TENDER NAPALM

posted on March 12th, 2013 at 6:33 PM by Steven Stanley


The East London exes of Philip Ridley’s Tender Napalm could give the long-married spouses of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a lesson in how to use language as both weapon and aphrodisiac, or so Los Angeles audiences can now discover in the sensational West Coast Premiere of Ridley’s surreal romantic tragedy at the downtown warehouse-turned-performance space Six-01 Studio.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

LEGALLY BLONDE

posted on March 11th, 2013 at 6:42 PM by Steven Stanley


When rights to a hit Broadway musical get released to regional theaters, it often takes longer than you’d expect for a show to reach L.A. Take the case of Legally Blonde. Though its rights were made available way back in September of 2011, it had until recently made its way only as close as Vista (94 miles away), with Thousand Oaks not scheduled to get it till this coming July, and Fullerton (a “mere” 26 miles away) not till October of 2013. And who knows when it will actually reach L.A. County?

All the more reason to zip on up to relatively nearby Simi Valley (only half an hour from downtown L.A.) where right this very minute Elle Woods is discovering the joys of higher education in Actors’ Repertory Theatre of Simi’s terrific (if not quite perfect) staging of the 2007 Broadway adaptation of the 2001 movie smash, solidly directed by David Daniels.
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posted in Musical, Ventura County, WOW!

DREAMGIRLS

posted on March 10th, 2013 at 1:37 PM by Steven Stanley


Deena Jones, Effie White, Lorrell Robinson, and Michelle Morris are singing up a storm and DOMA has got’em.

A news flash like this can only mean one thing. Dreamgirls is in town, with DOMA Theatre Company once again proving that you don’t need a gazillion dollars and a 1500-seat house to make musical theater magic in L.A.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, WOW!

WOLVES

posted on March 9th, 2013 at 2:17 PM by Steven Stanley


There Will Be Blood. What a title this would have made for playwright Steve Yockey’s latest creation had the name not already been taken. Or There Will Be Chills, or There Will Be Turmoil, or There Will Be Sex (or at the very least Foreplay), or There Will Be Laughs. Wisely, Yockey has simply called his newest devilish confection Wolves (as in Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad …) and as its real and alternate titles suggest, the prolific stage scribe has confectioned one sexy, funny, dark, bloody fairy tale for adults.

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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

CRAZY FOR YOU

posted on March 9th, 2013 at 1:07 AM by Steven Stanley


The Tony-winning Best Musical of 1992 has arrived at Glendale Centre Theatre in an in-the-round production so all-a-round terrific, you’d have to be crazy not to be crazy about Crazy For You. With its ever so talented pair of triple-threat leads, splendid supporting performances, a fabulous song-and-dance ensemble executing some of the most inventive choreography around, and costumes you’d expect to see on a Broadway stage, Crazy For You is is one of GCT’s best.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

DAVID DEAN BOTTRELL IS WORKING

posted on March 7th, 2013 at 4:47 PM by Steven Stanley


You’ve undoubtedly heard it said that “Everyone has at least one good book in them.” Substitute “solo performance” for book and you’re in Hollywood, and if you should happen to doubt my words, you’ve only to check out how many One-Man or One-Woman Shows there are every summer at the Fringe Festival.

Still, despite this solo performance glut, there aren’t that many you’d actually pay good money to see, all the more reason to celebrate the return of story-telling master David Dean Bottrell, who not only has a Scenie-winning Solo Performance in him, he’s got a wingdinger of a follow-up to it, entitled simply David Dean Bottrell Is Working.
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posted in Los Angeles, Solo Performance, WOW!

MY BIG GAY ITALIAN WEDDING

posted on March 5th, 2013 at 6:02 PM by Steven Stanley


The place is Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where Tony Manero discoed the night away in Saturday Night Fever and where women still live by the credo, “The higher the hair, the closer to God.” The time is the present, meaning that the gay boys of South Brooklyn no longer have to pretend to be straight, and can even tie the legal knot when they meet Mr. Right. What better time could there be for a 20something Italian-American ragazzo like our hero Anthony Pinnunziato to pop the question to his Polish-American sweetie Andrew Polinski? Now all he has to do is convince his traditional Mamma and Papa to give the happy same-sex couple their blessing.

Playwright Anthony Wilkinson thus sets the comedic wheels in motion in his off-Broadway hit My Big Gay Italian Wedding, now getting a hilarious West Coast Premiere in an exuberantly acted albeit barebones production under the peppy direction of Paul Storiale.
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posted in Comedy, North Hollywood, WOW!

THE TROUBLE WITH WORDS

posted on March 4th, 2013 at 9:36 PM by Steven Stanley


What do you do when you’ve won your second Ovation Award (for music directing The Color Purple) a mere twelve months after winning Ovation Number One for the music and lyrics of your original song cycle The Trouble With Words … and you’ve only just turned thirty?

The answer, if you’re Gregory Nabours, is to revisit The Trouble With Words in a smartly tweaked 2013 production for Coeurage Theatre Company, one which features the talents of its original director and band and most of its original cast, along with four new songs and a brand new choreographer and design team, all of this adding up to a TTWW 2.0 even more splendiferous than it was the first time round.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical Revue, WOW!

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