CALL ME MADAM


Here’s a question for Los Angeles area musical theater lovers. Of the two Tony-winning musicals of 1951, Guys And Dolls and Call Me Madam, which one have you seen over and over again and which one have you never seen—or at least not until last night at Glendale’s Alex Theatre?

The answer to the second part of the question is, of course, Irving Berlin’s Call Me Madam, the mostly forgotten winner of three Tonys (for Best Score, Best Actress, and Best Featured Actor), a musical gem/chestnut that hundreds of Angelinos got to experience last night in Concert Staged Reading form, thanks to the oh-so talented triple-threats of L.A.’s Musical Theatre Guild.
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WHEN LAST WE FLEW


Playwright Harrison David Rivers and Diversionary Theatre score a pair of coups, the former in having his award-winning* when last we flew get its West Coast Premiere at San Diego’s esteemed LGBT theater, the latter in giving Rivers’ mystical, magical dramedy its first major, fully-staged production since its limited-run debut at the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival.  The result is one of the best (and most unique) coming of age stories I’ve seen onstage.
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IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER


The gods and goddesses of the West African Yoruba people are transformed into African-Americans living in the projects of San Pere, Louisiana in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s award-winning In The Red And Brown Water, now getting an impressive Los Angeles premiere at the Fountain Theatre.
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DOESN’T ANYONE KNOW WHAT A PANCREAS IS?


Friends (and friends of friends) find themselves Looking For Love In Los Angeles in Carole Real’s funny, perceptive new comedy Doesn’t Anybody Know What A Pancreas Is?, now getting a sparkling World Premiere production by Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA.
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TEA, WITH MUSIC


When Velina Hasu Houston’s Tea was first staged back in 1987, the playwright could scarcely have imagined that one night, twenty-five years later, her poetic tribute to her mother and the 100,000 other Japanese “war brides” who came to the U.S. after World War II would one night become Tea, With Music, an exquisite new chamber musical now getting its World Premiere production by East West Players.
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INTIMATE APPAREL


Elegant writing, a fascinating place and time, and an African-American heroine rarely given center-stage status transform Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel from soap opera to Outer Critics Circle Award-winning drama, as Los Angeles audiences can now (re)discover in its impeccable big-stage revival at the Pasadena Playhouse.
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AVENUE Q


DOMA Theatre Company presents its strongest production to date with the first L.A.-area intimate staging of Avenue Q, Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx, and Jeff Whitty’s 2004 Tony-winning Best Musical, brought to fresh new life by director extraordinaire Richard Israel and an ever-so-talented young cast.
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THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA


Two men facing imminent death from a terminal illness and a doctor with the means to save only one of them. Who will live? Who will die?

If this sounds like a made-for-TV movie or an episode of a weekly medical drama, think again. It’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, George Bernard Shaw’s smart, funny, still thought-provoking 1906 comedy and the latest classic to be revived—smashingly—by A Noise Within.
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