BONNIE & CLYDE

Bonnie & Clyde may have featured as fine a score as any of its 2011-12 Broadway competitors (including Once and Newsies), but that didn’t stop critics from making sure that Frank Wildhorn’s latest musical bit the dust after a mere two months, previews included, just one reason SoCal audiences haven’t been granted the fully-staged professional production Bonnie & Clyde so richly deserves, just one reason Angelinos can rejoice that at the very least, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow returned to life last Sunday for one night only thanks to Musical Theatre Guild.
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FIRST DATE

First impressions, no matter how dismal, do indeed merit a second glance when boy meets girl in First Date, the smart, funny Broadway musical romcom now getting an absolutely Grade-A Southern California Premiere at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts.
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HIT THE WALL


“I was there!” roar the eclectic band of 1969 Greenwich Village People who populate Hit The Wall, Ike Holter’s slice-of-Stonewall now getting a daringly staged, thrillingly visceral West Coast Premiere that is, simply put, the next best thing to having actually been “there.” (Take that, Roland Emmerich!)
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THESE PAPER BULLETS!

The Bard meets The Fab Four in Rolin Jones’ exuberantly entertaining These Paper Bullets!, now getting its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, and while audience members lacking either a soft spot for iambic pentameter or a familiarity with Beatles legend might just end up tuning out, at least during the show’s overlong first act, by the time Act Two rolls around with its Monty-Python-meets-Benny-Hill delights (and with Billie Joe Armstrong’s songs the absolute next best thing to Lennon-&-McCartney circa 1964), it’s hard to imagine anyone not ultimately falling under These Paper Bullets!’ magic spell.
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CHINGLISH

East West Players continues its two-year-long 50th-anniversary celebration with Chinglish, David Henry Hwang’s hilarious, perceptive, eye-opening look at Chinese-American relationships (including one of a particularly romantic/sexual nature), a Los Angeles Premiere that could well prove one of EWP’s most popular productions ever. It’s certainly one of the finest I’ve seen onstage at the David Henry Hwang Theater.
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REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES

You don’t have to be Hispanic to fall in love with the full-figured Latinas celebrated in Josefina López’s Real Women Have Curves, nor do you have to travel to New York to see the crowd-pleasing comedy’s Broadway-caliber revival now playing at the historic Pasadena Playhouse.
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BIG FISH

Big Fish The Musical may have floundered on Broadway two years back, but it’s the furthest thing from a flop given the emotional depth and heart of Steven Glaudini’s direction and the abundant pizzazz of Karl Warden’s choreography at Vista’s Moonlight Amphitheatre.
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AMERICAN FALLS

George Gibbs and Emily Webb may have come of age over a hundred years ago in the New England equivalent of American Falls … but they had their lives a hell of a lot easier than the citizens of playwright Miki Johnson’s 21st-century Our Town, now getting an impressive Los Angeles Premiere by The Echo Theater Company.
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