MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

posted on July 21st, 2025 at 5:09 PM by Steven Stanley


Beatrice and Benedick are once again at it tooth and nail, but this time round she’s wearing a hoopskirt and he’s sporting a Civil War-era Army uniform as director Ellen Geer transposes the Shakespeare comedy classic from 16th-century Italy to 1860s Virginia while sprinkling in one I Love Lucy-inspired physical comedy bit after another.
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posted in Classic Play, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

SPRING AWAKENING

posted on July 21st, 2025 at 11:14 AM by Steven Stanley


Brilliantly innovative direction, stunningly original choreography, a baker’s dozen revelatory performances, and a Broadway-caliber production design guarantee Southland audiences as outstanding a Spring Awakening as any musical theater lover could ever hope to see.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

posted on July 21st, 2025 at 11:09 AM by Steven Stanley

A pair of magnetic, gorgeously sung lead performances bring out the best in Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman’s The Bridges of Madison County. The makeshift production design it’s been given by Chromolume Theatre Company and some occasionally clunky staging not so much.

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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, Theater Review

FROZEN

posted on July 15th, 2025 at 9:59 AM by Steven Stanley

Five fabulous lead performances elevate 5-Star Theatrical’s big-cast production of Disney’s Frozen, though probably not enough to be worth shelling out big bucks for a ticket given its rather lackluster production design and hundreds of chatty, fidgety preschool audience members not old enough to sit still for two hours.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, Ventura County

BUDDY – THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY

posted on July 13th, 2025 at 10:05 AM by Steven Stanley


Buddy Holly may have left this earth some six-and-a-half decades ago on “the day the music died”, but the 1950s rock and roll legend lives on in Long Beach in the person of dazzling quadruple-threat phenom Will Riddle in Musical Theatre West’s rousing revival of musical/tribute concert hybrid that is Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story.
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posted in Long Beach/San Pedro, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

XANADU

posted on July 12th, 2025 at 4:09 PM by Steven Stanley


Wisteria Theater Company makes it five hits in a row with their zestfully entertaining take on Douglas Carter Beane’s 2005 Broadway treat Xanadu, itself a textbook example of how to turn a movie lemon into multiple Tony-nominated lemonade.
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posted in Cabaret/Concert/Variety, Musical, North Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

YANKEE DAWG YOU DIE

posted on July 8th, 2025 at 11:05 AM by Steven Stanley

Kelvin Han Yee and Daniel J. Kim are on fire in East West Players’ 37th-anniversary revival of Yankee Dawg You Die, Philip Kan Gotanda’s look at Asian-American representation on stage and screen, at how it has changed since the days of Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, and at the changes that remained to be made in 1988 … and still do in 2025.

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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

GASLIGHT

posted on July 6th, 2025 at 11:35 AM by Steven Stanley


Decades before “gaslighting” became a thing people talked about, a villainous Victorian set about convincing his submissive spouse that she was losing her increasingly muddled mind in Patrick Hamilton’s classic thriller Gaslight, a mouthwateringly melodramatic treat from Pacific Resident Theatre.
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posted in Theater Review, Thriller, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

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