DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Adapting Double Indemnity for a 99-seat theater could easily prove disastrous. Make the wrong directorial, acting, or design choices and the enterprise could easily turn into an unintentional sequel to Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Steve Martin’s brilliant parody of film noir.
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THE THREEPENNY OPERA
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Fans of The Threepenny Opera will be hard-pressed to find a better production of the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht classic than International City Theatre’s current revival. Directed with consummate vision and artistry by Jules Aaron, beautifully choreographed by Broadway’s Kay Cole, performed by a sensational cast accompanied by a masterful quintet of musicians, and designed by a SoCal “dream team,” this Threepenny Opera may well be ICT’s all-around best musical production in years.
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OUR LEADING LADY
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
Comedienne extraordinaire Carol Burnett once said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time,” an adage which playwright Charles Busch proves spot-on in his hilarious backstage farce Our Leading Lady, now playing at The Neighborhood Playhouse in Palos Verdes Estates. The tragedy is the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Washington D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, only days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In imagining the backstage shenanigans taking place in the hours leading up to that fateful performance of Our American Cousin, starring real-life actress-manager Laura Keene, Busch has written an outrageously funny play which finds comedy out of national tragedy—and serves as an affectionate love letter to the theater as well.
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BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
Though he never appears on stage during the play’s 90-minute running time, the real star of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, currently wowing North Hollywood audiences, is the man who conceived and directed the supernaturally screamalicious production—Ken Sawyer. In lesser hands, and without the state-of-the-art sound and lighting equipment at the NoHo Arts Center, Hamilton Dean and John L. Balderston’s stage play might be a campy, creaky mess. Instead, it is an entirely thrilling evening of theater which provides the pleasures of the greatest horror films—shocks and screams galore—in three dimensions and surround sound.
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DAMES AT SEA
Friday, February 20th, 2009
It’s the 1930s and the height of the Great Depression. A pretty young would-be hoofer (that’s hoofer, not hooker!) arrives in New York City with dreams of starring on the Great White Way. When a temperamental Broadway diva becomes indisposed, our sweet young thing is the only chorus girl able to take on the star’s leading role at a moment’s notice. Recognize the plot? It’s 42nd Street, right?
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EVITA
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
No matter how many times you’ve seen Evita, you haven’t really seen it till you’ve seen Christa Jackson in the title role. As Eva Perón, Jackson gives one of the two or three most thrilling performances I’ve seen by a lead actress in a musical in the past several years. Directed and choreographed to perfection by the amazing Sha Newman, FCLO Music Theatre’s revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice blockbuster is that rare CLO production, one which could be transplanted to Broadway exactly as is. In other words, this Evita is out and out brilliant.
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IXNAY
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Following his death in a car crash, third-generation Japanese-American Raymond Kobayashi finds himself at heaven’s Reincarnation Station where he is given special permission to begin a new life immediately—on one condition. He must go back as a Japanese-American. Though the word Ixnay is never uttered in Paul Kikuchi’s new comedy-fantasy, a resounding “No way!” is Raymond’s response to this proposition. He’s had enough of his just-ended life as a sansei and the thought of being Japanese-American a second time is one he wants to put an emphatic “nix” on.
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THE FULL MONTY
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Those unemployed Buffalo factory workers turned Chippendales-style strippers are back, and Redondo Beach has them. Though The Full Monty lost all nine of its Tony Award nominations to The Producers in 2001, the David Yazbek-Terrence McNally musical has become a regional theater favorite, and rightly so. Musical Theatre West gave it a sensational big theater staging in 2007 and with director Dan Mojica at the helm, Civic Light Opera Of South Bay Cities’ brand new production is every bit its equal.
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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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