VERY STILL AND HARD TO SEE

posted on June 9th, 2012 at 3:02 PM by Steven Stanley


The ghosts are deceased and (relatively) well and haunting the hotel where Steve Yockey has set Very Still And Hard To See, his World Premiere Scary Play and the latest offering from August Viverito and T L Kolman’s The Production Company.

The theatrical equivalent of Disneyland’s Space Mountain, i.e. equal parts excitement, terror, and glee, Very Still And Hard To See provides thrills galore under Michael Matthews’ masterful direction.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

THE SLEEPER

posted on June 8th, 2012 at 3:13 PM by Steven Stanley


Among the many changes the events of 9/11 have brought about in American life is the new crop of words we’ve seen added to our daily lexicon, not the least of which is the term 9/11. Foreign words have become part of our vocabulary. Old words have been combined to create new phrases. Network news broadcasts have given us one media slogan after another. Who knew what a jihad was before the “axis of evil” launched its “Attack On America”? Even everyday words have acquired new meanings. Take the colors “blue,” “yellow,” “orange,” and “red,” no longer harmless hues but each one more frightening than the previous when modifying the word “alert.” Take too the word “sleeper,” once merely “a person or animal who is asleep” or perhaps a railroad sleeping car, now considerably more sinister in this post-9/11 world.

It’s this newer, scarier “sleeper” that playwright Catherine Butterfield has in mind in her 2004 comedy The Sleeper, now getting a sensational Los Angeles premiere by North Hollywood’s Theatre Tribe.
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posted in Comedy, North Hollywood, WOW!

DAMES AT SEA

posted on June 6th, 2012 at 10:59 PM by Steven Stanley


The campy 42nd Street spoof affectionately titled Dames At Sea proves a terrific showcase for the musical theater talents of UC Irvine in the Department Of Drama’s annual end-of-school-year big-stage musical, directed with oodles of imagination by UCI’s brand new Head Of Directing Jane Page.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

NO WAY AROUND BUT THROUGH

posted on June 6th, 2012 at 10:45 PM by Steven Stanley


Actor, writer, director, photographer, musician Scott Caan, star of TV’s Hawaii 5-0, spotlights the first two of these talents in his entertaining new comedy No Way Around But Through, now getting its World Premiere at Burbank’s Falcon Theater, an engagement made even more noteworthy by the presence of Oscar-nominated film star Melanie Griffith among its talented cast of five.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, WOW!

STONEFACE

posted on June 4th, 2012 at 9:39 PM by Steven Stanley


Imagine you’re writer-director Jaime Robledo, and your play Watson won you just about every award in the book, including a pair of Scenies. Then imagine you’re writer-performer Vanessa Claire Stewart, whose Louis And Keely Live At The Sahara and its holiday spin-off won you just about every award in the book, including a grand total of four Scenies. Now try to think of what to do for an encore.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

PETER PAN

posted on June 3rd, 2012 at 5:13 PM by Steven Stanley

Hear the words “I won’t grow up” and the name most likely to pop into your head will surely be Peter Pan, the boy who has become so synonymous with a refusal to grow older, he’s even got a syndrome named after him.  That’s why it makes perfect sense for the ageless Cathy Rigby to once again be starring in the Broadway/TV smash Peter Pan, whose title role she first played in the first of four separate Broadway engagements way back in 1990 … when she was a mere thirty-eight. As to the question of whether she can still pull it off twenty-two years later in the musical’s latest National Tour, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, WOW!

THE PAJAMA GAME

posted on June 2nd, 2012 at 12:41 PM by Steven Stanley


Carousel, Funny Girl, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, South Pacific … Probably no local Civic Light Opera so consistently revives classic musical comedies from Broadway’s Golden Age as Downey CLO, and their first-ever production of 1954’s The Pajama Game is one of their best revivals ever.
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, WOW!

COMPLEAT FEMALE STAGE BEAUTY

posted on June 1st, 2012 at 5:22 PM by Steven Stanley


When Restoration-era diarist Samuel Pepys wrote about “the prettiest woman in the whole house” and “the handsomest man,” in both cases he was referring to the same person—English actor Edward Kynaston. Known throughout mid-17th Century London for his portrayals of Shakespearean heroines Desdemona, Ophelia, and Juliet, Kynaston achieved more recent fame when Billy Crudup played him on the big screen opposite Claire Danes in 2004’s Stage Beauty. North Hollywood’s Crown City Theatre Company now presents the fascinating play upon which Stage Beauty was based—Jeffrey Hatcher’s Compleat Female Stage Beauty, and a gem of a production it is.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, North Hollywood, WOW!

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