A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE

posted on September 2nd, 2012 at 6:02 PM by Steven Stanley


Performance Riverside introduced its patrons to the musical theater genre known as the Concert Staged Reading in last night’s script-in-hand, one-performance-only “reading” of Ahrens and Flaherty’s A Man Of No Importance. And the result?

A nearly flawless production entirely deserving of its standing ovation.
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posted in Concert Staged Reading, Inland Empire, WOW!

THE FANTASTICKS

posted on September 2nd, 2012 at 11:12 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
When the best-known of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musicals ended its off-Broadway run ten years ago, the New Yorker marked its closing with (what else?) a cartoon. In it, an elderly couple sit reading the news, one of them glancing up to remark deadpan to the other, “We missed ‘The Fantasticks,’” a sly dig on folks who put off seeing a show so long that they end up missing it entirely, and in the case of The Fantasticks, that meant a record-breaking 42-year, 17,162-performance postponement.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Recommended

FISHING

posted on August 31st, 2012 at 5:00 PM by Steven Stanley


Playwright David J. Duman has taken his years of toiling in assorted San Francisco Bay Area restaurants and used them as food for laughter in Fishing, his sexy, spicy, fly-on-the-wall look at the staff and customers of a trendy seafood eatery, now getting its first Los Angeles production at Downtown L.A.’s Archway Studio/Theatre.
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, WOW!

DADDY LONG LEGS

posted on August 27th, 2012 at 8:35 PM by Steven Stanley


A brand new cast makes PCPA Theaterfest’s production of Daddy Long Legs, Paul Gordon and John Caird’s exquisite gem of a musical, seem fresh and new, even for those like this reviewer who fell in love with it in previous engagements at the Rubicon and La Mirada. Though Jean Webster’s 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs fits squarely in the Children’s Books section of your local library or Barnes And Noble, its musical adaptation (minus hyphens) once again proves absolutely right for ages eight to eighty.
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posted in Musical, Santa Barbara County, WOW!

MISS SAIGON

posted on August 27th, 2012 at 1:56 PM by Steven Stanley


Having now seen a grand total of seven major productions of Miss Saigon, I’m going to go out on a limb and say: If Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s reimagining of the 1991-2001 Broadway megasmash isn’t the very best of the bunch (which it may well be), it is certainly the freshest, grittiest, and most original staging I’ve seen since first experiencing Miss Saigon’s First National Tour at the Ahmanson way back in 1995.
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posted in Musical, San Gabriel Valley, WOW!

GHOST-WRITER

posted on August 25th, 2012 at 4:23 PM by Steven Stanley


Wikipedia defines a “ghostwriter” as someone who “writes books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person.” Add a hyphen and a “ghost-writer” is something quite different indeed—or so we learn in Michael Hollinger’s Ghost-Writer, now getting a classy West Coast Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

posted on August 24th, 2012 at 5:36 PM by Steven Stanley


Inspired direction, imaginative choreography, splendid performances, and an in-the-round stage make Glendale Centre Theatre’s revival of the cult musical classic Little Shop Of Horrors one of the very best of the many this reviewer has seen over the past decade.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

THE GRÖNHOLM METHOD

posted on August 22nd, 2012 at 3:27 PM by Steven Stanley

 


Catalan playwright Jordi Galcerán casts a cynical, bemused eye on the cutthroat world of international big business in his darkly comedic The Grönholm Method, the most exciting play to make the transatlantic crossing in an English translation since Yasmina Reza’s God Of Carnage stunned Broadway in 2009.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy-Drama, WOW!

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