THE WHO’S TOMMY
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013
Moonlight Stage Productions concludes its 33rd Summer Season with a sensational production of the legendary The Who’s Tommy, one sure to thrill both Baby Boomers (in their teens and twenties when Tommy began its life) and Generation Xers and Millennials, Tommy’s multiple 1960s hits (“Pinball Wizard,” “I’m Free,” “See Me, Feel Me”) sounding hardly to have aged even a decade in the ensuing years.
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THE LION IN WINTER
Sunday, September 29th, 2013
It’s a classic nighttime soap, that is if Dallas or Dynasty had been set in 12th-Century England. It’s a Shakespeare history, that is if you could understand every word the actors are saying. It’s a 1960s film classic that won Katharine Hepburn the third of her four Best Actress Oscars.
It’s Peter Goldman’s Broadway flop play-turned-Hollywood hit movie, and if (as Wikipedia puts it rather ungrammatically) “The Lion in Winter is fictional and none of the dialogue and actions is historical,” it still makes for one of modern American theater’s most entertaining dramas and offers actors some of the meatiest roles of their careers—proof of which is now onstage at the Sierra Madre Playhouse.
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HAIRSPRAY
Saturday, September 28th, 2013
The plus-size mother/daughter duo of Tracy and Edna Turnblad have arrived at Escondido’s Welk Theatre in a mid-sized Hairspray that diverts, dazzles, and delights under director-choreographer Dan Mojica’s accomplished hand.
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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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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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