HERSHEY FELDER IN ABE LINCOLN’S PIANO
Friday, January 10th, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
Hershey Felder is back at the Geffen with his latest one-man show, Hershey Felder In Abe Lincoln’s Piano, and though Felder does treat the audience to a bit of Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue, unlike the smash hit Hershey Felder As George Gershwin Alone, the maestro’s latest may prove a hard sell to all but Felder fanatics.
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LIGHT UP THE SKY
Sunday, December 15th, 2013
An all-around splendid cast light up the Reuben Cordova stage as Beverly Hills’ venerable Theatre 40 serves up its topnotch revival of Light Up The Sky, Moss Hart’s affectionate skewering of the world of “The Theater.”
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BOB’S HOLIDAY OFFICE PARTY
Friday, December 6th, 2013
It wouldn’t be Christmas season in L.A. without Bob’s Holiday Office Party, now back for its eighteenth year, the folks of Neuterburg, Iowa even wilder and crazier than ever! Talk about good tidings of great joy!
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PARFUMERIE
Friday, December 6th, 2013
Sworn enemies remain blissfully clueless that the (e)mail friend each has fallen head over heels for (without ever having laid eyes on him/her) is none other than the one person on earth he/she simply can’t abide. It’s a formula that worked to perfection for James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in The Shop Around The Corner, for Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in In The Good Old Summertime, for Daniel Massey and Barbara Cook in She Loves Me, and most recently for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. And it works once again to perfection for Eddie Kaye Thomas and Deborah Ann Woll in Parfumerie, the play that started it all back in Hungary some 76 years ago, and is now the irresistible inaugural season opener of Beverly Hills’ brand new Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts.
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WONDERFUL TOWN
Monday, November 18th, 2013
From autobiographical short story collection to play to movie to Broadway musical to musical movie (but with different songs) to TV series. Few musical comedies have had as many incarnations as 1953’s Wonderful Town, and though Broadway revived it in 2003, this Golden Era hit has faded a bit too much into obscurity to join perennial 1950s favorites like Damn Yankees and The Pajama Game onto any major theater’s annual season—making it a perfect choice for Musical Theatre Guild to revive for one night only as the first of their 2013-2014 “concert staged reading” treats.
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WHEN YOU WISH The Story Of Walt Disney
Thursday, October 24th, 2013RECOMMENDED
Director extraordiniare Larry Raben and choreographer par excellence Lee Martino team up with an all-around fabulous cast to make the very most of book, music, and lyric writer Dean McClure’s World Premiere bio-musical When You Wish (The Story Of Walt Disney), though for producers to dub it a “Pre-Broadway production” is wishful thinking indeed.
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WAIT UNTIL DARK
Saturday, October 19th, 2013
Some plays simply cannot be updated to the 21st Century. Take for example Wait Until Dark, Frederick Knott’s classic 1966 thriller about a blind New York City newlywed targeted by a trio of thugs out to find the heroin-filled doll they believe to be hidden somewhere in the walk-down flat she shares with her photographer husband—a play entirely dependent on there being just one land-line phone in the apartment and a (now virtually non-existent) phone booth on a nearby corner.
That’s why, when I heard that playwright Jeffrey Hatcher was adapting Wait Until Dark for the Geffen Playhouse “in a new time/setting,” my first thought was “They must be kidding!” Then I found out that Hatcher was actually taking Knott’s thriller back in time to WWII New York City and that thought turned to “Wow! What a clever idea!” Not only a clever idea, it turns out, but one that proves as exiting in execution as in theory.
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THE DREAM OF THE BURNING BOY
Friday, September 6th, 2013
There are as many shades of grief as there are survivors in David West Read’s powerful The Dream Of The Burning Boy, now getting its West Coast Premiere at Malibu Playhouse in a production that easily rivals the best of L.A.’s higher-profile 99-seat houses.
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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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