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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MY ANTONIA
Sunday, July 6th, 2008
Willa Cather’s epic 1918 novel has been transformed into an absolutely exquisite memory play by writer/director Scott Schwartz. For those like myself who missed the production’s debut at the Ventura’s Rubicon this past May, Antonia is back, in the more intimate setting of Venice’s Pacific Resident Theatre, and certain to enchant audiences of all ages for weeks to come.
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LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
Downsizing Broadway musicals to fit Equity waiver stages has become an L.A. theater tradition (and challenge) to companies with limited space and budgets. Though somewhat rough around the edges, the Knightsbridge Theatre’s production of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s La Cage Aux Folles succeeds admirably and enthusiastically, re-imagining La Cage as a Studio City “tranny” bar yet losing none of the original’s laughter, musical dazzle, and tears.
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THE LAST SEDER
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Jennifer Maisel’s warm and winning family dramedy The Last Seder opens with Michelle (Elisa Donovan), the youngest of four adult sisters, inviting Josh (Douglas Dickerman), a total stranger, to her family home. Michelle’s Alzheimer’s afflicted father Marvin (Joseph Ruskin) is about to be moved for long-term care into the serenely named Serenity Willows and the family home is soon to be sold, thus this year’s Seder will be the family’s last together and Michelle does not want to arrive empty-handed, so to speak.
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BETRAYAL
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
In the year 1999, Jerry confesses to Emma, his best friend’s wife, that he has loved her since he was best man at her wedding to Robert, and they begin an affair which goes on for years. In 2008, two years after ending the affair, Jerry and Emma meet again. With her marriage breaking up, she needs someone to talk to. In the course of conversation, Emma reveals (to Jerry’s dismay) that Robert knew about (and didn’t particularly mind) their affair. Indeed, says Emma, he knew about it as far back as 2004.
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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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