BABES IN ARMS
Tuesday, January 27th, 2015
Here’s a thought for schools considering yet another production of Grease, Bye Bye Birdie, or High School Musical. How about having a go at the quintessential “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” show, Rodgers & Hart’s Babes In Arms, and not the “sanitized, de-politicized rewrite” that debuted in 1959 but the 1937 original, political incorrectness be damned. As anyone attending Sunday’s one-night-only Concert Staged Reading at Musical Theatre West can tell you, there’s not a funnier, dancier, or more gorgeously tuneful show for up-and-coming musical theater majors to show off their triple-threat talents than Babes In Arms 1.0.
TIME STANDS STILL
Sunday, January 25th, 2015
A wounded photo-journalist’s return home from the war zone proves even more challenging than a life lived on the edge in Donald Margulies’ intelligent, perceptive, often funny, always compelling Time Stands Still, back in town now in a production every bit the outstanding equal of Aquila Morong Studio’s previous intimate revivals of Proof and Crimes Of The Heart.
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COMPANY
Saturday, January 24th, 2015
It’s been over a decade since Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Tony-winning Best Musical of 1970, Company, has had an L.A. (or L.A.-adjacent) big-stage revival, making its arrival at Thousand Oaks’ Cabrillo Music Theater big news indeed, particularly as directed with abundant inspiration and flair by Nick DeGruccio and performed by an all-around fabulous cast, with Cate Caplin’s imaginative choreography giving the show an added dash of pizzazz.
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INTO THE WOODS
Friday, January 23rd, 2015
Into The Woods is back big time, its long-awaited film adaptation joined by a couple of recent, much lauded out-of-town imports at the Old Globe and the Wallis Annenberg, community theater productions galore, and now by the supremely talented students who’ve been starring in, directing, and designing one terrific intimate revival after another at USC over the past eight years, the musical theater stars of the future who call themselves Musical Theatre Repertory.
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BUDDY – THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY
Monday, January 19th, 2015
February 3, 1959 may well have been, as Don McLean sang it, “the day the music died,” but the music of Buddy Holly lives on at Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater in the crowd-pleasing musical/tribute concert hybrid that is Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story.
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BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL
Sunday, January 18th, 2015
Few Broadway shows of recent years combine the drama, the laughter, the heart, and the emotional punch of Billy Elliot The Musical, now playing at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts. Factor in the music of Sir Elton John, brilliantly original direction and choreography by La Mirada’s very own Brian Kite and Dana Solimando, and a cast who prove that nobody does it better than our SoCal triple-threats and you’ve got not only the first Must-See big-stage musical of 2015, you will likely find yourself waiting a good long while before any other locally-staged musical achieves the heights to which Billy—at one point quite literally—soars.
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SERRANO THE MUSICAL
Saturday, January 17th, 2015
SoCal’s major regional houses can eat their hearts out they didn’t get first dibs on the World Premiere of Serrano The Musical, while L.A. musical theater aficionados can rejoice that this sensational contemporary adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac told Goodfellas style is making its debut in the up-close-and-personal intimacy of the Matrix on Melrose.
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PROOF
Saturday, January 17th, 2015
How many plays can you name that have won the Drama Desk Award for Best New Play, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?
David Auburn’s Proof is that rarity, a major prize-winner now making a welcome return to Los Angeles in an impeccably directed intimate production by Moth Theatre’s John Markland, ingeniously designed by Justin Huen and sensationally performed by Amanda Brooks, Chris Marquette, Felicity Price, and John Cirigilano, a foursome any major American theater would be thrilled to have grace their stage.
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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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