THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND
Saturday, February 16th, 2013
You may think you’ve seen The World Goes ‘Round before—the hit musical revue featuring 30 mostly little-known Kander & Ebb songs performed cabaret-style by a cast of 5. Yes, indeed, you may think you’ve seen The World Goes ‘Round (or And The World Goes ‘Round if you will), but trust me, you’ve never seen The World Goes Round as Downey Civic Light Opera executive producer Marsha Moode has reconceived it as a TV variety show-style extravaganza featuring 41 Kander & Ebb songs, including many of their Greatest Hits, as performed by cast of 37. Purists may carp, but for those in the Moode for two-and-a half hours of pure entertainment (with a bunch of Kander & Ebb trivia thrown in for good measure), the Downey Civic Light Opera’s The World Goes ‘Round more than fits the bill.
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COMPANY
Friday, February 15th, 2013
“Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!”
As any musical theater buff can tell you, the person whose phone is ringing and whose door is chiming and who is welcoming company into his Manhattan pad is none other than Robert, aka Bobby, aka Bob, aka Bobbo, aka Robby, aka Bobby Baby, aka Robert Darling, aka Bobby Honey, the bachelor lead of Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Tony-winning Best Musical of 1970, now getting its first L.A. production in what seems like eons—and a pretty darned terrific one at that—at North Hollywood’s Crown City Theatre.
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CHRISTMAS IN HANOI
Friday, February 15th, 2013
East West Players takes a chance on something new—a ghost story set in contemporary Vietnam—and comes up with a winner in Eddie Borey’s Christmas In Hanoi. As brought to life by a topnotch creative team, Borey’s EWP’s playwriting competition-winning script makes for a strong 2013 opener for the country’s premier Asian-American theater.
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CHESS
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
After their phenomenal concert staged reading of Titanic The Musical, a production I dubbed “one of Musical Theatre Guild’s crowning achievements,” you might think that the triple-threats of MTG would want to take it easy for the rest of the 2012-2013 season.
Not so, as last night’s titanic staging of Chess (In Concert) at Glendale’s Alex Theatre made abundantly clear, and for those who missed this phenomenal achievement, you have but one more chance to catch it this coming Sunday afternoon in Thousand Oaks.
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BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Monday, February 11th, 2013
What do a couple of gay male penguins immortalized in a controversial children’s book, an opposite-gender pair of red-tailed hawks nesting on a top-story ledge of a pricey Upper Manhattan co-op, and the marital woes of a former ABC/CBS/Fox/CNN news anchor have in common?
The answer is that all of the above take center stage in Birds Of A Feather, Marc Acito’s sweet, funny, topical, and ultimately quite moving one-act comedy now making its West Coast debut in a something-to-squawk-about production at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre.
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YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
Saturday, February 9th, 2013
Fans of Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Sally, and Snoopy will want to head up to Thousand Oaks to join the pint-sized Peanuts icons in a celebration of the life of a boy named Charlie Brown in the crowd-pleasing musical You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, the second production in Cabrillo Music Theatre’s 2012-2013 season.
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CHINGLISH
Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet” … because if so, complications will surely ensue as they do in David Henry Hwang’s hilarious (and eye-opening) Chinglish, freshly arrived at South Coast Repertory from Berkeley Rep with its entire creative team and virtually its entire cast intact.
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FALLEN ANGELS
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
The Pasadena Playhouse has come up with a surefire recipe for crowd-pleasing comedy. Start with a script by a master playwright, hire a cast of crackerjack comedic whizzes, surround them with a production that looks as smashing as Broadway’s best, and above all, entrust the entire project to director Art Manke, who has taken an early Noël Coward gem and turned it into a hilarious hit that would do Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance proud.
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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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