THE 39 STEPS
Saturday, July 20th, 2013
Glendale Centre Theatre proves that you don’t need a cast of dozens and a seven-figure budget to bring John Buchan’s The 39 Steps to life, despite a plot that takes hero-on-the-run Richard Hannay on an adventure from London to Edinburgh to the Scottish moors and back (during which he crosses paths with a hundred fifty characters or so). All you need are four crackerjack actors, an inventive design team, a tireless stage crew, and directorial whiz Todd Nielsen on hand to bring Buchan’s classic spy novel to vibrant, hilarious life.
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SUNSET BOULEVARD
Monday, July 15th, 2013
Let me put it simply. Musical Theatre West’s revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard is the theatrical event of the Summer Of 2013—bar none.
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NINE
Saturday, July 13th, 2013
DOMA Theatre Company follows its smash 99-seat revival of Dreamgirls with another dreamgirl-packed Tony-winning musical, a mostly quite successful downsizing of the big-stage Broadway hit Nine.
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FATHERS AT A GAME
Friday, July 12th, 2013
A pair of night-and-day different dads cheering on their teenage sons at a high school football game would seem more likely to inspire an odd-couple comedy à la Richard Dresser’s hilarious Rounding Third than an electrifyingly edge-of-your-seat thriller, but this is precisely what Trey Nichols has concocted in his one-act Fathers At A Game, now completing a brief Best Of Fringe extension following its original Hollywood Fringe run.
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BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON
Thursday, July 11th, 2013
Rowdy, outrageous, exhilarating, brash, and entertaining as all get-out—Chance Theater’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is all this and more, a slice of American history as told by a wild and crazy bunch of punk rockers that will have you cheering … and send you straight to Wikipedia to separate fact from fiction re our 7th President, “Old Hickory” himself.
Created by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson had its 2008 premiere at L.A.’s Kirk Douglas Theater before heading first to off-Broadway, then to Broadway, and now back to Southern California where director Kari Hayter, choreographer Kelly Todd, musical director Robyn Wallace, and a cast of some of SoCal’s most exciting triple-threats have joined forces to create the Orange County Musical Theater Event of the Summer ‘13.
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WATSON AND THE DARK ART OF HARRY HOUDINI
Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
What do you do when you’re writer-director Jaime Robledo and your play Watson: The Last Great Tale Of The Legendary Sherlock Holmes has won just about every award in the book? Elementary, my dear reader. You do what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did after creating his mystery-solving supersleuth in A Study In Scarlet (and what Universal Pictures kept doing year after year for their own inimitable Sherlock, Basil Rathbone). You write and direct a sequel, in this case Watson And The Dark Art Of Harry Houdini, and if the results don’t match the original in sheer brilliance, Watson 2.0 does for the most part avoid the dreaded sophomore curse.
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SOUTH PACIFIC
Monday, July 8th, 2013
Inspired by the thrilling 2008 Broadway revival, and making splendid use of its gorgeous National Tour sets and costumes, Moonlight Stage Productions now brings Southern California audiences an unforgettable outdoor staging of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific under the inspired direction of its new artistic director Steven Glaudini.
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SWEET KARMA
Saturday, July 6th, 2013
He was a 35-year-old physician when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia, and barely escaped the holocaust that took the lives of more than a quarter of his countrymen. He was a refugee-turned-movie actor, winning an Oscar for his film—and acting—debut as real-life Cambodian journalist Dith Pran. He was a humanitarian who worked to rebuild his shattered country. And after surviving the killing fields, he met his death in the streets of Los Angeles, murdered by members of a predominantly Cambodian street gang.
This was the life—and death—of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, explored by playwright Henry Ong in the powerful Sweet Karma, now getting an exquisitely designed, imaginatively directed, and beautifully acted West Coast Premiere at the Grove Theatre Center.
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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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