BORN TO WIN

posted on February 17th, 2019 at 12:31 PM by Steven Stanley

Little Miss Sunshine hopefuls could learn a thing or two from the Texas-based partners (business and otherwise) who coach preschool pixies to beauty pageant stardom in Matthew Wilkas and Mark Setlock’s Born To Win, the outrageously funny latest from Celebration Theatre.
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

LIGHTS OUT: NAT “KING” COLE

posted on February 16th, 2019 at 8:54 AM by Steven Stanley

The impending live broadcast of the 42nd and final episode of network TV’s first black-hosted variety show becomes an existential nightmare for its celebrated star in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor’s Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, a Geffen Playhouse West Coast premiere not without its problems but one well worth catching, and not just for the drama-song-and-dance showcase it provides its triple-threat star Dulé Hill.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls

WITNESS UGANDA

posted on February 14th, 2019 at 12:24 AM by Steven Stanley

A gay black NYU student heads off to Africa to help build a school only to come back transformed for life in Witness Uganda, Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews’ off-Broadway “Documentary Musical” thrillingly performed and excitingly restaged for L.A. audiences at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

RAGTIME

posted on February 12th, 2019 at 12:45 AM by Steven Stanley

A nation where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and immigrants are told to get out and stay out. Ragtime may take place a century ago, but the epic 1998 Broadway musical has never been more relevant than it is today, and thanks to director David Lee and a glorious cast and design team, its 2019 Pasadena Playhouse revival blows the seven other Ragtimes this reviewer has seen out of the water, and then some.
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posted in Musical, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

OLIVER!

posted on February 11th, 2019 at 8:50 AM by Steven Stanley

Lionel Bart’s Oliver! is back in town in its first major L.A. production in over ten years and what a joy it is to re-experience (or to discover for the first time) Broadway’s Greatest Dickens Musical at Long Beach’s Musical Theatre West.
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posted in Long Beach/San Pedro, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

THE MOUNTAINTOP

posted on February 9th, 2019 at 1:02 PM by Steven Stanley

America’s greatest civil rights leader spends the last night of his life with a sultry, saucy motel maid in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, a concept likely to rile those who prefer to remember Dr. Martin Luther King as a sin-and-vice-free saint, but one that makes for gripping, thought-provoking dramatic sparks at the Garry Marshall Theatre just in time for Black History Month 2019.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Drama, Theater Review, WOW!

MAN OF GOD

posted on February 8th, 2019 at 4:18 PM by Steven Stanley

The discovery of a spy cam pointing up from inside the hotel bathroom toilet of four Korean-American teens on a mission trip to Thailand sets in motion a wild and unexpected chain of events in Anna Moench’s Man Of God, an East West Players World Premiere as funny, dramatic, and edge-of-your-seat gripping as it is a timely reminder that there are no age restrictions where the #metoo movement is concerned.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

MATTHEW BOURNE’S CINDERELLA

posted on February 7th, 2019 at 6:24 PM by Steven Stanley

The world’s favorite step-daughter once again meets her Prince Charming (but this time the man in question is an injured WWII pilot, the setting is London circa The Blitz, and their romantic tale-as-old-as-time is told entirely in dance as only Sir Matthew Bourne can choreograph it) in the thrillingly performed, apty retitled Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella (Music By Prokoviev), now paying a return visit to the Ahmanson Theatre twenty years after it first captivated L.A.
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posted in Dance, Los Angeles, National Tour, Theater Review, WOW!

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