GOOD PEOPLE
Thursday, October 18th, 2012
When a well-known politician recently made some off-the-cuff remarks about a certain 47% of Americans he essentially considers free-loading bums, one American who’d surely have a word or two to say to him would be Margaret Walsh, the protagonist of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, currently America’s most-produced play—and a great one at that, as its San Diego premiere at the Old Globe Theatre makes abundantly clear.
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CREATION
Monday, October 15th, 2012
Ian and Sarah have had what would seem to be the perfect marriage, not only of hearts but of minds, his work as an evolutionary biologist complimenting hers as a pathologist with none of that religious mumbo-jumbo attached. Then one night Ian gets struck by lightning and all that changes in an instant.
Thus begins Kathryn Walat’s intriguing, thought-provoking new drama Creation, now getting its World Premiere in a production that makes it abundantly clear why The Theatre @ Boston Court is as top-tier as 99-Seat-Plan theater gets.
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HAIRSPRAY
Sunday, October 14th, 2012
When I tell you that 3-D Theatricals’ big-stage, big-budget production of “Broadway’s Big Fat Musical Comedy Hit” is the best Hairspray I’ve seen since catching both the original Broadway production and its First National Tour in 2004, trust me that having seen now nine different productions since then (all in the space of two and a half years), this is the Hairspray not to be missed.
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AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’
Saturday, October 13th, 2012
The music of the Harlem Renaissance lives again in Long Beach as five sensational triple-threats perform the music of Fats Waller in International City Theatre’s snazzy revival of the 1978 Tony-winning Best Musical Ain’t Misbehavin’.
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ORDINARY DAYS
Friday, October 12th, 2012
The lives of the four young New Yorkers featured in Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days may well be nothing out of the ordinary, but the same cannot be said about the exquisite chamber musical which Southern Californians first discovered in 2010 in its big-stage West Coast Premiere at South Coast Repertory.
Now, director Patrick Pearson and a talented cast of Cal State Fullerton Musical Theater BFA majors bring Gwon’s musical back to its intimate theater roots at CSUF’s off-campus black box, Santa Ana’s Grand Central Theatre, and what a gem of a production it is.
TWILIGHT ZONE UNSCRIPTED
Thursday, October 11th, 2012
“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.”
Anyone around in the early 1960s can surely recall these words, and the voice of the man speaking them, the legendary Rod Serling, creator of the iconic TV series The Twilight Zone, one which spawned a feature film, a radio series, a comic book, a magazine, and various other spin-offs over the next five decades, including two revival television series and now, in 2012, an evening of hilariously improvised theater which the masters of improvisation known as Impro Theatre have entitled—what else?—Twilight Zone Unscripted.
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SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
Autobiographical solo performances may sometimes seem to be a dime a dozen in L.A. (or at the very least during Fringe Festival season), but when was the last time you saw an autobiographical magic show by one of the finest actors in town?
Unless you’ve caught Albie Selznick’s Smoke And Mirrors, the answer is probably “No”—all the more reason not to miss this hour-and-a-half of mysterious card tricks, furniture and humans levitated without a cord in sight, and handkerchiefs turned into birds of many colors, birds, birds, and more birds, enough to fill a mini-aviary, or at least a very large cage. Add to that an otherworldly Oracle (who’d make a terrific stand up comedienne if only she had legs to stand up on instead of just a gigantic, balloon-shaped head), a human-sized bunny rabbit, and a poignant coming-of-age story and you’ve got one uniquely entertaining show, directed with panache by Paul Millet.
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ANYTHING GOES
Sunday, October 7th, 2012
Way back in Broadway’s pre-Oklahoma! days, pretty much all that was required to create a hit musical was a a dozen or so songs (preferably by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, or Rodgers & Hart) and some lively dance numbers (the kind that Busby Berkeley was creating both in New York and in Hollywood). As for plot, three-dimensional characters, or any trace of the dramatic, well who needed those so long as a show’s zany characters made you laugh?
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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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