A CHORUS LINE

posted on April 15th, 2013 at 11:30 AM by Steven Stanley


Musical Theatre West follows its superb 70th Anniversary revival of Oklahoma! with a first-rate production of the considerably more recent yet equally groundbreaking A Chorus Line.

Now the fifth-longest-running musical in Broadway history, A Chorus Line (book by James Kirkwood, Jr. and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and concept and original direction/choreography by Bennett) remains as fresh, as entertaining, and as powerful as ever with Roger Castellano directing and recreating Bennett’s iconic choreography.
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posted in Long Beach/San Pedro, Musical, WOW!

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS

posted on April 14th, 2013 at 6:04 PM by Steven Stanley


Glenn Casale and Patti Colombo dust the cobwebs off Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, the stage adaptation of the 1954 MGM musical movie classic, offering audiences at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts far more than simply two hours of old-fashioned G-rated family entertainment. With Casale and Colombo in the driver’s seat, this ‘50s chestnut seems fresh and new, honest and real, and thrillingly grown-up.
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, WOW!

GREASE

posted on April 13th, 2013 at 2:05 PM by Steven Stanley


Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski fall in summer love all over again—with the movie’s Doody and Putzie in charge of the whole nostalgic shebang—as Cabrillo Music Theatre revives the 3,388-performance Broadway megahit Grease to the delight of teen and adult audiences alike.
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posted in Musical, Ventura County, WOW!

AMERICAN BUFFALO

posted on April 12th, 2013 at 4:55 PM by Steven Stanley


The four-letter words fly fast and furious in the Geffen Playhouse’s latest, American Buffalo, and though David Mamet’s 1977 Broadway debut remains unlikely to be a traditional theatergoer’s cup of tea, it’s hard to imagine a better cast, acted, directed, or designed revival of this 1977 groundbreaker than the one at the Geffen.
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posted in Comedy, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

SMOKEFALL

posted on April 10th, 2013 at 6:06 PM by Steven Stanley


Man, woman, birth, death, infinity.

The spirit of Thornton Wilder is alive and well and living inside playwright Noah Haidle, whose remarkable Smokefall, now getting its World Premiere at South Coast Repertory, bears comparison with Wilder’s Our Town and The Skin Of Our Teeth.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Orange County, WOW!

SWEET CHARITY

posted on April 9th, 2013 at 10:14 PM by Steven Stanley


Director Neil Dale and choreographer Janet Renslow make a triumphant return to Candlelight Dinner Theatre for the Neil Simon-Cy Coleman-Dorothy Field musical comedy classic Sweet Charity, giving San Gabriel Valley-Inland Empire audiences the best Candlelight show I’ve seen since the duo’s innovative, multiple-Scenie-winning Miss Saigon.
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posted in Musical, San Gabriel Valley, WOW!

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HEDDA GABLER

posted on April 8th, 2013 at 5:50 PM by Steven Stanley

In a case of serendipitous cross-programming, two of Henrik Ibsen’s most iconic heroines are currently alive and well and onstage in San Diego, Nora Helmer in A Doll’s House at The Old Globe and Hedda Gabler in The Further Adventures Of Hedda Gabler at Diversionary Theatre.

No, you didn’t read that last title wrong. Though The Old Globe is featuring Ibsen’s Doll House in its original, albeit freshly translated, form, Diversionary is offering San Diegans Jeff Whitty’s surrealistic comedy The Further Adventures Of Hedda Gabler, and if Whitty’s play runs about twenty minutes longer than it ought to, in all other ways it makes for a heady, laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking evening of absurdist theater.
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posted in Comedy, San Diego County, WOW!

A DOLL’S HOUSE

posted on April 7th, 2013 at 3:29 PM by Steven Stanley


Eight and a half decades before Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique set off what’s known as the Second-Wave Feminist Movement in the U.S., Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen created a heroine whose frustration at being “just a housewife” could well have inspired Friedan and her fellow women’s libbers.

Her name, as you may have guessed, was Nora, and if playwright Ibsen steadfastly asserted that he had not consciously “worked for the women’s rights movement,” A Doll’s House must certainly have inspired generation after generation of women in the years since its 1879 debut.

Ibsen’s masterpiece, incidentally the world’s most performed play, now arrives at San Diego’s The Old Globe Theatre in a World Premiere adaptation by translator Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey and director Kirsten Brandt that makes Nora, the Norwegians surrounding her, and Ibsen’s play itself seem considerably younger than their one hundred thirty-four years of age.
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posted in Drama, San Diego County, WOW!

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