ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE

posted on July 8th, 2011 at 7:29 AM by Steven Stanley


When Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane opened on London’s West End back in 1964, a certain Mrs. Edna Welthorpe was inspired to write the Editor of Plays And Players as follows:

“I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion. And to be told that such a disgusting piece of filth now passes for humour. Today’s young playwrights take it upon themselves to flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people. I hope that ordinary people will shortly strike back.”
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

FLEETWOOD MACBETH

posted on July 8th, 2011 at 7:26 AM by Steven Stanley


They’ve done As You Like It as “As U2 Like It,” A Winter’s Tale as “A Wither’s Tale,” Much Ado About Nothing as “Much Adoobie Brothers About Nothing,” A Midsummer Night’s Dream as “A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream,” and Hamlet as “Hamlet The Artist Formerly Known As Prince Of Denmark.” Now, the Troubadour Theater Company (affectionately nicknamed The Troubies) are back with a revival of their 2004 musical spoof of Macbeth, which they’ve titled “Fleetwood Macbeth.”
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

DONNA/MADONNA

posted on July 6th, 2011 at 7:31 AM by Steven Stanley


Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1980s, John Paul Karliak always knew he was adopted. What he didn’t figure out until a good deal later was that there wouldn’t be a Mrs. Karliak in his future, if you get my drift. Still, despite young J.P.’s cluelessness to his budding sexual orientation, it must have been hard for his family to mistake the signs: An occasional dress. A running gait like Tinkerbell’s. The ability to quote Auntie Mame as if it were the Bible.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Solo Performance, WOW!

A DEATH IN COLOMBIA

posted on July 3rd, 2011 at 7:04 AM by Steven Stanley


It takes particular skill to write a thriller for the stage. Playwrights can’t rely on chase sequences or camera angles or other cinematic tricks as screenwriters can. Their task becomes all the more difficult if the stage thriller they’re writing is to unfold in real time on a single set with only a handful of characters. Add to the above a political theme, and you’ve got a doozy of a writing assignment.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

posted on July 1st, 2011 at 6:56 AM by Steven Stanley


It takes a good deal of chutzpah to chop an hour off the running time of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a great deal of talent to pull it off, a feat which Vanguard Rep has performed to perfection—and to gales of laughter—in an open-air production certain to delight audiences of all ages, and that includes Shakespearephiles-and-phobes alike.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, WOW!

BROADSWORD: A HEAVY METAL PLAY

posted on June 30th, 2011 at 7:10 AM by Steven Stanley


Sixteen years ago, four young New Jerseyans dreamed of a heavy metal stardom that would transport them far away from the Podunk town of Rahway. Then, as these things happen, their lead singer got a too-good-to-resist offer of a solo career and the remaining three were left to pick up the pieces. Now, a decade and a half later one of the the foursome is dead (or at the very least presumed dead), and his surviving bandmates have reunited for his memorial.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

1776

posted on June 29th, 2011 at 7:19 AM by Steven Stanley


If you’ve ever wondered what it would have felt like to be a fly on the wall of the Continental Congress of 1776 as our country’s Founding Fathers wrangled over the question of Independence from Great Britain and the writing of our Declaration Of Independence, then wonder no more. Instead, head on over to Glendale Centre Theatre, where a splendid cast of twenty-six under the skilled direction of Todd Nielsen revive the 1969 Broadway musical 1776 in an “all-a-round” terrific in-the-round staging.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

TWIST: AN AMERICAN MUSICAL

posted on June 26th, 2011 at 6:51 AM by Steven Stanley


Simply put, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of Twist: An American Musical are as breathtakingly thrilling as any I’ve ever experienced inside a theater. An honest-to-goodness overture previews some of the tunes we’ll be hearing, and how exciting it feels to have this mostly lost tradition revived. Then comes “Back By Demand,” the kind of dazzling tap extravaganza one might have seen at Harlem’s legendary Prohibition-era Cotton Club, though here it is set in Louisiana’s Big Easy, aka New Orleans, and the applause it inspires seems to go on forever.
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posted in Musical, Pasadena, WOW!

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