THE SPITFIRE GRILL

posted on June 11th, 2017 at 10:18 AM by Steven Stanley

A young woman fresh out of prison seeks a second chance at life in James Valcq and Fred Alley’s powerhouse chamber musical The Spitfire Grill, the gorgeously directed-and-performed latest from Solana Beach’s North Coast Repertory Theatre.
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posted in Musical, San Diego County, Theater Review, WOW!

CRIMES OF THE HEART

posted on June 10th, 2017 at 11:02 AM by Steven Stanley

The Mississippi Magrath sisters have set up housekeeping at Long Beach’s International City Theatre with all their quirks and charms and ups and downs intact in the best of the seven productions I’ve now seen of Beth Henley’s crowd-pleasing down-home comedy gem Crimes Of The Heart.
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posted in Comedy, Long Beach/San Pedro, Theater Review, WOW!

NICKY

posted on June 9th, 2017 at 2:35 PM by Steven Stanley

Chekhov’s melancholy antihero Nikolai Ivanov is alive and well and living unhappily ever after in today’s Palm Springs as Nicky, the titular protagonist of Boni B. Alvarez’s rewardingly adventurous reinvention of a late-19th-century Russian classic.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

AVENUE Q

posted on June 8th, 2017 at 12:40 PM by Steven Stanley

A beefed-up cast of fourteen terrifically talented student performers and some inspired directorial tweaks make UC Irvine’s Avenue Q the best of the five productions I’ve seen since first discovering it on Broadway a baker’s-dozen years ago.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

CARRIE THE MUSICAL

posted on June 7th, 2017 at 5:35 PM by Steven Stanley

Director Nick DeGruccio amps up the horror movie thrills at UCLA as two-dozen of the most talented musical theater up-and-comers in town give Carrie The Musical as exciting a big-stage production as any scary-musical buff could possibly wish for.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

LES BLANCS

posted on June 7th, 2017 at 12:08 AM by Steven Stanley

Mid-20th-century colonial Africa serves as a metaphor for the then ongoing American civil rights movement in Lorraine Hansberry’s rarely produced posthumous epic Les Blancs, a Rogue Machine revival that transcends the play’s inherent didacticism to electrifying effect.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

HOLD THESE TRUTHS

posted on June 5th, 2017 at 2:14 PM by Steven Stanley

The time could not be riper for Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths to make its powerful, compelling, inspiring Pasadena Playhouse debut, the extraordinary tale of one American’s fight for his inalienable rights at a time when his own government wished to deny them.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Solo Performance, Theater Review, WOW!

THE LAST BREAKFAST CLUB

posted on June 4th, 2017 at 12:51 PM by Steven Stanley

Imagine John Hughes’ archetypal Brain, Athlete, Basket Case, Princess, and Criminal performing twenty or so ‘80s hits to a live band inside the Shermer High School library as the only kids left in “an apocalypse of nuclear zombies” and you’ve got The Last Breakfast Club, the latest from Rockwell Table And Stage and the ab-fab first in a series of The Fuse Project musical movie spoofs.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical Spoof, Theater Review, WOW!

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