THE KING AND I
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
What would CLOs do without Rodgers and Hammerstein? There’s scarcely a season in which a regional Civic Light Opera doesn’t present at least one of their Big 5—Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I, or The Sound Of Music. Fortunately for lovers of contemporary musicals, these Golden Oldies do hold up rather well, thank you. Theatergoers are assured of recognizing most if not all of the songs, the roles created by R & H offer actors some of the best in musical theater of any era, and the themes which R & H snuck in (racism, domestic violence, cross-cultural understanding, etc.) remain valid even half a century or more later.
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SHE LOVES ME
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
A man and a woman who can’t stand each other in real life fall in love with each other in cyberspace. Sound familiar? It should be if you’ve seen Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. But before email, there were letters, and 35 years before You’ve Got Mail, there was the 1963 Broadway musical She Loves Me, a pre-Internet version of the same irresistible tale.
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SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
Sunday, July 27th, 2008
The customary path for a musical to follow is the one from stage to screen, the most recent example being Mamma Mia, in movie theaters (and live on Broadway) even as I write this. Far less usual is seeing an original movie musical adapted for the stage, yet just as MTW’s The Wizard Of Oz closes, Singin’ In The Rain opens at Cabrillo Music Theatre, a veritable bonanza for lovers of MGM musicals of Hollywood’s golden age.
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IT’S ONLY LIFE
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
In 2005 I paid my first visit to Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre, to see its justly lauded production of Jason Robert Brown’s musical revue Songs For A New World. Now, a bit more than three years later, the Rubicon has become one of my favorite Southland theaters and (despite outlandish gasoline prices) still worth the drive north, especially when the production being presented is as sensational as 2008’s musical revue, John Bucchino’s It’s Only Life. In fact, it’s only distance and gas prices that prevent me from seeing It’s Only Life a second, or even third time.
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JEKYLL & HYDE
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
What a difference a director makes! Cabrillo Music Theatre’s production of
Jekyll & Hyde towers over all others, including FCLO’s excellent revival just five
months ago, and the #1 reason can be summed up in a single name: Nick
DeGruccio. Following his brilliant direction of The Last Five Years, Beehive, and
Zanna Don’t (all of them cited on StageSceneLA’s Best Of The Year lists),
DeGruccio now does quite possibly his best work yet, taking a show which
detractors have called “bombastic” and “boring” and electrifying it, clarifying
its themes, heightening its drama, and above all making it human. These are
real people we are seeing on stage, from its trio of star roles (or should that be
quartet?) to even the bit players at The Red Rat, in St. Jude’s Hospital, or on
the streets of London.
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BUS STOP
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
William Inge is perhaps best known for a pair of plays about life in the American
Midwest in the 1950s. Picnic tells of a frustrated small town girl who falls for a
handsome drifter. Its companion piece, Bus Stop, is about a naïve cowboy
who loses his head over a “chanteuse” with a past. Both became popular
films and gave blonde bombshells Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe rare
chances to prove that they were actresses and not just glamour girls. Both
Picnic and Bus Stop continue to be favorites of community and regional
theaters, with the latter now getting a first-rate staging at the Rubicon in
Ventura.
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AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’
Saturday, January 5th, 2008
Five terrifically talented singers, a virtuoso piano player, and a sensational
onstage band combine forces with the music of Fats Waller to get the joint (i.e.
the Thousand Oaks Civics Arts Plaza) jumpin’ in Ain’t Misbehavin’, the
Southland’s first CLO production of 2008. If this show is any indication, this looks
to be the start of a fantastic year of musical theater for Angelenos.
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LOVE SWEET LOVE
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s greatest hits comprise several dozen of the
most memorable songs of the 1960s. Beginning before the British invasion and
continuing through their 1968 Broadway smash Promises, Promises, Bacharach
and David wrote some of the most timeless hits of the decade. Bacharach’s
melodies and rhythms were complex but accessible and David’s lyrics told stories
that listeners could easily identify with.
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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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