SHAKE
Saturday, August 7th, 2010
There’s something about Reverse Chronology that can work magic with a tale of innocence lost. Take for example Harold Pinter’s Betrayal or Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, the former beginning with the end of a marriage and ending with the characters’ first meeting, the latter starting off with three irreparably estranged friends and climaxing with the threesome as starry-eyed best-friends-forever. There’s something particularly poignant about a happy ending when you already know the disillusionment yet to come.
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BOYS’ LIFE
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
Howard Korder writes insightfully—and hilariously—about the male psyche in his 1988 comedy Boys’ Life, smashingly revived (and smoothy updated to the 21st Century) by Crown City Theatre Company. Impeccably acted and directed, this is a production which ought to disprove once and for all any notion of Los Angeles not being the great theater town it is.
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IN THE HEIGHTS
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
When West Side Story premiered on Broadway in 1957, one might have assumed that sometime over the following half century, another hit Broadway musical would center on Latino life in New York City, or on Latino life anywhere for that matter. It would, after all, make sense for a musical as revolutionary as West Side Story to engender others that followed its ground-breaking example, right?
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THE GOOD BOOK OF PEDANTRY AND WONDER
Sunday, August 1st, 2010
In 1879, British lexicographer James Murray was hired by Oxford University Press to edit a new dictionary of the English language, a task expected to take about ten years and result in a 7,000-page tome. Holed up in a corrugated-iron garden shed on the grounds of Mill Hill School, Murray began the monumental undertaking with the help of a small team of assistants. Neither the linguist nor the dons of Oxford could have imagined that it would take until 1928 for the dictionary to be completed (nearly a decade after Murray’s death) and that the final product would end up a twelve-volume tome instead of the initially planned four volumes.
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WEST SIDE STORY
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
If ever a Broadway musical deserved to be called a classic, that musical is West Side Story. What must Broadway audiences have felt as they first discovered it back in 1957? This was, after all, a Broadway whose most recent Tony-winners were My Fair Lady, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game. What must audiences who were accustomed to this sunny fare have thought about a show whose leading man and leading lady didn’t have the proverbial happy ending, and whose characters lived dismal lives in the worst parts of Manhattan and hated anyone whose differences threatened their go-nowhere existences? What must they have thought about Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy, operatic score, about Stephen Sondheim’s poetic lyrics, about Arthur Laurents’ Romeo and Juliet inspired book, and above all about Jerome Robbins’ truly revolutionary choreography? How must West Side Story have rocked the world of those Eisenhower-era 1950s New Yorkers and, even more so, of the out-of-towners who make up so much of a Broadway show’s audience?
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THE EXISTENTS
Friday, July 30th, 2010
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to witness the coming together—and ultimate breakup—of a superstar rock band like, say, Fleetwood Mac, you won’t want to miss The Existents, the new rock musical by Ty Taylor, Douglas Crawford, and Jason Wooten.
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BEDROOM FARCE
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Alan Ayckbourn is back at the Odyssey Theatre, the British playwright’s West Los Angeles “home away from home,” with his 1975 smash Bedroom Farce, While not exactly a farce per se (there are no slamming doors or mistaken identities), Bedroom Farce nonetheless provides two hours of frothy fun, particularly in its wild-and-crazy second act.
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HAIRSPRAY
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
Following over six years (and a grand total of 2642 performances) on Broadway and several Equity and non-Equity National Tours, the smash hit musical Hairspray has at last been made available to theaters across the country, and San Diego Repertory Theatre has scored big in getting the rights to its Southern California Regional Theater Premiere, making for a delightful, often outstanding production directed with assurance and flair by Sam Woodhouse and featuring actors who put their own stamp on John Waters’ memorable characters and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s tuneful songs.
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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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