THE REAL HOUSEKEEPERS OF STUDIO CITY

posted on June 21st, 2013 at 5:36 PM by Steven Stanley


Divorced Studio City homemaker Ashley Tribbiani has a shot at being picked as one of TV’s Real Housewives Of Studio City. There’s only one problem. As any reality TV fan will tell you, a real Housewife needs to have a real Housekeeper, and with ex-hubby Joey seriously in arrears on his alimony and child support payments, Ashley has hardly been able to hire help since their split. Now, with her Real Housewives audition only an hour away, Ashley (Lani Shipman) and gay best friend Scot (Ryan O’Connor) have exactly sixty minutes to hire the best maid possible out of ten of TVland’s most famous housekeepers.

Fortunately, the Hollywood Fringe Festival has allotted precisely one hour for Joe Green, Heidi Powers, Tom Moore to debut their brand new musical The Real Housekeepers Of Studio City, and what a sixty-minute-musical gem it is.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

IONESCOPADE

posted on June 20th, 2013 at 2:14 PM by Steven Stanley


An elderly couple who spend the entire evening setting up chairs for invisible guests who’ve come to hear an invisible orator. French villagers transformed one by one into rhinoceroses. A soprano without a single hair on her head. Could there be anything more ridicule?

Welcome to the world of théâtre de l’absurde as epitomized by Eugène Ionesco, the French playwright whose plays The Chairs, Rhinoceros, and The Bald Soprano express the meaninglessness of life in the most amusing of ways … and now form the basis of Ionescopade, Robert Allan Ackerman and Mildred Kayden’s wacky vaudeville currently being revived at the Odyssey Theatre three decades after its Los Angeles debut.
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posted in Musical Revue, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

[title of show]

posted on June 19th, 2013 at 11:47 AM by Steven Stanley

From Fringe Festival to Fringe Festival with a Broadway stop along the way is hardly the normal trajectory for a Hollywood Fringe Festival entry. Then again, [title of show] is not your average, run-of-the-mill Fringe entry, as Fringe Festivalgoers can now discover at the Hollywood Fringe, where Theatre Unleashed has unleashed a stripped-down-to-basics but highly entertaining [tos].
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

NATALIE PORTMAN THE MUSICAL

posted on June 18th, 2013 at 10:52 AM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Natalie Portman The Musical has arrived at the Hollywood Fringe Festival following last year’s successful run (and return engagement) at Chromolume Theatre At The Attic in what appears to be a considerably stripped-down-for-The-Fringe production.
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Not Recommended, Theater Review

A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE

posted on June 18th, 2013 at 1:23 AM by Steven Stanley


Sometimes wishes do come true.

Back in September of last year, following a superb concert staged reading of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s A Man Of No Importance, I ended my review with a wish: “Isn’t it time that A Man Of No Importance got a fully-staged L.A. production?”

Now, a mere nine months later, that wish comes true as director-choreographer extraordinaire Janet Miller and her new Good People Theater Company offer Los Angeles audiences that fully-staged A Man Of No Importance, as all-around perfect a production as this or any musical theater lover could possibly have wished for.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

posted on June 17th, 2013 at 6:15 PM by Steven Stanley


No sequins. No glitz. No feathers. No frills. Nothing but glorious songs and dances and a heartstrings-tugging story to transport you back in time and space to a Jewish shtetl in early 20th Century Tsarist Russia. This is Fiddler On The Roof, the Broadway classic whose (almost) 50th Anniversary production makes for a memorable PCPA Theaterfest summer season opener under Roger DeLaurier’s assured direction.
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posted in Musical, Santa Barbara County, Theater Review, WOW!

REVOLVER

posted on June 16th, 2013 at 12:21 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED

A gay man seeking vengeance on the bashers who killed his first love years before. Jesus dancing a tango in heaven with the disciple whose betrayal led to his death on the cross. A closeted mega-rich movie star and the openly gay starving actor who was once his one true love. Antagonistic friends of a recently od’ed crystal meth addict sorting through his things. An angry gay activist being interviewed by a young journalist who idolizes him. A murdered gay man and one of his killers meeting once again in heaven.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Recommended, Theater Review

YES, PRIME MINISTER

posted on June 14th, 2013 at 11:51 PM by Steven Stanley


The country is England, the time is now, and the PM’s country house retreat Chequers is in crisis mode. The coalition government finds itself representing a divided electorate, the British Pound Sterling is waning in value, and an ongoing European Council conference seems headed for disaster. With all these problems and more on his table, what’s a Prime Minister to do?

In Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s hilariously farcical Yes, Prime Minister (now getting its US Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse), the answer comes in the form of a potential ten-trillion dollar bailout from a former Soviet republic the authors have dubbed Kumranistan. All the PM has to do is provide the Kumranistani foreign secretary with a trio of call girls for a totally illegal (and immoral and unethical) sex orgy.
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posted in Comedy, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

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