THE END OF IT
Friday, September 27th, 2013RECOMMENDED
A 50ish couple (or is it three?) confront the dissolution of a twenty-year relationship in Paul Coates’ The End Of It, a World Premiere production elevated above a too generic script by sensational direction, fine acting, and one humdinger of a gimmick.
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ANYTHING GOES
Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
No 1930s musical has achieved the enduring popularity of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. A grand total of five Broadway, off-Broadway, and West End revivals, a pair of movie adaptations, a TV special, and more national and international productions than even the most dedicated Porter aficionado could possibly count.
For those who wonder why Anything Goes just keeps on ticking, there’s no more compelling evidence than the National Tour of its 2011 Broadway revival now spending the week at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, a Broadway tour that guarantees SoCal audiences one show-stopping number after another in an Anything Goes that tops any other production of it you might happen to have seen.
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SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ
Monday, September 23rd, 2013
“Kansas City,” “Yakety Yak,” “Love Potion No. 9,” and “On Broadway” are just four of the 1950s rock and pop hits now being performed to cheers and not one but two standing ovations as the Pasadena Playhouse revives the 1995 Broadway smash Smokey Joe’s Café, featuring forty of the greatest hits of rock-and-roll songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
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BROADWAY BOUND
Sunday, September 22nd, 2013
Neil Simon reminisces about his last days of being a live-at-home son and the earliest days of his writing career in Broadway Bound, the third play in Simon’s “Eugene Trilogy” and one of the master scribe’s bona fide masterworks, now getting a Broadway-caliber revival by McCoy-Rigby Entertainment at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts.
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THE PRODUCERS
Saturday, September 21st, 2013
The Norris Center For The Arts undertakes its most ambitious musical to date, a near Broadway-scale production of Mel Brooks’ multiple Tony-winning The Producers which, despite some technical elements still rough around the edges on opening night, makes for a bona fide crowd-pleaser sparked by one standout performance after another.
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BREATH AND IMAGINATION: THE STORY OF ROLAND HAYES
Friday, September 20th, 2013
Before there was Paul Robeson, before there was Marian Anderson, a young man ten years their junior became the first African-American to achieve worldwide acclaim on the concert stages of the United States and Europe.
It is this lesser-known music—and civil rights—pioneer that playwright Daniel Beaty brings to vibrant, compelling life in his “play with music” Breath And Imagination: The Story Of Roland Hayes, now being given a pitch-perfect West Coast Premiere at Burbank’s Colony Theatre under the inspired direction of Saundra McClain.
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LOST GIRLS
Wednesday, September 18th, 2013
Let’s say your most recent play has won every major Best Production award in L.A. and you’re about to head back east to star in it off-Broadway. That would be one tough act to follow, wouldn’t it?
But follow it John Pollono has with Lost Girls, a night-and-day departure from the aforementioned Small Engine Repair, but a humdinger of a play in its own right, and one whose last five minutes elevate it to a whole new level of amazing.
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SWEENEY TODD
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013
Candlelight Pavilion takes its audiences on a considerably darker though no less entertaining journey than usual (with several menu items given a ghoulish though no less delicious twist) as the landmark Claremont dinner theater stages a Grade A Prime revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Weaver’s Sweeney Todd.
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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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