AMERICAN IDIOT

posted on May 30th, 2012 at 1:09 PM by Steven Stanley


Green Day’s American Idiot has arrived in the OC for a head-bangingly exciting one-week engagement at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
(read more)

posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, WOW!

A5678

posted on May 29th, 2012 at 4:53 PM by Steven Stanley


Escondido’s Welk Resort Theatre brings back the good old-fashioned Musical Comedy Revue with its “World Premiere Revival” of Barbara Epstein’s A5678, a show which debuted at L.A.’s The Zephyr Theatre way back in 1976.
(read more)

posted in Musical Revue, San Diego County, WOW!

WHERE THE GREAT ONES RUN

posted on May 29th, 2012 at 4:18 PM by Steven Stanley


Mark Roberts writes plays about abuse, adultery, addiction, illness, incest, and suicide in the American Midwest, or at least that’s the terrain he covered in Parasite Drag, reviewed here a couple years back. Rogue Machine Theatre produces dark, edgy dramas like Small Engine Repair and Blackbird, which swept virtually every major theater award in town this past year. That’s why Roberts’ and Rogue Machine’s maiden collaboration, Where The Great Ones Run, comes as such a surprise. Though alcoholism, domestic violence, homosexuality, and a rather long bit of full-frontal male nudity would doubtless make this Mark Roberts play rather too daring for, say, Actors Co-op, coming from Rogue Machine, Where The Great Ones Run seems downright sunny, more Horton Foote than Sam Shepard, and if you’re anything like this reviewer you’ll love every minute of Roberts’ only slightly acidic valentine to small-town Indiana life. (read more)

posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

REX PICKETT’S SIDEWAYS THE PLAY

posted on May 26th, 2012 at 2:18 PM by Steven Stanley


Longtime best friends Miles and Jack set off on “the ultimate road trip, the last hurrah” in Rex Pickett’s Sideways The Play, now getting a terrific World Premiere staging by Santa Monica’s The Ruskin Group Theatre Co.
(read more)

posted in Comedy-Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

PANACHE

posted on May 25th, 2012 at 5:58 PM by Steven Stanley


Here’s a question for romantic comedy buffs. When is the last time you saw a stage play that drew you into its spell and held you throughout laughter (and a tear or two) to a picture perfect fade-out in the same way that romcom favorites like You’ve Got Mail, While You Were Sleeping, and Notting Hill have been doing for decades on the silver screen. It’s been years since this reviewer (and romcom lover) has seen a comedy as intoxicatingly romantic as Don Gordon’s Panache, now in the homestretch of its six-week run at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre. As I write this review, you’ve got only two more chances not to miss out on his romantic comedy gem.
(read more)

posted in Comedy-Drama, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

IT IS DONE

posted on May 23rd, 2012 at 10:54 AM by Steven Stanley


When a playwright plunks down three strangers in a bar ninety miles from nowhere on a dark and stormy night, it’s a sure bet sparks are going to fly, and fly they do (though probably not as you’d ever suspect) in Alex Goldberg’s edge-of-your-seat thriller It Is Done, now getting its West Coast Premiere at Hollywood’s Pig ‘N Whistle.
(read more)

posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

NICCI CLASPELL

posted on May 22nd, 2012 at 5:46 PM by Steven Stanley

(read more)

posted in Interview

BELLS ARE RINGING

posted on May 22nd, 2012 at 4:38 PM by Steven Stanley


Tony-nominated musicals of the 1950s fall largely into two categories. There are those that have made such a lasting impression that hardly a year goes by without regional theater revivals galore. Shows like South Pacific, Guys And Dolls, The King And I, West Side Story, Damn Yankees, My Fair Lady, and The Music Man make this list. The rest are mostly long-forgotten chestnuts that nonetheless merit a “concert staged reading” from time to time, if only for nostalgia’s sake. Take for instance Pipe Dream, Redhead, or New Girl In Town.

Then there’s Bells Are Ringing, which in spite of a Tony-nominated Broadway revival in 2001, has largely faded into obscurity despite at least three popular standards (“Long Before I Knew You,” “Just in Time,” and “The Party’s Over”) written by the incomparable Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and a book that continues to delight five and a half decades later. If ever there were a show in Category B which deserved to be in Category A, Bells Are Ringing is that show, as Sunday’s Musical Theatre West concert staged reading made abundantly clear.
(read more)

posted in Concert Staged Reading, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

Next PagePrevious Page