R.R.R.E.D. / THE REDHEAD MUSICAL MANIFESTO
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
Though it won’t be for all tastes, R.R.R.E.D. / The Redhead Musical Manifesto is a wow of a showcase for a wow of a redheaded singer-songwriter, Katie Thompson, and her talented redheaded musical cohort Patrick Livingston.
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SHE LOVES ME
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
A man and a woman who can’t stand each other in real life fall in love with each other in cyberspace. Sound familiar? It should be if you’ve seen Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. But before email, there were letters, and 35 years before You’ve Got Mail, there was the 1963 Broadway musical She Loves Me, a pre-Internet version of the same irresistible tale.
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FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIRE DE LUNE
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
Frankie and Johnny were lovers and (as the song goes), “Oh Lordy, how they could love,” that is until she caught Johnny cheating on her “with that high-browed Nellie Bly” and shot him dead.
Fortunately, things are a good deal more hopeful for the lovers in Terrence McNally’s moving two-character, two-act dramedy, Frankie And Johnny In The Clair De Lune, now playing at International City Theatre in Long Beach. With the superb Libby West and Thomas Fiscella in the title roles and master director Todd Nielsen at the helm, ICT’s production proves to be one of their finest.
VANITIES
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
Vanities, the new Broadway-bound musical at the Pasadena Playhouse, takes a tuneful, laugh-filled, and sometimes emotional look at the lives of three small town Texas women from the optimistic Camelot years of the early 1960s, through the draft card and bra burning the late 60s, and on into the swinging 70s. Based on Jack Heifner’s immensely popular three-character three-scene comedy (one of the longest running plays in off-Broadway history), Vanities (the musical) adds David Kirshenbaum’s catchy melodies and story-propelling lyrics to the mix, plus a fourth scene (bringing the women up to 1990), to create a laughter and tear-filled 90-minute musical journey through the lives of three very different best friends.
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LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Lovers And Other Strangers is perhaps best known as the Oscar-winning 1970 movie which starred Gig Young (remember him?), Bea (then Beatrice) Arthur and Cloris Leachman (pre Maud and MTM), and featuring an unknown actress named Diane Keaton in her very first film role. (A dollar to whoever can remember in what category Lovers And Other Strangers won its Oscar.)
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INHERIT THE WIND
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
Is there any play from the 1950s more relevant in 2008 than Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit The Wind? It’s been 83 years since Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was put on trial for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in the classroom, yet only a half dozen years ago, a suburban Atlanta school board voted unanimously to allow teachers to introduce students to “different views about the origins of life”—a codeword for “creationism,” and John McCain’s choice to be Vice President of this country is a woman who says she is open to teaching “creationism” in public schools.
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ROSE’S DILEMMA
Friday, August 29th, 2008
The “ghost comedy” is a tried a true genre that, for me at least, never fails to entertain. You know the story. Ghost returns from the other side to haunt our hero (or heroine), the only one who can see or hear said ghost, a situation leading to exchanges like the following (purely of my own creation):
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BEETHOVEN AS I KNEW HIM
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Over the past ten years, pianist/actor Hershey Felder has created an entirely new genre, the “Hershey Felder Musical Bio,” beginning with the multiple award-winning George Gershwin Alone and followed by the equally acclaimed Monsieur Chopin. Now, the trilogy is completed with Beethoven, As I Knew Him.
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