WAR HORSE

posted on January 23rd, 2013 at 7:15 PM by Steven Stanley


Simply put, War Horse is a theatrical experience unlike any other you have ever witnessed. A spectacular, breathtaking work of art that does things usually reserved only for the movies, it had this reviewer gasping in awe and blubbering like a baby. Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like it before.
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posted in Drama, National Tour, Orange County, WOW!

110 IN THE SHADE

posted on January 21st, 2013 at 7:43 PM by Steven Stanley


Musical Theatre West’s One-Night-Only concert staged reading of 110 In The Shade, the 1963 Broadway musical adaptation of N. Richard Nash’s perennial favorite The Rainmaker, proved an entertaining, particularly well-timed treat for this reviewer, having only one week prior seen the very play which set the musical ball in motion.
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posted in Concert Staged Reading, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

CLYBOURNE PARK

posted on January 21st, 2013 at 6:06 PM by Steven Stanley


The 19th Century axiom that “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”* could have been thought up to describe race relations in the United States, or at least race relations as Bruce Norris writes about them in his Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Clybourne Park, now getting its first San Diego production—and a splendid one at that—at San Diego REPertory Theatre.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, San Diego County, WOW!

BOEING-BOEING

posted on January 21st, 2013 at 1:53 PM by Steven Stanley


Theatergoers wanting to start off the New Year with a good laugh—or a thousand of them—are hereby advised to head on over to the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts where McCoy Rigby Entertainment is opening its 2013 season with Marc Camoletti’s saucy, sexy French farce Boeing-Boeing.
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posted in Comedy, Downey/La Mirada, WOW!

YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN

posted on January 19th, 2013 at 3:38 PM by Steven Stanley


Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Sally, and Snoopy celebrate the life of a boy named Charlie Brown in the crowd-pleasing musical You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, now being given a positively irresistible guest production at North Hollywood’s intimate Theatre Banshee.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

FREUD’S LAST SESSION

posted on January 18th, 2013 at 6:44 PM by Steven Stanley


Maxwell Anderson did it in his 1936 play Mary Of Scotland. Steve Allen did it in his late 1970s TV series Meeting Of Minds. And now playwright Mark St. Germain does it in Freud’s Last Session.

What these writers have in common is that all three imagined what might have happened had famous historical figures actually met, like Anderson did with Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen Of Scots, or in the case of Germain’s off-Broadway smash, now playing at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage, the Father Of Psychoanalysis (and confirmed atheist) Sigmund Freud and the Chronicles Of Narnia creator (and Christian apologist) C. S. Lewis.
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posted in Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

BRIAN ROBERT BURNS

posted on January 17th, 2013 at 6:51 PM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

THE MOTHERF**KER WITH THE HAT

posted on January 16th, 2013 at 3:46 PM by Steven Stanley


The play with arguably the most unprintable title in Broadway history now gets its West Coast Premiere at South Coast Repertory, once again providing mainstream publications, broadcast media, and SCR with the following dilemma—how to write or talk about a comedy whose title New York publications censored as either The ___________ With the Hat or The [Expletive] With the Hat or The Mother With The Hat (say what?), and whose “official” title is for most media the still unprintable The Motherf**cker With the Hat. Perhaps that’s why, despite the star power of Bobby Cannavale, Chris Rock, and Annabella Sciorra in the original New York cast and a total of six Tony nominations, popular playwright Stephen Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Broadway debut closed after a grand total of 28 previews and 112 performances.

Fortunately for South Coast Rep, The Motherfucker With The Hat (there, I’ve written it and will write it again) has generated enough buzz (it was the 8th most produced play in the U.S. last year) that even lacking name stars, that buzz—plus the rave reviews this sensational production has already generated—is likely to keep every one of the Julianne Argyros Stage’s 336 seats filled throughout its three-week run.
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, WOW!

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