SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
Sunday, July 27th, 2008
The customary path for a musical to follow is the one from stage to screen, the most recent example being Mamma Mia, in movie theaters (and live on Broadway) even as I write this. Far less usual is seeing an original movie musical adapted for the stage, yet just as MTW’s The Wizard Of Oz closes, Singin’ In The Rain opens at Cabrillo Music Theatre, a veritable bonanza for lovers of MGM musicals of Hollywood’s golden age.
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MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
With eight fully staged productions in a scant ten months, The Production Company (aka TheProdCo) has quickly established itself as Los Angeles’ most prolific new theater company. It is also one of the most consistently reliable, opening one excellent production only days after the preceding has closed, with yet another in rehearsal. Amazing!
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AMERICAN DEAD
Friday, July 25th, 2008
Five years ago, Grace Tisdale, a young Midwestern deputy sheriff and Mark Shawver, a teenage bagger, were gunned down in a grocery store robbery, precisely the kind of crime big city dwellers read about on a daily basis. To the residents of this small American town, however, it was not merely the deputy and the teenager who were victimized. Grace Tisdale left behind a husband and a brother, both of whose lives were forever changed.
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RESPECT: THE GIRL EM-POWERED MUSICAL
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
Time was when a woman was nothing without a man, and if she ever made the mistake of throwing the bum out, it was only a matter of time until she took all the blame and begged him to return. Need proof? Just sing a few bars of “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home?” and you’ll see how true this was back at the turn of the last century:
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YANK!
Sunday, July 20th, 2008
San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre (“The Nation’s 3rd Oldest LGBT Theatre”) has scored a major (and I mean MAJOR) coup in obtaining the rights to present the West Coast Premiere of Yank!, a major hit (and audience award winner) at 2005’s New York Musical Theatre Festival. In fact, Diversionary is only the second theater company in the U.S. to stage Yank! since the Festival, and a WOW! of a production it is, thanks a terrific cast, staging by the original New York director Igor Goldin, and the hands-on presence of book and lyrics writer David Zellnik and composer Joseph Zellnik.
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THE WIZARD OF OZ
Saturday, July 12th, 2008
“We’re off to see the wizard!”
Children of all ages (and that means parents and grandparents too) will be following the yellow brick road from now until July 27 as Musical Theatre West concludes its 55th season with its very first staging of the L. Frank Baum/MGM classic.
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PARADE
Friday, July 11th, 2008
The lynching of Jewish Northerner Leo Frank, falsely convicted of murdering 13-year-old Georgia factory worker Mary Phagan, remains today, nearly a century later, one of the most serious miscarriages of justice (and instances of anti-Semitism) in United States history. Powerful stuff for a Broadway musical, and one that would seem, at least on paper, more than a bit of a downer. Parade (with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and book by Alfred Uhry) was a hard sell on Broadway. If Fosse was the “feel-good” musical of 1999, then a show with such grim subject matter as Parade was pretty much its antithesis, and closed after 85 performances.
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LOOPED
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
Tallulah.
For anyone over a certain age, there was, is, will always be only one Tallulah.
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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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