LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

posted on August 5th, 2016 at 11:42 AM by Steven Stanley

Save for one teensy tiny potted plan that doesn’t even make it through Act One, there’s nothing even vaguely botanical-looking in The B Productions’ 99-seat revival of Menken & Ashman’s Little Shop Of Horrors. What there is is an abundance of talent both onstage and off, making the NoHo Arts Center guest production a winner even if its central conceit (“Technology Can Kill”) will probably work best for those who’ve already seen Little Shop umpteen times.
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posted in Musical, North Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

EVERYTHING’S COMING UP ROSIE

posted on August 2nd, 2016 at 9:11 AM by Steven Stanley

A couple of luminous Broadway stars shone brightly this past Sunday in Everything’s Coming Up Rosie, Sterling’s Upstairs At The Federal’s one-night-only salute to Rosemary Clooney, a celebration of both the lady of song and the ten years that Michael Sterling has treated L.A. to the crème-de-la-crème of musical theater talent in an intimate supper club setting.
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posted in Cabaret/Concert/Variety, North Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

A RAISIN IN THE SUN

posted on July 31st, 2016 at 2:35 PM by Steven Stanley

Star turns you’d expect to see at the Pasadena Playhouse or the Geffen distinguish Ruskin Group Theatre’s 57th-anniversary revival of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award-winning A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s piercing look at racial discrimination, gender roles, family values, and burgeoning African-American identity—a modern American classic that remains as relevant today as it was in the pre-Civil Rights Era 1950s.
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posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

BABY DOLL

posted on July 30th, 2016 at 12:35 PM by Steven Stanley

A just-right darkly comedic tone and pitch-perfect performances turn minor Tennessee Williams into major summer entertainment as the Fountain Theater gives West Coast audiences their first taste of Pierre Laville and Emily Mann’s streamlined, Williams-estate-approved adaptation of the 1956 movie potboiler Baby Doll.
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

SPACE

posted on July 30th, 2016 at 10:07 AM by Steven Stanley

Disproving the oft-suggested notion that a playwright should never direct his own work, Stefan Marks not only scores a double bulls-eye at the Stella Adler; in never leaving the stage as Space’s riveting protagonist, the Ovation Award-winning director-writer-actor proves himself a bona fide triple-threat in this brain-teasing dazzler of a play.
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

posted on July 25th, 2016 at 5:27 PM by Steven Stanley

The Dashwood Sisters sing, and gloriously so, in Paul Gordon’s charming, witty, heartstrings-tugging musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s gift, not just to San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre and Jane Austen lovers across the Southland, but to anyone in the mood for music, laughter, tears, and romance-with-a-capital-R.
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posted in Musical, San Diego County, Theater Review, WOW!

OBAMA-OLOGY

posted on July 24th, 2016 at 12:33 PM by Steven Stanley

The months leading up to Barack Obama’s election as this country’s first African-American President serve as the backdrop for Aurin Squire’s semi-autobiographical Obama-ology, the 2015 Juilliard grad’s engaging look at a pivotal moment in our nation’s history as seen through one 20something black man’s eyes.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

I LOVE YOU BECAUSE

posted on July 23rd, 2016 at 2:40 PM by Steven Stanley

A sparkling book, a dozen or so delightfully quirky characters, and above all one of the catchiest (and often most gorgeous) scores in recent years add up to Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham’s unabashedly romantic I Love You Because, at long last getting the Los Angeles staging I’ve been wishing and hoping for since first falling in love with the musical’s original cast recording nearly ten years ago—and what a terrific production ILYB has been given at Hollywood’s Hudson Theatre.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

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