HAIRSPRAY
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
It’s taken nearly ten years for the Broadway smash musical Hairspray to get its first L.A.-area CLO production, but it’s been well worth the wait, as Musical Theatre West’s sensational Opening Night performance at the Carpenter Center made abundantly clear.
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NINE CIRCLES
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
If protests against the war in Iraq have never come close to reaching the size or intensity of those of the Vietnam War era, one need merely compare the military demographics of troops serving in the Iraqi desert with those of soldiers sent to fight in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Whereas the pre-1973 military draft affected all but the wealthiest of Americans more or less equally, these days we have an all-volunteer Army, few of whose members have likely chosen a soldier’s life over a university degree or a white collar job. In fact, as Bill Cain’s Nine Circles makes abundantly clear, with soldiers like Pvt. Daniel Reeves in uniform, our military may well be scraping the very bottom of the barrel in recruiting new grunts. If not for Cain’s searing, probing, heart-rending look at Pvt. Reeves wounded soul, few among us would give much of a damn whether he lived his soldier’s life or got sent home in a body bag.
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PRIVATE LIVES
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
Five of the best and brightest of the Hermosa Beach Playhouse’s unofficial “resident company” of stars have reunited under artistic director Stephanie A. Coltrin’s directorial baton to bring Noël Coward’s Private Lives to the South Bay Cities. Who could ask for anything more?
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I LOVE LUCY® LIVE ON STAGE
Monday, October 24th, 2011
Have you ever wondered what it might have been like to be inside Desilu Studios for a taping of the sitcom that revolutionized TV? If so, then let I Love Lucy® Live on Stage be your time machine back to the early 1950s—and ninety of the funnest/funniest minutes you’re likely to have all year.
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PEACE IN OUR TIME
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
It’s November of 1940 and the folks gathered at The Shy Gazelle are precisely those you’d expect to run into in a London pub just a month after the Battle Of Britain. Gregarious manager Fred Shattock and his affable wife Nora are offering pub regulars their customary warm welcome as they serve the usual libations to entertainer Lyia Viven and her lover George Bourne, magazine editor Chorley Bannister, chums Janet Braid and Alma Broughton, and middle-aged couple Mr. and Mrs. Grainger. Conversation revolves around the usual topics—news of the Grangers’ soldier son, “still there, on the Isle Of Wright;” the “dreadfully negative” nine o’clock BBC Nightly News broadcast; George’s defense of Lyia’s vocal talents against Chorley’s nasty digs, etc.
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ALL MY SONS
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
It’s been nearly sixty-five years since Broadway audiences first thrilled to Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, decades during which countless actors have put their stamp on the now iconic roles of factory owner Joe Keller, Joe’s son Chris, Chris’s fiancée Ann Deever, and Ann’s brother George. It’s a sure bet, however, that few if any of them have ever looked like Alex Morris, A.K. Murtadha, Linda Park, and James Hiroyuki Liao—and for obvious reasons. The Kellers and Deevers are Caucasian. Morris, Murtadha, Park, and Liao are not.
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SOUTHERN COMFORTS
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
To hear Hollywood tell it, the only thing post-retirement folks are good for is a laugh, often at their own expense. As for romance or (God forbid) sex, forget it. For these and many other reasons, Kathleen Clark’s romantic comedy Southern Comforts, now playing at Burbank’s Falcon Theatre, comes as a welcome treat.
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THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM
Sunday, October 16th, 2011
When was the last time you saw a production of the Tony Award-winning, Drama Desk Award-nominated Broadway musical The Robber Bridegroom?
Ask most any Los Angeles theatergoer for their answer and the one you’ll probably get is “Never.” Despite a hilarious book and oh-so clever lyrics by Alfred (Driving Miss Daisy) Uhry and a showful of catchy bluegrass melodies by Robert Waldman, about the only professional L.A. production in the past decade would appear to have been Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only concert staged reading in 2001—all the more reason to celebrate its current revival at International City Theatre in Long Beach, though hardly the only one.
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