LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

posted on October 5th, 2012 at 5:24 PM by Steven Stanley


The prodigiously talented students of USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory join forces to produce, direct, perform in, and design one of MTR’s absolute best productions to date, an almost perfect intimate theater revival of the Broadway/cult classic Little Shop Of Horrors that more than holds its own against the finest professional productions in town.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!

EURYDICE

posted on October 3rd, 2012 at 10:57 PM by Steven Stanley


Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s magical, mystical, poetic retelling of the Orpheus myth from the point of view of his bride has arrived at South Coast Repertory in a production that, in addition to being exquisitely acted and directed, is likely to be remembered as one of the most stunningly designed SCR productions ever.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Orange County, WOW!

SILENCE! THE MUSICAL

posted on October 2nd, 2012 at 11:40 PM by Steven Stanley


When a flock of musical theater triple-threats adorned with sheep’s ears and hooves blend light-operatic voices to sing out “This is the story of Clarice,” only to be joined by a pantsuit-clad jogger looking like none other than a young Jodie Foster in FBI trainee mode, there’s only one place you could possibly be, whether in New York or L.A., and that’s at SILENCE! The Musical, the “unauthorized parody of Silence Of The Lambs” whose continuing Off-Broadway run has proved so successful that a sister production has now opened in Los Angeles to audience laughter and cheers.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!

THE RED ROOM

posted on October 1st, 2012 at 10:35 AM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Memories of the past haunt the present of a once successful Hollywood mogul, his tormented wife, and their three adult sons in Christopher Knopf’s frustratingly abstruse The Red Room, now getting its World Premiere at North Hollywood’s NoHo Arts Center.
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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, Not Recommended

AMERICAN FIESTA

posted on September 30th, 2012 at 1:17 PM by Steven Stanley


When a self-penned solo performance, the kind that Fringe Festival participants seem ever so fond of, proves so popular that actors other than the original writer get hired to perform it, that’s pretty much a guarantee of something special, or at least this is the case with the Colony Theatre’s latest, Steven Tomlinson’s autobiographical American Fiesta.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Solo Performance, WOW!

CRAZY FOR YOU

posted on September 29th, 2012 at 12:12 PM by Steven Stanley


Downey Civic Light Opera opens its 2012-13 season with one of its strongest productions in recent years, Crazy For You, the Tony-winning Best Musical of 1992. Winning lead performances by Mishi Schueller and Andrea Dodson, a bunch of terrific supporting turns, and some of the best dancing I’ve seen on the Downey Theatre stage make this a worthy follow-up to last spring’s excellent The Pajama Game.
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, WOW!

BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK

posted on September 29th, 2012 at 1:08 AM by Steven Stanley


The Motion Picture Production Code changed more than the sexual content of films made between 1934 and 1968. Not only did the Hays Code, as it was better known, ban “every profane and vulgar expression, any licentious or suggestive nudity, the illegal traffic in drugs, any inference of sex perversion,” and other cinematic sins which pre-1933 movies might have felt free to feature, it also restricted the ways blacks and whites could interrelate.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage looks back at the last pre-Code year and the effects the Code had on the life of Hollywood’s first (albeit fictional) African-American film star in her fascinating, funny, thought-provoking—though not entirely satisfying—By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, now getting its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

TITANIC THE MUSICAL

posted on September 26th, 2012 at 1:15 PM by Steven Stanley


Few 20th Century events continue to exert the fascination of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. The mind still boggles at the epic tragedy of a supposedly unsinkable ocean liner on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City striking an iceberg in dead of night. What terror must have been inspired by the sudden realization that death was but an inexorable hour or two away?

2,224 passengers and crew in all—and only enough lifeboats onboard to carry half of them. 1,514 dead. Only 710 survivors, despite there having been space for 500 more.

And the “what ifs.” What if there had been sufficient lifeboats? What if the ship hadn’t been traveling at full speed so as to reach its destination in record time? What if a few critical modifications had been integrated into its design? What if a nearby ship had gotten Titanic’s SOS? What if? What if? What if?
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Concert Staged Reading, WOW!

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