STEEL PIER

Though I’d be hard pressed to pick just one of the fifty concert staged readings reviewed here as the Absolute Best Concert Staged Reading Ever, I can’t recall a more spectacularly staged “reading” of a Broadway musical than last night’s Reiner Reading Series staging of Kander & Ebb’s Steel Pier.
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WINTER WONDERETTES

There may not be snow on the ground down Escondido way this month or next, but with Winter Wonderettes spending the holidays at the Welk Theatre, the marvelous (and wonderful) quartet’s trademark blend of comedy, harmony, nostalgia, and seasonal melodies turn the San Diego-adjacent resort’s year-round green grass and blue skies into the next best thing to a traditional White Christmas.
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VOX LUMIERE–THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

A 1920s silent movie classic + 21st-century techno-punk-rock with an operatic twist + some of the most exciting contemporary dance moves you’re likely to see on a Los Angeles theater stage = Vox Lumiere–The Phantom of the Opera, Kevin Saunders Hayes’ latest thrilling mash-up of all of the above.
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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

From family-friendly animated funfest to powerful grown-up fare, Disney’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame has been transformed by the folks at La Jolla Playhouse into a new stage musical so darkly dramatic that Broadway’s Phantom Of The Opera seems almost light and frothy by comparison. In other words, what they’ve come up with is that rarity—a Disney musical with the proviso “Leave the kids at home.”
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a SILVER LINING

Anyone with a yen for interactive theater at its time-travelingest need only head on over to L.A.’s downtown Arts District this week for as unique a theatrical adventure as you’re likely to experience any time soon in a Silver Lining (the uncapitalized “a” is part of its title), the latest from A Working Theatre.
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TRIUMPH OF LOVE

Frothy Broadway musical comedy romps don’t get any frothier than the frothy Broadway musical comedy romp Triumph Of Love, a fact made amply clear last night by Musical Theatre Guild’s one-performance-only concert staged reading of the 1997 gem.
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Putting It Together, aka The Greatest Hits Of Stephen Sondheim Volume Two, has made a splendid arrival at Chromolume Theatre, the 1999 Broadway revival version of the original 1992 UK production updating 1976’s Side by Side by Sondheim with songs from S.S. shows as recent as 1990’s Assassins—news which should come as the best end-of-year gift to Sondheim lovers near and far.
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CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL

The summertime Fringe Festival spirit lives on as the leaves turn their fall colors (or would if we lived in Utah or Colorado) in Coeurage Theatre Company’s hysterically funny, terrifically performed, absolutely shpadoinkle* live staging of Trey Parker’s tongue-in-cheek (and flesh-in-mouth) cult movie “classic” Cannibal! The Musical.
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