PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT
posted on October 23rd, 2013 at 4:33 PM by Steven Stanley
The rainbow-colored bus known around the world as Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert has just pulled into the Costa Mesa station (make that Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts), and as anyone who’s seen Stephen Elliott’s 1994 cult hit movie of the same name can tell you, that’s just about the most fabulous news any OC resident or neighbor to the north could possibly ask for this week.
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Tags: Orange County Theater Review, Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, Segerstom Center For The Arts
posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!
XANADU
posted on October 21st, 2013 at 4:30 PM by Steven Stanley
Xanadu has arrived at Cal State Fullerton’s Little Theater, proving once again that for big-stage professional-caliber musical theater, just about the only thing separating CSUF productions from those at Musical Theatre West or 3-D Theatricals is the uniformly young age of their talented casts. Case in point: Douglas Carter Beane’s 2005 Broadway treat.
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Tags: Cal State Fullerton, Douglas Carter Beane, Orange County Theater Review, Xanadu
posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!
SUNNY AFTERNOON
posted on October 20th, 2013 at 10:53 PM by Steven Stanley
On November 22, 1963, at about half-past-noon Dallas time, President John F. Kennedy was shot as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository … and thirty minutes later was pronounced dead. On November 24, the President’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself fatally shot by local nightclub operator Jack Ruby as a nation sitting glued to their TV screens looked on in horror.
But what about the forty-eight hours separating these two America-shattering events?
Playwright-director Christian Levatino and his gangbusters theatre company* let us be flies on the walls of the Dallas Police Headquarters where Oswald spent his last two days under police interrogation in Levatino’s gripping new play Sunny Afternoon, now getting its official World Premiere following its Best-Of-Fringe-winning workshop at last June’s Hollywood Fringe Festival.
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Tags: gangbusters theatre company, John F. Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Los Angeles Theater Review
posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!
KISS ME KATE
posted on October 19th, 2013 at 2:29 PM by Steven Stanley
It’s been six-and-a-half decades since William Shakespeare met Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate, though with director extraordinaire Richard Israel in the driver’s seat, Cabrillo Music Theatre’s 2013 revival of the Tony Award-winning 1948 Broadway smash feels fresh and alive and gay and young for all its years.
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Tags: Cabrillo Music Theatre, Cole Porter, Kiss Me Kate, Ventura County Theater Review
posted in Musical, Theater Review, Ventura County, WOW!
WAIT UNTIL DARK
posted on October 19th, 2013 at 11:37 AM by Steven Stanley
Some plays simply cannot be updated to the 21st Century. Take for example Wait Until Dark, Frederick Knott’s classic 1966 thriller about a blind New York City newlywed targeted by a trio of thugs out to find the heroin-filled doll they believe to be hidden somewhere in the walk-down flat she shares with her photographer husband—a play entirely dependent on there being just one land-line phone in the apartment and a (now virtually non-existent) phone booth on a nearby corner.
That’s why, when I heard that playwright Jeffrey Hatcher was adapting Wait Until Dark for the Geffen Playhouse “in a new time/setting,” my first thought was “They must be kidding!” Then I found out that Hatcher was actually taking Knott’s thriller back in time to WWII New York City and that thought turned to “Wow! What a clever idea!” Not only a clever idea, it turns out, but one that proves as exiting in execution as in theory.
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Tags: Frederick Knott, Geffen Playhouse, Jeffrey Hatcher, Los Angeles Theater Review, Wait Until Dark
posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!
FAST COMPANY
posted on October 17th, 2013 at 11:41 PM by Steven Stanley
The Rag, the Spanish Prisoner, the Pig-in-a-Poke, the Badger Game, and the Glim Dropper are just five of the games that H, Blue, and Francis learned at their mother Mable’s knee—which will give you an idea of just what kind of family the three siblings grew up in in Carla Ching’s exhilarating World Premiere comedy Fast Company, the latest from South Coast Repertory.
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Tags: Carla Ching, Orange County Theater Review, South Coast Repertory
posted in Comedy, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!
Cirque Du Soleil TOTEM
posted on October 16th, 2013 at 5:11 PM by Steven Stanley
Port Of Los Angeles Berth 46 is the place to be from now through November 10, and it’s not because some majestic ocean liner or USS Battleship has arrived at Los Angeles Harbor. Non, messieurs-dames. The big news down San Pedro way is that the world-famous Cirque Du Soleil has pitched its blue-and-yellow bigtop (aka “Le Grand Chapiteau”) there, treating Angelinos to its latest spéctacle, and ooh-la-la is this spéctacke spéctaculaire!
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Tags: Cirque Du Soleil, TOTEM
posted in Long Beach/San Pedro, Special Event, WOW!
LEGALLY BLONDE
posted on October 14th, 2013 at 8:46 PM by Steven Stanley
3-D Theatricals gets everything right in its end-of-season staging of Legally Blonde The Musical. With director David F.M. Vaughn assuredly in charge, this is the very best production I’ve seen of one of Broadway’s best-crafted hits of the past ten years.
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Tags: 3-D Theatricals, Elle Woods, Legally Blonde, Los Angeles Theater Review
posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!
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