THE KING AND I
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
What would CLOs do without Rodgers and Hammerstein? There’s scarcely a season in which a regional Civic Light Opera doesn’t present at least one of their Big 5—Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I, or The Sound Of Music. Fortunately for lovers of contemporary musicals, these Golden Oldies do hold up rather well, thank you. Theatergoers are assured of recognizing most if not all of the songs, the roles created by R & H offer actors some of the best in musical theater of any era, and the themes which R & H snuck in (racism, domestic violence, cross-cultural understanding, etc.) remain valid even half a century or more later.
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THE ALL NIGHT STRUT
Friday, October 17th, 2008
Long Beach is indeed a-jumpin’ with International City Theatre’s absolutely terrific revival of The All Night Strut. Music, song, and dance from the big band and swing era combine under the sensational direction of Lance Roberts (who also choreographed the many fabulous dance sequences), with a smashing quartet of triple-threat performers singing such standards as “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “As Time Goes By,” and “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing.”
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HAMLET
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Michael Michetti + Hamlet @ A Noise Within = A sure-to-be-talked-about event.
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PUSH
Monday, October 13th, 2008
In Las Vegas, a “push” happens when a dealer and a player tie. It’s not the same as losing, but tell that to the player who’s only broken even.
Playwright Kristen Lazarian explores a marital “push” in her provocative new drama Push, getting its Los Angeles premiere at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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LEADING LADIES
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Actors Co-op has found the perfect complement to the concurrently running drama of The Elephant Man—Ken Ludwig’s hilarious gender-bending Leading Ladies. What better way to put an end to the post-summer blues than by spending a couple hours with the oddest couple of men in drag since Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon put on lipstick and hose in Some Like It Hot? Unlike Tony and Jack, though, our two unlikely “heroines” are not on the run from the mob but rather in search of a few million dollars to be inherited if only they can convince a dying woman that they are her lone (and long lost) female relatives. Here’s how it goes:
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GIRL’S ROOM
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Take West Side Story’s original Maria and A Chorus Line’s original Cassie and star them together in 2008 and you have, as Girl’s Room’s publicity proclaims, two veritable Broadway legends sharing the same stage for the first time, and more than enough reason to catch Joni Fritz’s ingratiating dramedy during its limited engagement at the El Portal.
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PORCELAIN
Friday, October 10th, 2008
BRUTAL TOILET-SEX MURDER IN BETHNAL GREEN!
British tabloids trumpet the news of a vicious murder in a public lavatory in East London. John Lee, a nineteen-year-old Londoner of Asian descent, is accused of cold-bloodedly shooting William Hope, his twenty-six-year old Caucasian lover, six times at close range. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
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M BUTTERFLY
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
David Henry Hwang was inspired to write the Tony Award-winning M Butterfly by the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not-worthy real-life case of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a Chinese Opera performer, never once suspecting that the love of his life was a man pretending to be a woman. It was only when charged with treason (for having passed on sensitive political information to his “mister-ess”) that the diplomat found out that his “she” was in fact a “he.”
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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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