LOVE NEVER DIES

posted on April 25th, 2018 at 1:50 PM by Steven Stanley

The music is gorgeous, the plot ridiculous, and the show’s raison d’etre purely monetary, but for those curious to know what happened to the Phantom and Christine a decade after the chandelier fell in the Paris Opera House, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies provides answers this week and next at the Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review

BELLEVILLE

posted on April 23rd, 2018 at 1:12 PM by Steven Stanley

Young marrieds don’t get much more appealing than Americans in Paris Abby and Zack, but don’t let their Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks looks and charm fool you into thinking Amy Herzog’s Belleville will be the next big romcom. What the Obie-winning Pulitzer Prize finalist has up her sleeve in Belleville is something considerably darker and more twisted, just one reason the latest from the Pasadena Playhouse is one of the season’s must-see productions.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

SOUTH PACIFIC

posted on April 22nd, 2018 at 12:15 PM by Steven Stanley

No matter how many times you’ve seen Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific (I myself am at nine productions and counting), you might just feel you’re experiencing it for the first time ever at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts, so thrillingly performed and gorgeously designed is this 69th-anniversary McCoy Rigby Entertainment revival.
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

posted on April 21st, 2018 at 7:29 PM by Steven Stanley


Victor Hugo’s classic tale of the misshapen Quasimodo and the shapely gypsy beauty who wins his lonely, aching heart comes to glorious musical life thanks to Alan Menken’s gift for melody and a couple dozen of SoCal’s most multi-talented performers in 5-Star Theatricals’ The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, Ventura County, WOW!

NATIVE SON

posted on April 21st, 2018 at 7:10 PM by Steven Stanley

Lead performances are powerhouse and production design one of the year’s most electrifying, but Richard Wright’s 20th-century classic Native Son is ill-served at Antaeus Theatre Company by Nambi E. Kelley’s 21st-century stage adaptation’s temporal zigzags, sledgehammer approach to issues of race, and the addition of a “character” not found in the original novel.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Drama, Theater Review

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN

posted on April 19th, 2018 at 8:00 AM by Steven Stanley

The survivor of a horrific childhood is visited by ghosts of his dark and desolate past in Daniel Talbott’s memory play What Happened When, now getting an exquisitely designed Echo Theater Company West Coast Premiere unfortunately made more cryptic than already written by one bad casting choice.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review

LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS

posted on April 17th, 2018 at 11:42 AM by Steven Stanley

Kemp Powers’ Little Black Shadows takes an intriguing concept (the lives of teenage house slaves serving white teen masters in early-1850s Georgia), then veers off track into family dysfunction, folktales, magical realism, and a couple of weird plot twists that left me scratching my head despite the best efforts of a Grade-A cast headed by the simply sensational Giovanni Adams and Chauntae Pink.
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posted in Drama, Orange County, Theater Review, World Premiere

GODSPELL

posted on April 17th, 2018 at 7:52 AM by Steven Stanley

Godspell will never make my list of favorite musicals. Despite its melodious Stephen Schwartz score, I find the show itself pretty much a snooze. Still, its many fans could hardly ask for a more imaginatively directed or more sparklingly performed production than The Wayward Artist’s at Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review

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