HAPPY DAYS
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
A StageSceneLA prediction: Happy Days The Musical is going to be a sold-out hit at La Mirada Theatre and a surefire smash on its soon-to-begin national tour. Thanks to major rewrites, a bunch of new songs, Michele Lynch’s rockin’-&-rollin’ choreography, and the firecracker direction of Gordon Greenberg, the 2006 Falcon Theatre world premiere musical has gone from so-so to wow-wow!
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THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
Advice columnist Ann Landers had for decades been famous as “the lady with all the answers” when, on a night in 1975, she sat down to write the most difficult column in her career. “The lady with all the answers doesn’t have an answer to this one,” wrote Ann … in the column which announced to her readers the end of her 36-year marriage.
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HALO
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Coming to Beverly Hills as a delightful pre-holiday treat, Josh MacDonald’s Halo combines the quirky charm of TV’s Northern Exposure and Picket Fences with more than a bit of Christmas spirit.
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THE HEIRESS
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Martha in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Sally in Cabaret.
Cast the right actress in one of these roles and you’re sure to get a brilliant performance, the kind that gets nominated for an Oscar or Tony, and maybe even wins. It happened to Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh, to Uta Hagen and Elizabeth Taylor, to Natasha Richardson and Liza Minnelli.
LOVE’S OLD SWEET SONG
Friday, October 24th, 2008
The Syzygy Theatre Group joins in the International Centennial Celebration of William Saroyan with an captivating production of one of the Armenian-American writer’s lesser known works, 1940’s Love’s Old Sweet Song. Like Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, Love’s Old Sweet song is both sentimental and idealistic, and all the more wonderful for being so. Like the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks, it involves mistaken identities, culture clashes between haves and have-nots, some fast-talking, witty repartee, and ridiculous, farcical situations. It is this blend of the screwball and the sentimental that makes Love’s Old Sweet Song such a magical piece of theater.
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OKLAHOMA!
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
As the orchestra plays the final notes of the overture, the curtain rises on a middle-aged woman sitting alone on stage in front of a butter churn, her hands around the plunger, methodically moving it up and down. Behind the woman is a farmhouse and fields of corn as high as an elephant’s eye, and her long country dress tells us we are in the early 1900s. From offstage comes a male voice singing a capella, “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…” The voice grows louder until the man enters, wearing a cowboy hat and chaps. “Oh what a beautiful morning… Oh what a beautiful day,” serenades the man to the farm woman, who continues her churning.
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THE RAINMAKER
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
There aren’t many plays from the 1950s that hold up as well as L. Richard Nash’s 1954 folksy romance The Rainmaker. Not only does The Rainmaker not seem dated, it’s as funny and heartwarming as any play being premiered today, and despite its 1950s Midwest setting, it might as well be taking place somewhere in middle America circa 2008. As the second production of A Noise Within’s “Season Of Awakenings,” The Rainmaker is sure to charm audiences of all ages.
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BLITHE SPIRIT
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
As long as there’s been theater, there have surely been comedies about ghosts come back to haunt the people on stage and amuse those in the audience who are watching their shenanigans. Movies like the 1937’s Topper, which spawned not one but two TV series (and is scheduled for a 2010 Steve Martin remake) have continued the tradition on the big and small screen. When there’s only one character who can see the ghost(s) in question and the people around him/her suddenly find our hero(ine) talking to the air and see objects floating around the room, hilarity is sure to ensue.
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