doing their assignments. Then again, who would pay to see a show about homework?
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WAIT UNTIL DARK
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
The dark is a scary place to be. Just think back on all the movie and TV thrillers with the word “dark” in their title: Dark Shadows, The Dark House, Whispers In The Dark, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, Dark Water, and of course Elvira Mistress Of The Dark—to name just a few.
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JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
As one of the few musical theater buffs who’d never seen a big stage production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, I didn’t know quite what I’d be in for at Civic Light Opera Of South Bay Cities’ big-cast, big-scale revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber rock classic, though given CLOSBC’s great track record and the sensational lineup of talent in the JCS cast, I knew I’d be in for something special.
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OUR LEADING LADY
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
Comedienne extraordinaire Carol Burnett once said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time,” an adage which playwright Charles Busch proves spot-on in his hilarious backstage farce Our Leading Lady, now playing at The Neighborhood Playhouse in Palos Verdes Estates. The tragedy is the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Washington D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, only days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In imagining the backstage shenanigans taking place in the hours leading up to that fateful performance of Our American Cousin, starring real-life actress-manager Laura Keene, Busch has written an outrageously funny play which finds comedy out of national tragedy—and serves as an affectionate love letter to the theater as well.
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THE FULL MONTY
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Those unemployed Buffalo factory workers turned Chippendales-style strippers are back, and Redondo Beach has them. Though The Full Monty lost all nine of its Tony Award nominations to The Producers in 2001, the David Yazbek-Terrence McNally musical has become a regional theater favorite, and rightly so. Musical Theatre West gave it a sensational big theater staging in 2007 and with director Dan Mojica at the helm, Civic Light Opera Of South Bay Cities’ brand new production is every bit its equal.
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