THE NIGHT ALIVE

posted on February 14th, 2015 at 1:17 AM by Steven Stanley

Superb performances, a brilliant production design, plenty of chuckles (with a few gasps thrown in for good measure), and characters as weirdly idiosyncratic as any I’ve seen onstage spark the Geffen Playhouse’s West Coast Premiere of Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive. As to whether the play itself is worthy of the unqualified superlatives that out-of-town critics have showered upon McPherson’s oh-so quirky comedy, well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
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posted in Comedy, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

HELLMAN V. MCCARTHY

posted on February 12th, 2015 at 5:29 PM by Steven Stanley

Hell hath no fury like a best-selling author dissed, or so Lillian “The Little Foxes” Hellman made abundantly clear when she sued fellow writer Mary McCarthy for disparaging words uttered during a 1980 TV interview with PBS talk show host Dick Cavett.

Playwright Brian Richard Mori returns to the scene of the alleged slander with none other than 78-year-old Dick Cavett playing a 40something Dick in Mori’s terrifically entertaining comedy-drama Hellman v. McCarthy, now getting its West Coast Premiere at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

SEUSSICAL THE MUSICAL

posted on February 10th, 2015 at 6:52 PM by Steven Stanley

Cathy Rigby soars again, both literally and figuratively, alongside some of Dr. Seuss’s most iconic characters in 3-D Theatricals’ crowd-captivating revival of Ahrens & Flaherty’s Seussical The Musical, a delightfully nostalgic, infectiously tuneful treat for audiences of all ages.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

posted on February 9th, 2015 at 12:40 PM by Steven Stanley

Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice has rarely if ever been more deliciously, delightfully entertaining than Actors Co-op’s irresistible new staging of Helen Jerome’s 1936 adaptation of Miss Austen’s two-centuries-old classic.
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

LOCH NESS, a new musical

posted on February 8th, 2015 at 10:33 AM by Steven Stanley

A young English girl and the Loch Ness Monster become the most improbable of life-changing friends in Chance Theater’s World Premiere production of Marshall Pailet and A.D. Penedo’s irresistibly entertaining, utterly magical new musical Loch Ness, a new musical. (The lower-case addendum is part of its title, not a case of reviewer redundancy.)
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

GREASE

posted on February 5th, 2015 at 9:58 PM by Steven Stanley

A number of imaginative directorial touches and a fresh young cast of up-and-coming triple-threats make Inland Valley Repertory Theatre’s midweek revival of Grease at Candlelight Dinner Theatre worth a drive out to Claremont even if you’ve seen the musical or its smash movie adaptation umpteen times before.
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posted in Musical, San Gabriel Valley, Theater Review, WOW!

THE WHIPPING MAN

posted on February 4th, 2015 at 6:35 PM by Steven Stanley

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, at long last ending what is still the deadliest war in United States history. Five days later, President Abraham Lincoln was dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet. Coincidentally, during this fateful week in our country’s history, Jews in both North and South observed Pesach, the festival of Passover, celebrating the freeing of the Israelites from centuries of slavery in Egypt.

Inspired by this bit of historical happenstance, and armed with the knowledge that there were indeed Jewish slaveholders (and Jewish slaves) in the pre-Civil War Deep South, playwright Matthew Lopez sat down to write The Whipping Man, a gripping, eye-opening look at three Jews—two black, one white—in the days just following Appomattox, a play now brought to compelling life in a spectacular new production just transferred from South Coast Rep to the Pasadena Playhouse.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

DIRTY DANCING – THE CLASSIC STORY ON STAGE

posted on February 4th, 2015 at 5:34 PM by Steven Stanley


An Oscar-winning ‘80s smash returns to exciting new life as the Segerstrom Center For The Arts presents Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story On Stage, the ultimate 3-D “movie” musical experience.
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posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

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