BROADWAY BOUND
Thursday, August 21st, 2014
Neil Simon plays don’t get any finer than his semi-autobiographical 1986 dramedy Broadway Bound, nor intimate theater revivals any more flawless than the Broadway Bound revival now playing at West L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre under Jason Alexander’s inspired direction.
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ONCE
Wednesday, August 20th, 2014
Sometimes execution can be everything. It certainly is in the case of Once, the multiple Tony-winning Best Musical of 2012. The story and the songs are the same as those in the film on which it is based (a movie I found quite unbearable), and yet as brought to freshly inspired life on the musical theater stage, Once The Musical turns out to be one of the best, and quite possibly the most original Broadway smashes, of the past decade.
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BUSKER ALLEY
Monday, August 18th, 2014RECOMMENDED
A pair of stellar lead performances, a topnotch supporting cast, and direction by the musical’s original leading lady bring out the best in the never-made-it-to-Broadway Busker Alley, Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series 2013-14 season closer. Still, despite some terrific Sherman Brothers songs, it’s hard to become invested in the story of as sad sack a lead character as street entertainer Charlie Baxter, even as played with abundant pizzazz by triple-threat extraordinaire James Leo Ryan.
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MY FAIR LADY
Sunday, August 17th, 2014
Moonlight Stage Productions revives the Lerner & Lowe classic My Fair Lady for a 21st-century audience with the one element that’s been mostly missing since its 1956 Broadway debut—sex appeal—and the result is a My Fair Lady that is not only every bit as captivating as the best of the past century, its Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle could give the hottest Hollywood romcom stars a run for their money any day.
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Saturday, August 16th, 2014
No set, no frills, the original script cut by more than half, and abundant imagination and flair add up to quite possibly the shortest and without a doubt one of the most entertaining Midsummer Night’s Dreams in the four-hundred-twenty or so years since those foolish mortals first ventured into the woods, sixty-five minutes of madcap Midsummer 2014 magic courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group.
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OSWALD, THE ACTUAL INTERROGATION
Friday, August 15th, 2014
Playwright Dennis Richard turns audience members into flies on the walls of the Dallas Police Station interrogation room where Lee Harvey Oswald parried question after question with the aplomb of a professional liar in the two days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Richard’s fascinating docudrama Oswald, The Actual Interrogation, now playing at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre.
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6 RMS RIV VU
Monday, August 11th, 2014
One of theatergoing’s greatest pleasures is the discovery of “forgotten gems,” plays that may have hit it big when they debuted but for one reason or another have faded into obscurity in the intervening years. Such is the case with Bob Randall’s 1972 romantic comedy 6 Rms Riv Vu, now getting a sparkling Sierra Madre Playhouse revival under Sherrie Lofton’s pitch-perfect direction.
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LEAR
Sunday, August 10th, 2014
A Queen with three sons, two of them ungrateful jerks wed to a pair of domineering Duchesses. An Earl with two daughters, one of them illegitimate and a conniver to boot. Meet Shakespeare Through The Looking Glass as Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum debuts its uniquely intriguing, exquisitely acted, gender-bending take on Shakespeare’s King Lear, retitled simply Lear, directed by and starring Ellen Geer as Queen Lear and Melora Marshall as her Fool.
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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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