A CINDERELLA CHRISTMAS

posted on December 10th, 2016 at 9:32 AM by Steven Stanley

There’s only one place in town where you can see Disney Channel teen idols, a ‘70s/‘80s TV diva, ugly stepsisters in drag, a gender-bending fairy godmother, a pygmy horse, magic effects and transformations galore, and some terrifically danced production numbers; hear over a dozen Top-40 hits (and more one-liners than a Henny Youngman set); and perhaps most excitingly, get to cheer the heroes and boo the villains—and that’s at the Pasadena Playhouse, once again treating L.A. audiences to the British tradition known as “Panto” with this year’s A Cinderella Christmas, the fifth annual Panto At The Playhouse.
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posted in Musical, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

posted on December 7th, 2016 at 6:13 PM by Steven Stanley

Broadway couldn’t do it any better than the breathtaking revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along now playing at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts, not unless they too could get recent Tony nominee Michael Arden on board to direct with the same originality and flair he brought to last season’s Spring Awakening or come up with a cast as spectacular as the one at the Wallis.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

A TELENOVELA CHRISTMAS CAROL

posted on December 4th, 2016 at 8:03 PM by Steven Stanley

Imagine a bunch of East L.A. or Boyle Heights vecinos getting together to put on a Christmas show for friends and family and what you’ve got is A Telenovela Christmas Carol, Force Of Nature Productions’ unpolished but entertaining adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic Mexican soap opera-style.
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posted in Comedy, North Hollywood, Theater Review

MOM’S DEAD

posted on December 4th, 2016 at 2:31 PM by Steven Stanley

Dysfunctional families have guaranteed theatrical fireworks since the Ancient Greeks, and families don’t get much more dysfunctional than the Thompsons in Nathan Wellman’s darkly comedic Mom’s Dead, a frequently compelling if overly padded World Premiere from Sacred Fools.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, World Premiere

THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF HOME ALONE

posted on December 4th, 2016 at 12:48 AM by Steven Stanley

Rockwell Table And Stage will have audiences rocking around the Christmas tree John Hughes-style all December long with The Unauthorized Musical Parody Of Home Alone, the most rollicking, raunchy, radio-hit-packed holiday entertainment in town.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical Spoof, Theater Review, WOW!

BOB’S HOLIDAY OFFICE PARTY

posted on December 2nd, 2016 at 3:15 PM by Steven Stanley

Let the beer chugging begin! Bob’s Holiday Office Party, the yuletide season’s side-splittingest antidote to yet another A Christmas Carol, Nutcracker, or It’s A Wonderful Life, is back in town for its 21st year of drunken Midwestern mayhem.
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

THE CONSUL, THE TRAMP, AND AMERICA’S SWEETHEART

posted on November 28th, 2016 at 11:37 AM by Steven Stanley

Here’s a fun fact for you. Hollywood routinely allowed Hitler’s Nazis to dictate movie content during the decade leading up to World War II, a bit of Tinseltown trivia at the heart of John Morogiello’s The Consul, The Tramp, And America’s Sweetheart, the engaging, enlightening latest from Theatre 40.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

WHEN JAZZ HAD THE BLUES

posted on November 27th, 2016 at 8:06 PM by Steven Stanley

He was the love of Lena Horne’s life. He ghostwrote and/or arranged many of Duke Ellington’s Greatest Hits. He lived an openly gay life three full decades before Stonewall. He was Billy Strayhorn, and if the name doesn’t ring a bell, playwright Carole Eglash-Kosoff aims to rectify that with her elucidating, engrossing, enormously entertaining World Premiere musical drama When Jazz Had The Blues.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

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