DAMN YANKEES
Monday, September 17th, 2012RECOMMENDED
Simi Valley Performing Arts Center hit the jackpot earlier this year with productions of the Broadway hits Hairspray and Pippin that rivaled those of bigger-stage, bigger-budget companies like Thousand Oaks’ Cabrillo Music Theatre and Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West. Their latest, a revival of the 1950s Broadway smash Damn Yankees, while not in the same league as its predecessors, does offer sufficient pleasures to recommend it to Simi Valley audiences (with a couple of reservations).
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MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
Sunday, July 22nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
Director Linda Kerns, choreographer Heather Castillo, and a terrifically talented cast make the most of Cabrillo Music Theatre’s summer offering, a revival of the short-lived 1989 Broadway adaptation of the 1944 MGM movie musical Meet Me In St. Louis. Though the material being brought to life doesn’t hold up nearly as well as our rose-colored memories of the Judy Garland classic would like it to, the resulting production has much to recommend in it.
PIPPIN
Monday, May 7th, 2012
Picture a hundred thirty or so dancing, glow-in-the-dark fingertips spiraling and swirling around on an otherwise pitch-black stage as the orchestra launches into “Magic To Do” and you’ll have some idea of just how fresh and new the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center revival of Pippin is. Then again, few musicals lend themselves to as many different interpretations as the Stephen Schwartz classic. Reprise did it sexy and Chicago-esque some years back, East West Players took an Asian hip-hop approach to the material, and Deaf West at the Taper featured not one but two Pippins, one deaf and one hearing. SCVAC describes their Pippin as taking place in the “intriguing and wacky world of Steampunk Carnivale,” and an exciting new interpretation it is.
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ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
Saturday, April 21st, 2012
For musical theater fans in search of something out of the ordinary, Cabrillo Music Theatre has just the show for you, a star-studded revival of the 1959 Broadway hit Once Upon A Mattress and a terrific companion piece to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which Cabrillo just happens to have staged two summers ago.
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HELLO! MY BABY
Monday, March 26th, 2012
“You Made Me Love You” “Ballin’ The Jack” “I Don’t Care” “If You Were The Only Girl” “Some Of These Days”
Tin Pan Alley circa the 1910s comes to singing/dancing life in Cheri Steinkellner’s World Premiere musical Hello! My Baby, and though its book could use some tweaking to give the tale a more contemporary sensibility, the tuneful confection proves a terrific showcase for its talented cast under Brian McDonald’s spirited direction.
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AN EVENING WITH PATTI LUPONE AND MANDY PATINKIN
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
Patti. Mandy. Together. On stage. Live. In concert.
Need I say more?
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AVENUE Q
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
Imagine what might happen if puppet characters like those you or your kids grew up watching on Sesame Street started singing songs and teaching life lessons about adult topics, things like sexual orientation, racism, Internet porn, and Schadenfreude (that’s German for people taking pleasure in your pain).
Well, that is precisely what Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx, and Jeff Whitty did in their 2003 off-Broadway-to-Broadway (and back-to-off-Broadway) smash hit musical Avenue Q.
Actors’ Repertory Theatre Of Simi now recreates all the magic of the New York original, artfully scaled down from the John Golden Theater’s 804 seats to the Simi Valley Performing Arts Center’s far more intimate 220.
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HAIRSPRAY
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
The smash hit Broadway musical Hairspray has arrived at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center in an intimate staging so all-around terrific, it’s hard to know where to start singing its praises.
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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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