MEMPHIS
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012
December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. November 6, 2012: Barack Obama is reelected to the Presidency of the United States. What a difference 57 years make!
November 6, 2012 happens also to have been the Opening Night of the National Tour of Memphis, the Tony-winning Best Musical set in the same decade Rosa Parks made her historic stand for racial equality, a serendipitous coincidence given that Memphis is the fictional but fact-inspired tale of Huey Calhoun, a Memphis DJ who made history in his own way by daring to play “race music” on mainstream, i.e. white radio. That particularly groundbreaking step, and Calhoun’s then illegal romance with a young singer he meets on his first visit to a “colored” nightclub, are at the heart of one of the most powerful—and most tuneful and exuberant—musicals Broadway has seen in many a year.
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THE FISHERMAN’S WIFE
Tuesday, November 6th, 2012
An unhappily married fisherman and his wife get some unsolicited sex therapy from a nautically tattooed traveling salesman and a sexually insatiable pair of tentacled sea creatures in Steve Yockey’s laugh-out-loud surreal screwball comedy The Fisherman’s Wife, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s maiden offering in The Speakeasy, its brand new (and aptly named) performance space in Atwater Village.
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AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
Monday, November 5th, 2012
A mysterious host invites eight guests, each of them a stranger to the others, for an island holiday off the coast of Devon, a pair of married servants in attendance and said host (or hostess?) nowhere to be seen. Does this sound like recipe for murder?
To a diehard Agatha Christie fan, it not only does, it sounds suspiciously like And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians), published first as a novel in 1939 and then adapted for the stage by the author herself in 1943.
Hollywood’s Actors Co-op now revives this Christie gem in a production that makes for as entertaining and suspenseful a mystery thriller as any Christie fan or neophyte could possibly ask for, thanks to incisive direction by Linda Kerns and topnotch performances by an all-around terrific cast.
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THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW
Sunday, November 4th, 2012
What would the Halloween season be without the camp classic Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, the science fiction/horror movie spoof that has become so iconic, it now includes its creator’s name in its official title?
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SPRING AWAKENING
Saturday, November 3rd, 2012
More than a dozen talented young Southland triple-threats have brought Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s Spring Awakening to the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, where they star in a topnotch staging of the Tony-winning musical adaptation of Frank Wedenkind’s groundbreaking 1891 drama.
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HOW TO WRITE A NEW BOOK FOR THE BIBLE
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
I wonder if any son has ever paid greater tribute to his mother than Bill Cain does in How To Write A New Book For The Bible, his extraordinary new play about her death—and her life, told extraordinarily well in its Southern California Premiere at South Coast Repertory.
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EDITH CAN SHOOT THINGS AND HIT THEM
Monday, October 29th, 2012
How times have changed for gay American teens over the past two decades. Kenny Tolentino could scarcely have conceived of Gay Straight Alliances or “It Gets Better” videos or out celebrities like Ricky Martin and Zachary Quinto (Mr. Spock, no less!) when he was sixteen just twenty years ago, a coming of age now chronicled by A. Rey Pamatmat in his absolutely wonderful Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them.
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42nd STREET
Sunday, October 28th, 2012
The audience has only just finished applauding this Broadway classic’s “Greatest Hits” overture when the curtain rises to reveal the legs—and only the legs—of thirty long-legged hoofers tap-dancing as if their Broadway careers depended on it (as they indeed do) … and the audience erupts in high-decibel cheers.
Anyone who knows musical theater can surely identify the show in question. It’s the Broadway megahit 42nd Street (3486 performances in its original run and another 1524 in its smash revival), now playing to sold-out houses at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West in a production that sets the bar spectacularly high for any other company with the chutzpah to follow in their foot-taps.
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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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