A NEW BRAIN
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
Musical Theatre Guild continued its finest season in years with Monday evening’s one-night-only concert staged reading of William Finn’s A New Brain, so brilliantly directed (by Todd Nielsen) and performed with such polish and panache that it came close to meriting the words “fully staged,” quite an achievement considering that the entire shebang was put together with a mere twenty-five hours of rehearsal.
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FORBIDDEN BROADWAY GREATEST HITS, VOLUME 2
Monday, April 16th, 2012
It’s been thirty years now since New York City audiences first got treated to Forbidden Broadway, a series of revues spoofing The Great White Way’s latest hits (and flops).
Since 1982, a revolving quartet of supertalented performers backed by a piano—and the master-satirist that is writer/creator Gerard Alessandrini—have lampooned Broadway legends like Carol Channing, Ethel Merman, and Mandy Patinkin, current hit shows like Wicked and Mary Poppins, and musical theater classics from Evita to Annie to Cats.
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DAMES AT SEA
Sunday, April 15th, 2012
It’s the 1930s and the height of the Great Depression. A pretty young would-be hoofer arrives in New York City with dreams of starring on the Great White Way. When a temperamental Broadway diva becomes indisposed, our sweet young thing is the only chorus girl able to take on the star’s leading role at a moment’s notice. Recognize the plot? It’s 42nd Street, right?
Wrong!
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MORNING’S AT SEVEN
Saturday, April 14th, 2012
“Morning’s at seven. The hill-side’s dew-pearled. The lark’s on the wing. The snail’s on the thorn. God’s in His heaven. All’s right with the world!”
–Robert Browning
All does indeed seem right with the world, at least at first glance, in Paul Osborn’s 1939 classic Morning’s At Seven, now being revived at the venerable Sierra Madre Playhouse. Sisters Cora and Ida have each been married for decades to men they adore, and have lived in side-by-side houses somewhere in the American Midwest for the past forty years or so. Married eldest sister Esther lives only a block and a half away, while spinster Arry resides with Cora and Cora’s husband Thor. Aside from Thor’s hypochondriacal complaints, which his wife has long gotten used to, the Gibbs sisters would seem to be, if not the happiest siblings ever, then at least far from the unhappiest.
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THE PRINCE OF ATLANTIS
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
An adult adoptee attempts to connect with his birth father, who then concocts a cockamamie scheme to have his younger brother pretend to be Dear Old Dad, in Steven Drukman’s The Prince Of At Atlantis, now getting its World Premiere at South Coast Repertory.
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THE BUNGLER
Monday, April 9th, 2012
When you hear the name Moliere, it’s likely that The Bungler, one of the 17th Century playwright’s earliest comedies, will not make the list of titles coming to mind. Still, if A Noise Within’s production of this little-known gem is any indication, The Bungler (aka L’Etourdi) is one of the French master’s funniest confections—or so it would seem as conceived by director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott.anselm
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THE PRIDE
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
Playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell puts a personal face on Contemporary Gay History in his provocative, daringly constructed, thought-provoking, occasionally hilarious, and profoundly impactful The Pride, the latest offering by San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre, and one of its very best.
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LAURA
Friday, April 6th, 2012
“Laura is the face in the misty light, footsteps that you hear down the hall, the laugh that floats on a summer night that you can never quite recall…”
Anyone familiar with the mid-20th Century Hit Parade will surely recall the David Raskin/Johnny Mercer song standard “Laura” and its many covers by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and the majority of film buffs will likely have seen the 1944 Otto Preminger film noir classic of the same name, starring Dana Andrews as a detective investigating the murder of a beautiful, successful ad executive (portrayed in flashbacks by Gene Tierney) and based on a novel by Vera Caspary.
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