SOUTH PACIFIC
Sunday, April 22nd, 2018
No matter how many times you’ve seen Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific (I myself am at nine productions and counting), you might just feel you’re experiencing it for the first time ever at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts, so thrillingly performed and gorgeously designed is this 69th-anniversary McCoy Rigby Entertainment revival.
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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Saturday, April 21st, 2018
Victor Hugo’s classic tale of the misshapen Quasimodo and the shapely gypsy beauty who wins his lonely, aching heart comes to glorious musical life thanks to Alan Menken’s gift for melody and a couple dozen of SoCal’s most multi-talented performers in 5-Star Theatricals’ The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.
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NATIVE SON
Saturday, April 21st, 2018Lead performances are powerhouse and production design one of the year’s most electrifying, but Richard Wright’s 20th-century classic Native Son is ill-served at Antaeus Theatre Company by Nambi E. Kelley’s 21st-century stage adaptation’s temporal zigzags, sledgehammer approach to issues of race, and the addition of a “character” not found in the original novel.
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WHAT HAPPENED WHEN
Thursday, April 19th, 2018The survivor of a horrific childhood is visited by ghosts of his dark and desolate past in Daniel Talbott’s memory play What Happened When, now getting an exquisitely designed Echo Theater Company West Coast Premiere unfortunately made more cryptic than already written by one bad casting choice.
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LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS
Tuesday, April 17th, 2018Kemp Powers’ Little Black Shadows takes an intriguing concept (the lives of teenage house slaves serving white teen masters in early-1850s Georgia), then veers off track into family dysfunction, folktales, magical realism, and a couple of weird plot twists that left me scratching my head despite the best efforts of a Grade-A cast headed by the simply sensational Giovanni Adams and Chauntae Pink.
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GODSPELL
Tuesday, April 17th, 2018Godspell will never make my list of favorite musicals. Despite its melodious Stephen Schwartz score, I find the show itself pretty much a snooze. Still, its many fans could hardly ask for a more imaginatively directed or more sparklingly performed production than The Wayward Artist’s at Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center.
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THE MOUSETRAP
Sunday, April 15th, 2018
West End audiences have been keeping the murderer’s identity top secret for a record-breaking 27,000-plus performances, and now Angelinos can check out Crown City Theatre Company’s spiffy revival of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap to see why 65 years’ worth of Londoners keep on going back for more.
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ALL SHOOK UP
Sunday, April 15th, 2018All Shook Up arrives at NoHo’s El Portal Theatre with its entertaining mix of Elvis Presley hits and jukebox musical plot in a big-stage production featuring top-notch professional leads performing on a community theater-like set backed by a talented but mostly too young ensemble.
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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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