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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SQUABBLES
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Theatergoers in search of laughter with a dollop of romance added for good measure need look no farther than Squabbles, currently lighting up the stage at the Palos Verdes-adjacent Norris Center For The Performing Arts.
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FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
There are times in musical theater when all the elements—performance, direction, choreography, musical direction, and design—come together to form an absolutely perfect whole. One of these times is now, in CLOSBC’s brilliant revival of Fiddler On The Roof.
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BLITHE SPIRIT
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
As long as there’s been theater, there have surely been comedies about ghosts come back to haunt the people on stage and amuse those in the audience who are watching their shenanigans. Movies like the 1937’s Topper, which spawned not one but two TV series (and is scheduled for a 2010 Steve Martin remake) have continued the tradition on the big and small screen. When there’s only one character who can see the ghost(s) in question and the people around him/her suddenly find our hero(ine) talking to the air and see objects floating around the room, hilarity is sure to ensue.
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BYE BYE BIRDIE
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
It’s 1958 all over again in CLOSBC’s picture-perfect revival of the rock-n-rollin’ Broadway classic Bye Bye Birdie, with L.A. favorites John Bisom and Natalie Nucci giving New York originals Dick Van Dyke and Chita Rivera a run for their money in stellar triple-threat performances. Director-choreographer extraordinaire Dan Mojica once again works his magic in bringing to finger-snappin’ toe-tappin’ life the Elvis Presley-gets-drafted-inspired book by Michael Stewart and the oh-so-memorable songs by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams.
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SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS
Friday, August 8th, 2008RECOMMENDED
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Torrance Theatre Company’s 10th annual Summer Musical, provides ample proof as to the amount and level of musical theater talent on our local stage scene. Unlike recent 7Brides productions by FCLO Music Theatre and Cabrillo Music Theatre, Torrance’s brides, brothers, and assorted townspeople are all portrayed by non-Equity actors, and though TTC’s production does not reach the bar its predecessors set, the results are nonetheless praiseworthy indeed.
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PARADE
Friday, July 11th, 2008
The lynching of Jewish Northerner Leo Frank, falsely convicted of murdering 13-year-old Georgia factory worker Mary Phagan, remains today, nearly a century later, one of the most serious miscarriages of justice (and instances of anti-Semitism) in United States history. Powerful stuff for a Broadway musical, and one that would seem, at least on paper, more than a bit of a downer. Parade (with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and book by Alfred Uhry) was a hard sell on Broadway. If Fosse was the “feel-good” musical of 1999, then a show with such grim subject matter as Parade was pretty much its antithesis, and closed after 85 performances.
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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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