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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THE WIZARD OF OZ
Saturday, October 15th, 2011
Children of all ages (and that means parents and grandparents too) can now join Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Toto in following the yellow brick road to the Land Of Oz as 3-D Theatricals concludes its second season with the L. Frank Baum/MGM classic The Wizard Of Oz.
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DUSK RINGS A BELL
Friday, October 14th, 2011
Playwright Stephen Belber starts off his latest with a classic romantic setup—then throws the audience an unexpectedly serious curve—in Dusk Rings A Bell, his not quite perfect but nonetheless highly affecting two-hander, now playing at Hollywood’s Blank Theatre in an exquisitely acted and directed West Coast Premiere.
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SHIRLEY VALENTINE
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
Chick flick fans of a certain age may recall British actress Pauline Collins’ Oscar-nominated performance as Shirley Valentine in the 1989 movie of the same name. If you’re like me, you sat entranced watching 40something Liverpool housewife Shirley leave the drudgery of her day-to-day existence for a life-altering holiday in Greece, her traveling companion not her inattentive, unappreciative lug of a husband but contest-winning best friend Jane—who promptly abandons Shirley upon arrival. Befriended by an English couple whose xenophobia proves too much to take, Shirley takes off into the night and into arms of a handsome Greek named Costas.
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THE DINOSAUR WITHIN
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
An aging, wheelchair-bound 1960s movie goddess longs for a return to past glories. Her greatest fan, a young Australian aborigine hoping to break into the movie biz in Hollywood, still mourns the death of his two older brothers to suicide. A newspaper reporter remains incapable of recovering from the disappearance of his ten-year-old son years before.
The lives of these three disparate characters intersect in both “The Dreamtime” and “The Dream Factory” in John Walch’s powerful, engrossing, deeply moving The Dinosaur Within, now getting its most major production to date at Pasadena’s Theatre @ Boston Court under the inspired direction of Michael Michetti.
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tick, tick … BOOM!
Monday, October 10th, 2011
With its twelve years and 5,124 performances on Broadway, a major motion picture, countless recent Southern California productions large and small, and an ongoing off-Broadway revival, it seems hard to believe there was ever a time before Jonathan Larson’s Rent.
But there was.
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THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS
Sunday, October 9th, 2011
Stephen Metcalfe’s gripping new drama The Tragedy Of The Commons takes as its title a term coined in the early 1960s by sociobiologist Garrett Hardin, though it’s not until late in the play that its protagonist explains Hardin’s concept: (read more)
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