HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES
Friday, April 30th, 2010
In the musical theater classic Gypsy, strippers Mazeppa, Electra, and Tessie Tura sing, “You gotta have a gimmick if you wanna get ahead.” No playwright would seem to have taken this advice more seriously than prolific British comedy scribe Alan Ayckbourn, whose hit plays almost always have a gimmick.
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TROG AND CLAY: AN IMAGINED HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC CHAIR
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Michael Vukadinovich’s Trog And Clay: An Imagined History Of The Electric Chair may well be one of the funniest plays ever written about actual events, the ingenious playwright having turned the rivalry between electricity pioneers Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse (which led to the first ever execution by electrocution in the U.S.) into a hilarious fact-based absurdist historical farce.
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FULLY COMMITTED
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
If you haven’t heard that one before, Sam Peliczowski probably has. Sam is, you see, a struggling New York-based actor with the worst restaurant job in the Big Apple. Stuck deep down in a tiny basement cell, Sam is the reservations clerk for one of the city’s most shi-shi établissements. No chance for Sam to be seen by directors, producers, casting people. No chance for him to meet women (or men, if he happens to swing that way). No chance to get even the measliest of tips.
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JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
It’s taken me twenty-eight years to see my first production of 1982’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (and even longer if you count the show’s pre-Broadway incarnations), and now, having finally experienced the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical on the great big stage of the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, it’s rainbow clear to me why the Joseph has become an international phenomenon. The show is one hundred minutes of pure, unadulterated, Technicolor music and fun.
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NINE
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
When Rob Marshall’s movie adaptation of Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston’s Nine came out last year, many reviewers and moviegoers shook their heads. Could this film (rated a mere 6.2 by imdb.com users and a dismal 49/100 by major media reviewers*) actually have been nominated for twelve Tonys and won five (including Best Musical and Best Score) when it debuted as a Broadway musical in 1982? What did the original show have that Marshall’s movie lacked?
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WELCOME HOME JENNY SUTTER
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
Jenny Sutter is the newest kind of wounded war vet—a female United States Marine who, just like her male counterparts did four decades ago upon returning home from an unpopular war in Southeast Asia, has no idea how she can possibly fit back into a “normal” life after the hell she experienced in Iraq.
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STARMITES
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Here’s a trivia question for all you musical theater buffs out there. Name a Broadway musical (within the last quarter century) nominated for six Tony awards including Best Musical—that absolutely no one has heard of.
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LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Audrey II, the “strange and interesting plant” that made his/her/its? first appearance way back in Roger Corman’s 1960 Z-movie classic, is back, newly arrived in Thousand Oaks for a two-week visit with much voracious munching on his/her/its cannibalistic mind—and you all know what that means. “They may offer you lots of cheap thrills, fancy condos in Beverly Hills, but whatever they offer you, don’t feed the plants!”
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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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