INCIDENT AT VICHY
posted on July 28th, 2012 at 7:15 PM by Steven Stanley
The mind still boggles and the heart still recoils at the statistics. Nearly 6,000,000 Jews killed, including 90% of the Polish Jewish population, 90% of German and Austrian Jews, and similarly high percentages in the Baltics and Czechoslovakia. If Jews in France fared “better,” with 74% their 350,000 surviving the Holocaust, these figures provided cold comfort to the 90,000 exterminated by the Nazis.
Arthur Miller puts a personal face on a dozen or so of these French victims of Nazi terrorism in his powerful Incident At Vichy, now being revived at the Sierra Madre Playhouse in a proscenium-staged production that comes close to matching what you’d see at the Pasadena Playhouse or any major regional theater, albeit on a smaller scale.
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posted in Drama, San Gabriel Valley, WOW!
ALL YOUR HARD WORK
posted on July 27th, 2012 at 4:57 PM by Steven Stanley
A decade or so ago, Jim and Mary-Ellen were college lovers, though perhaps not exclusively. Both seemed headed toward success, he in business, she in journalism. Now Jim is racking up those frequent flyer miles, doing business in fifteen cities in ten states, married, the father of a young child, and the owner of a “starter” house he was able to purchase with a $50,000 cash down payment. Mary-Ellen, on the other hand, works 12-hour shifts at Urban Outfitters, lives in a cramped studio apartment, and is just about the only person she knows without a spouse and children, though you could hardly call her celibate …or a teetotaler.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
posted on July 25th, 2012 at 6:01 PM by Steven Stanley
Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s La Cage Aux Folles is back, with 1960s heartthrob George Hamilton as nightclub manager George and Broadway’s Christopher Sieber as the fabulously flamboyant Albin, the star of George’s drag show and the love of his life.
posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, WOW!
ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER
posted on July 23rd, 2012 at 3:18 PM by Steven Stanley
A title that rings a bell for older musical theater buffs, but one that might not be familiar to anyone under a certain age. A score by songwriters whose better known shows keep getting revived and revived, but not this one. Songs that became hits even though the musical they came from did not. A book that, as they say, “needs work.”
It’s precisely for musicals like 1965’s On A Clear Day You Can See Forever that the “concert staged reading” was designed.
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posted in Concert Staged Reading, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!
MATT ANCTIL
posted on July 23rd, 2012 at 2:43 PM by Steven Stanleyposted in Interview
SPRING AWAKENING IN CONCERT
posted on July 22nd, 2012 at 2:07 PM by Steven Stanley
Spring Awakening fans have new reason to rejoice. Just three months after an intimate staging of the 2006 Broadway smash ended its sold-out six-week Hollywood run, the Steven Sater-Duncan Sheik musical returns to Los Angeles for an all-too-brief two weekends a mere six miles away from its Hollywood venue, an all-around sensational “Spring Awakening In Concert” that easily rivals the best of Spring Awakenings before it.
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posted in Cabaret/Concert/Variety, Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
posted on July 22nd, 2012 at 1:21 AM by Steven StanleyRECOMMENDED
Director Linda Kerns, choreographer Heather Castillo, and a terrifically talented cast make the most of Cabrillo Music Theatre’s summer offering, a revival of the short-lived 1989 Broadway adaptation of the 1944 MGM movie musical Meet Me In St. Louis. Though the material being brought to life doesn’t hold up nearly as well as our rose-colored memories of the Judy Garland classic would like it to, the resulting production has much to recommend in it.
posted in Musical, Recommended, Ventura County
MACBETH
posted on July 21st, 2012 at 2:12 PM by Steven Stanley
Director extraordinaire Jessica Kubzansky humanizes the murderous Macbeth and his lethal Lady McB in a uniquely powerful production of Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play,” particularly as performed by a mashup of the Antaeus Company’s double-cast ensemble.
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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, WOW!
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