GUYS AND DOLLS
Friday, October 18th, 2024
Damon Runyon’s picturesque band of New York denizens continue to delight audiences almost seventy-five years after their Broadway debut in Altadena Music Theatre’s lively outdoor revival of the 1950 Broadway classic Guys And Dolls.
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KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Thursday, October 17th, 2024
It only took me only seconds to fall madly in love with Kimberly Akimbo at the Pantages. No wonder then that David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori’s tuneful, touching adaptation of the former’s outrageously funny, deeply moving play of the same name won five 2023 Tonys including the big one, Best Musical.
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I, DANIEL BLAKE
Wednesday, October 16th, 2024Brilliant performances and dazzling production design aside, Dave Johns’ unrelentingly bleak stage adaptation of I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s Kafkaesque 2016 film about a good man living a British bureaucratic nightmare is the most depressing 90 minutes I’ve spent in a theater in a very long time.
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¡PASAJE!
Monday, October 14th, 2024If I were grading on good intentions alone, then J Quiroz and Asdru Sierra’s ¡Pasaje! would earn high marks. Unfortunately, this musical salute to la vida latina in South El Monte is no In The Heights.
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RENT
Monday, October 14th, 2024Jaxx Theatricals follows their Scenie-winning intimate stagings of Andrew Lippa’s Wild Party and Chess The Musical with an excitingly performed but overly choreographed revival of Jonathan Larson’s Rent.
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AMERICAN IDIOT
Thursday, October 10th, 2024
The Mark Taper Forum is back in business with an American Idiot revival so spectacular, the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll-packed musical extravaganza ought to follow in the footsteps of Deaf West’s Big River and Spring Awakening and become a Broadway must-see.
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BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL
Tuesday, October 8th, 2024A trio of topnotch star turns are the three best reasons to catch Morgan-Wixson Theatre’s over-the-top staging of the horror rock extravaganza that is Bat Boy: The Musical. (It would help too if you could understand what the characters are saying/singing.)
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GLORIA
Monday, October 7th, 2024
Everyone’s out for their fifteen minutes of fame in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ ripped-from-today’s-headlines gut-puncher Gloria, now being given an electrifying Orange County premiere at Chance Theater.
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