LEGS DIAMOND
Tuesday, December 4th, 2012
Legs Diamond died twice, the first time in a mob shootout on December 18, 1931, and then a second time on February 19, 1989, when the musical bearing the Prohibition-era gangster’s name died an ignominious death inside the soon-to-be-defunct-itself Mark Hellinger Theatre, the victim of too much hurried rewriting and a leading man who wasn’t quite the triple-threat the role of Legs required.
End of story, right?
Wrong, though it would have been without Michael Betts, co-producer of Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series, who fell in love with the musical’s Original Broadway Cast recording and refused to let go of a dream to bring Legs back to life, even if for One Night Only, a dream which came miraculously true on Sunday, December 2, 2012.
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IN THE HEIGHTS
Monday, December 3rd, 2012
In The Heights, the Tony-winning Best Musical of 2008, now gets its very first Los Angeles regional staging—an under-the-radar intimate production in L.A.’s own (Boyle) Heights that is so sensational it deserves to be on any musical theater fan’s radar throughout the month of December, and hopefully beyond.
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THE SNOW QUEEN
Saturday, December 1st, 2012
That particularly English form of musical entertainment called “panto” is back for the holidays in Dale Sandlin and Steve Apostolina’s “Frosty Fractured Fable” The Snow Queen, now keeping audiences in stitches at South Pasadena’s Fremont Centre Theatre under the imaginative, effervescent direction of McKerrin Kelly.
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CONEY ISLAND CHRISTMAS
Friday, November 30th, 2012
The Geffen Playhouse has begun what could well turn into an annual holiday event with their World Premiere staging of Donald Margulies’ Coney Island Christmas, the Pulitzer Prize winner’s heartwarming, crowd-pleasing look back at a Brooklyn December circa 1935, directed with flair and heart by Bart DeLorenzo.
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MRS. MANNERLY
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
Playwright Jeffery Hatcher takes a delightful trip down memory lane in Mrs. Mannerly, his staged memoir of an etiquette class he once took under the tutelage of Mrs. Helen Anderson Kirk, aka the Emily Post of Steubenville, Ohio.
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THE EIGHT: REINDEER MONOLOGUES
Tuesday, November 27th, 2012
Chance Theater resident artist Casey Long could hardly have imagined back in 2004 that eight Christmases later he’d be performing in the Ninth Annual Chance production of The Eight: Reindeer Monologues. Yet, miracle of miracles, Casey and the rest of The Eight (reindeer that is) continue shocking and delighting Orange County audiences with year after year of raunchy, R-rated yuletide cheer, written by Jeff Goode (author of the equally adult-themed Poona The Fuckdog And Other Plays For Children).
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LITTLE WOMEN THE BROADWAY MUSICAL
Sunday, November 25th, 2012
Little Women The Broadway Musical returns to the Chance Theater for the first time since its maiden holiday engagement in 2009, and to paraphrase an Oscar-nominated song, the Chance hit proves even more wonderful the second time around.
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ANGELS FALL
Saturday, November 24th, 2012
Confine a group of strangers in an enclosed space and what do you get? Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential classic No Exit? Michael Leoni’s smash L.A. hit Elevator? TV’s Big Brother, now in its 14th season?
To this list Los Angeles theatergoers can now add Lanford Wilson’s Tony-nominated (for Best Play of 1982) Angels Fall, now getting a marvelous intimate staging by The Production Company, a 30th Anniversary revival which not only does ample justice to Wilson’s themes but does so in the most entertaining of ways.
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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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