THE 39 STEPS

posted on January 22nd, 2012 at 7:30 PM by Steven Stanley


A quarter century before Cary Grant found himself pursued across the United States by enemy spies mistakenly believing him to be a CIA agent in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller North By Northwest, a young man named Richard Hannay wound up in similar straits in The 39 Steps, one of the master of the suspense’s earliest hits, and one whose now iconic sequences include a train-top chase leading to Hannay’s daredevil jump onto the Forth Bridge, a seemingly fatal shooting of our hero midway through, hero handcuffed to Hitchcock Blonde heroine as he searches for a villain recognizable only by the missing top joint on one of his fingers, and a very public climactic scene at the London Palladium, much like the one Hitchcock later filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in The Man Who Knew Too Much.
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posted in Comedy, Downey/La Mirada, WOW!

THE WATER’S EDGE

posted on January 21st, 2012 at 5:48 PM by Steven Stanley


A man’s return visit to the wife and children he left behind seventeen years ago yields unexpected consequences in The Water’s Edge, Theresa Rebeck’s gripping family drama (with a twist), now getting a sensational Los Angeles Premiere at North Hollywood’s The Road Theatre under the inspired direction of Sam Anderson.
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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, WOW!

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE

posted on January 20th, 2012 at 3:50 PM by Steven Stanley


The Tony-winning 2006 Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone proves the best possible showcase for more than twenty talented USC undergrads (and audiences lucky enough to catch it during its sold-out six-performance run through Sunday).
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!

OUR TOWN

posted on January 20th, 2012 at 1:16 PM by Steven Stanley


Rare is the theatergoer who has not seen at least one, if not half a dozen productions of Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s classic bit of Americana that first astonished audiences in 1938 with its innovative storytelling, even as it told a story as old as time itself—a story of birth, and life, and love, and death.
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posted in Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

LONESOME TRAVELER

posted on January 19th, 2012 at 3:03 PM by Steven Stanley


There’s a hootenanny down yonder in Laguna Beach these days as the Laguna Playhouse presents the Rubicon Theatre production of Lonesome Traveler, a nostalgic trip down folk music memory lane, from the early part of the 20th Century to the mid-‘1960s, when the screeches of Bob Dylan’s electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival signaled the end of an era.
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posted in Musical Revue, Orange County, WOW!

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

posted on January 16th, 2012 at 11:07 PM by Steven Stanley


Emmy-winning writer JP Miller examines the devastation wrought by alcoholism on a young couple’s marriage in his best-known work, Days Of Wine And Roses, now being revived to powerful effect at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

HARLEY JAY

posted on January 16th, 2012 at 3:05 PM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

AVENUE Q

posted on January 15th, 2012 at 8:10 PM by Steven Stanley


Avenue Q has arrived on Broadway—at 202 N. Broadway in Santa Ana, that is—making for just about the best musical theater news in town, particularly since the Theatre Out downscaling of the Tony-winning Broadway smash is just about as perfectly staged as an intimate-theater musical can be.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

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