LOVE SONGS

RECOMMENDED
Six simply marvelous performances and a couple dozen simply gorgeous songs are the best reasons to see Love Songs A Musical, Steven Cagan’s minimal-plot song cycle now getting its World Premiere by Chromolume Theatre at the Attic in a production that comes across more like a low-budget workshop than the fully-staged premiere Cagan’s work deserves and L.A. theatergoing regulars will likely be expecting.
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THE FANTASTICKS


The Sierra Madre Playhouse revives the world’s longest-running musical The Fantasticks in a production so perfectly cast, so beautifully performed, so imaginatively directed, and so gorgeous to look at that I finally understand why the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical chalked up 17,162 performances over its 42-year off-Broadway run.

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THE REAL HOUSEKEEPERS OF STUDIO CITY


Divorced Studio City homemaker Ashley Tribbiani has a shot at being picked as one of TV’s Real Housewives Of Studio City. There’s only one problem. As any reality TV fan will tell you, a real Housewife needs to have a real Housekeeper, and with ex-hubby Joey seriously in arrears on his alimony and child support payments, Ashley has hardly been able to hire help since their split. Now, with her Real Housewives audition only an hour away, Ashley (Lani Shipman) and gay best friend Scot (Ryan O’Connor) have exactly sixty minutes to hire the best maid possible out of ten of TVland’s most famous housekeepers.

Fortunately, the Hollywood Fringe Festival has allotted precisely one hour for Joe Green, Heidi Powers, Tom Moore to debut their brand new musical The Real Housekeepers Of Studio City, and what a sixty-minute-musical gem it is.
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[title of show]

From Fringe Festival to Fringe Festival with a Broadway stop along the way is hardly the normal trajectory for a Hollywood Fringe Festival entry. Then again, [title of show] is not your average, run-of-the-mill Fringe entry, as Fringe Festivalgoers can now discover at the Hollywood Fringe, where Theatre Unleashed has unleashed a stripped-down-to-basics but highly entertaining [tos].
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NATALIE PORTMAN THE MUSICAL

NOT RECOMMENDED

Natalie Portman The Musical has arrived at the Hollywood Fringe Festival following last year’s successful run (and return engagement) at Chromolume Theatre At The Attic in what appears to be a considerably stripped-down-for-The-Fringe production.
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A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE


Sometimes wishes do come true.

Back in September of last year, following a superb concert staged reading of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s A Man Of No Importance, I ended my review with a wish: “Isn’t it time that A Man Of No Importance got a fully-staged L.A. production?”

Now, a mere nine months later, that wish comes true as director-choreographer extraordinaire Janet Miller and her new Good People Theater Company offer Los Angeles audiences that fully-staged A Man Of No Importance, as all-around perfect a production as this or any musical theater lover could possibly have wished for.
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FIDDLER ON THE ROOF


No sequins. No glitz. No feathers. No frills. Nothing but glorious songs and dances and a heartstrings-tugging story to transport you back in time and space to a Jewish shtetl in early 20th Century Tsarist Russia. This is Fiddler On The Roof, the Broadway classic whose (almost) 50th Anniversary production makes for a memorable PCPA Theaterfest summer season opener under Roger DeLaurier’s assured direction.
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REVOLVER

RECOMMENDED

A gay man seeking vengeance on the bashers who killed his first love years before. Jesus dancing a tango in heaven with the disciple whose betrayal led to his death on the cross. A closeted mega-rich movie star and the openly gay starving actor who was once his one true love. Antagonistic friends of a recently od’ed crystal meth addict sorting through his things. An angry gay activist being interviewed by a young journalist who idolizes him. A murdered gay man and one of his killers meeting once again in heaven.
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