MARRY ME A LITTLE/THE LAST FIVE YEARS
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
My favorite East West Players shows are their productions of well-known plays and musicals which offer Asian-American actors the opportunity to tackle roles for which they might not normally be considered. Whether dramatic fare, like Proof or Equus, or musicals like Little Shop Of Horrors or pretty much all of the Sondheim oeuvre, or a play with music like Master Class, these are the productions which have left the strongest, best impressions on me.
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THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
Diversionary Theatre’s production of The Little Dog Laughed makes several things perfectly clear. First, that despite the out, proud, and successful-as-ever Neil Patrick Harrises and T.R. Knights et al, the closet is alive and well in Hollywood. Second, that Douglas Carter Beane’s comedy may be the funniest Broadway show yet about gay movie stars, lesbian agents, and bisexual hustlers. Third, and the best news of all for San Diego audiences, Diversionary’s cast of four locally-based actors stands up very nicely to their Broadway counterparts, thank you very much.
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BIG THE MUSICAL
Friday, May 8th, 2009
Following its award-winning productions of Zanna, Don’t and Assassins, West Coast Ensemble continues its winning streak of musical hits with a sensational intimate staging of Big The Musical.
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FORBIDDEN BROADWAY
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
For the past 27 years, New York City audiences have been treated to Forbidden Broadway, a series of ten or so revues spoofing The Great White Way’s latest hits (and flops). Since 1982, a revolving quartet of supertalented performers backed by a piano—and the master-satirizer that is writer/creator Gerard Alessandrini—have lampooned Broadway legends like Carol Channing and Liza Minnelli, current hit shows a la Jersey Boys and Mary Poppins, and musical theater classics such as Man Of La Mancha and Gypsy. Coming up with a new revue every two or three years, Alessandrini and company have created their own special franchise—which now gets its first original L.A. regional theater staging at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West. Dubbed Forbidden Broadway Greatest Hits, Volume One, the resulting concoction makes for one of the funniest CLO shows you’re likely to see this year.
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INCORRUPTIBLE
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
Can you imagine anything more improbable than a screwball comedy set in a monastery in 13th Century Europe? Wacky, zany, and madcap are not adjectives one would normally use to describe what Wikipedia refers to as “a period of cultural decline or societal collapse that took place in Western Europe between the fall of Rome and the eventual recovery of learning.” And yet Michael Hollinger’s Incorruptible is indeed a wacky, zany, madcap romp which takes place in 1250 France. I saw Incorruptible at the Colony Theatre in 2001—and loved it—and I am delighted to report that Theatre 40 has put together an equally rib-tickling production—now available for your delectation.
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WAIT UNTIL DARK
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
The dark is a scary place to be. Just think back on all the movie and TV thrillers with the word “dark” in their title: Dark Shadows, The Dark House, Whispers In The Dark, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, Dark Water, and of course Elvira Mistress Of The Dark—to name just a few.
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IS HE DEAD?
Friday, May 1st, 2009
Straight men in drag have made for sure-fire comedy since long before Milton Berle donned wigs, lipstick, and gowns on TV’s Texaco Star Theater back in the 1950s and Barry Humphries created Dame Edna several decades later. Charley’s Aunt made the first of his/her six Broadway appearances way back in 1893, and only five years after that Mark Twain wrote Is He Dead?.
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PHOTOGRAPH 51
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
In an ironic twist of fate, Dr. Rosalind Franklin, the woman who should have shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure received no recognition whatsoever from the Nobel Foundation. True, the Foundation does not award the prize posthumously, and Dr. Franklin had died four years earlier. No, the real irony is that Rosalind Franklin died without even knowing her part in this world-changing discovery.
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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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