DONNA/MADONNA
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1980s, John Paul Karliak always knew he was adopted. What he didn’t figure out until a good deal later was that there wouldn’t be a Mrs. Karliak in his future, if you get my drift. Still, despite young J.P.’s cluelessness to his budding sexual orientation, it must have been hard for his family to mistake the signs: An occasional dress. A running gait like Tinkerbell’s. The ability to quote Auntie Mame as if it were the Bible.
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A DEATH IN COLOMBIA
Sunday, July 3rd, 2011
It takes particular skill to write a thriller for the stage. Playwrights can’t rely on chase sequences or camera angles or other cinematic tricks as screenwriters can. Their task becomes all the more difficult if the stage thriller they’re writing is to unfold in real time on a single set with only a handful of characters. Add to the above a political theme, and you’ve got a doozy of a writing assignment.
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Friday, July 1st, 2011
It takes a good deal of chutzpah to chop an hour off the running time of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a great deal of talent to pull it off, a feat which Vanguard Rep has performed to perfection—and to gales of laughter—in an open-air production certain to delight audiences of all ages, and that includes Shakespearephiles-and-phobes alike.
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BROADSWORD: A HEAVY METAL PLAY
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Sixteen years ago, four young New Jerseyans dreamed of a heavy metal stardom that would transport them far away from the Podunk town of Rahway. Then, as these things happen, their lead singer got a too-good-to-resist offer of a solo career and the remaining three were left to pick up the pieces. Now, a decade and a half later one of the the foursome is dead (or at the very least presumed dead), and his surviving bandmates have reunited for his memorial.
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1776
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
If you’ve ever wondered what it would have felt like to be a fly on the wall of the Continental Congress of 1776 as our country’s Founding Fathers wrangled over the question of Independence from Great Britain and the writing of our Declaration Of Independence, then wonder no more. Instead, head on over to Glendale Centre Theatre, where a splendid cast of twenty-six under the skilled direction of Todd Nielsen revive the 1969 Broadway musical 1776 in an “all-a-round” terrific in-the-round staging.
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TWIST: AN AMERICAN MUSICAL
Sunday, June 26th, 2011
Simply put, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of Twist: An American Musical are as breathtakingly thrilling as any I’ve ever experienced inside a theater. An honest-to-goodness overture previews some of the tunes we’ll be hearing, and how exciting it feels to have this mostly lost tradition revived. Then comes “Back By Demand,” the kind of dazzling tap extravaganza one might have seen at Harlem’s legendary Prohibition-era Cotton Club, though here it is set in Louisiana’s Big Easy, aka New Orleans, and the applause it inspires seems to go on forever.
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CHICAGO
Saturday, June 25th, 2011
Just the thought of a community theater trying its hand at the Broadway megahit Chicago is probably enough to send most Kander and Ebb lovers scurrying in the opposite direction, that is unless the community theater in question is Santa Monica’s venerable Morgan-Wixson. As their productions of Urinetown: A Musical, A Chorus Line, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have demonstrated, the folks at the Morgan-Wixson are more than capable of staging quality musical theater on a tight budget—without the benefit of Equity performers, blessed as they are with directors, designers, and technical staff who know their stuff, and the talent pool of an area as crowded with triple-threats as is Los Angeles.
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BAKERSFIELD MIST
Friday, June 24th, 2011
If there’s anyone with whom most Los Angeles theatergoers would surely not want to change places, it would probably be Maude Gutman of Bakersfield, the heroine of Stephen Sachs’ impressive World Premiere comedy Bakersfield Mist, now playing at the Fountain Theatre. Not only would the mere idea of living without a hundred or more plays to choose from each week be eminently resistible, a mere glance at the rundown knickknack-filled trailer Maude calls (mobile) home would provoke a spontaneous urge to hightail it back to L.A. asap.
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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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