THE WHO’S TOMMY

posted on October 1st, 2013 at 10:43 AM by Steven Stanley


Moonlight Stage Productions concludes its 33rd Summer Season with a sensational production of the legendary The Who’s Tommy, one sure to thrill both Baby Boomers (in their teens and twenties when Tommy began its life) and Generation Xers and Millennials, Tommy’s multiple 1960s hits (“Pinball Wizard,” “I’m Free,” “See Me, Feel Me”) sounding hardly to have aged even a decade in the ensuing years.
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posted in Musical, San Diego County, Theater Review, WOW!

THE LION IN WINTER

posted on September 29th, 2013 at 1:28 PM by Steven Stanley


It’s a classic nighttime soap, that is if Dallas or Dynasty had been set in 12th-Century England. It’s a Shakespeare history, that is if you could understand every word the actors are saying. It’s a 1960s film classic that won Katharine Hepburn the third of her four Best Actress Oscars.

It’s Peter Goldman’s Broadway flop play-turned-Hollywood hit movie, and if (as Wikipedia puts it rather ungrammatically) “The Lion in Winter is fictional and none of the dialogue and actions is historical,” it still makes for one of modern American theater’s most entertaining dramas and offers actors some of the meatiest roles of their careers—proof of which is now onstage at the Sierra Madre Playhouse.
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posted in Drama, San Gabriel Valley, Theater Review, WOW!

HAIRSPRAY

posted on September 28th, 2013 at 5:04 PM by Steven Stanley


The plus-size mother/daughter duo of Tracy and Edna Turnblad have arrived at Escondido’s Welk Theatre in a mid-sized Hairspray that diverts, dazzles, and delights under director-choreographer Dan Mojica’s accomplished hand.
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posted in Musical, San Diego County, Theater Review, WOW!

THE END OF IT

posted on September 27th, 2013 at 12:29 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
A 50ish couple (or is it three?) confront the dissolution of a twenty-year relationship in Paul Coates’ The End Of It, a World Premiere production elevated above a too generic script by sensational direction, fine acting, and one humdinger of a gimmick.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Recommended, Theater Review

ANYTHING GOES

posted on September 25th, 2013 at 11:30 AM by Steven Stanley


No 1930s musical has achieved the enduring popularity of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. A grand total of five Broadway, off-Broadway, and West End revivals, a pair of movie adaptations, a TV special, and more national and international productions than even the most dedicated Porter aficionado could possibly count.

For those who wonder why Anything Goes just keeps on ticking, there’s no more compelling evidence than the National Tour of its 2011 Broadway revival now spending the week at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, a Broadway tour that guarantees SoCal audiences one show-stopping number after another in an Anything Goes that tops any other production of it you might happen to have seen.
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posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ

posted on September 23rd, 2013 at 12:08 PM by Steven Stanley


“Kansas City,” “Yakety Yak,” “Love Potion No. 9,” and “On Broadway” are just four of the 1950s rock and pop hits now being performed to cheers and not one but two standing ovations as the Pasadena Playhouse revives the 1995 Broadway smash Smokey Joe’s Café, featuring forty of the greatest hits of rock-and-roll songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
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posted in Musical Revue, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

BROADWAY BOUND

posted on September 22nd, 2013 at 2:25 PM by Steven Stanley


Neil Simon reminisces about his last days of being a live-at-home son and the earliest days of his writing career in Broadway Bound, the third play in Simon’s “Eugene Trilogy” and one of the master scribe’s bona fide masterworks, now getting a Broadway-caliber revival by McCoy-Rigby Entertainment at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Downey/La Mirada, Theater Review, WOW!

THE PRODUCERS

posted on September 21st, 2013 at 5:50 PM by Steven Stanley


The Norris Center For The Arts undertakes its most ambitious musical to date, a near Broadway-scale production of Mel Brooks’ multiple Tony-winning The Producers which, despite some technical elements still rough around the edges on opening night, makes for a bona fide crowd-pleaser sparked by one standout performance after another.
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posted in Musical, South Bay, Theater Review, WOW!

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