CHICAGO

posted on June 25th, 2011 at 7:05 AM by Steven Stanley


Just the thought of a community theater trying its hand at the Broadway megahit Chicago is probably enough to send most Kander and Ebb lovers scurrying in the opposite direction, that is unless the community theater in question is Santa Monica’s venerable Morgan-Wixson. As their productions of Urinetown: A Musical, A Chorus Line, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have demonstrated, the folks at the Morgan-Wixson are more than capable of staging quality musical theater on a tight budget—without the benefit of Equity performers, blessed as they are with directors, designers, and technical staff who know their stuff, and the talent pool of an area as crowded with triple-threats as is Los Angeles.
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posted in Musical, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

BAKERSFIELD MIST

posted on June 24th, 2011 at 7:17 AM by Steven Stanley


If there’s anyone with whom most Los Angeles theatergoers would surely not want to change places, it would probably be Maude Gutman of Bakersfield, the heroine of Stephen Sachs’ impressive World Premiere comedy Bakersfield Mist, now playing at the Fountain Theatre. Not only would the mere idea of living without a hundred or more plays to choose from each week be eminently resistible, a mere glance at the rundown knickknack-filled trailer Maude calls (mobile) home would provoke a spontaneous urge to hightail it back to L.A. asap.
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, WOW!

THE BLUE LAGOON: A MUSICAL

posted on June 23rd, 2011 at 12:26 AM by Steven Stanley


(*At 45 minutes, The Blue Lagoon: A Musical gets a lower-case wow!)

When Henry De Vere Stacpoole wrote his romance novel The Blue Lagoon back in 1908, little did he know that a century later, his teenaged heroine Emmeline Lestrange would be singing “(Oh Dear God Above) Please Keep Us Safe On This Ocean” to her first cousin Richard, who would then reply with an encouraging “With Dick around, you don’t have to frown.”
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, WOW!

MAMMA MIA!

posted on June 21st, 2011 at 11:01 AM by Steven Stanley


Is there any show in the world that can rival the success of Mamma Mia!? Since its 1999 World Premiere in London’s West End, there have been at least 30 “sit-down” productions across the globe. Sydney, Las Vegas, Madrid, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Paris, and Oslo are just a handful of the cities where Mamma Mia has “sat down” and stayed for months or even years. Then there are the tours, beginning with the First U.S. tour that played the Ahmanson back in 2002, stretching up to the musical’s four current tours—North American, European, Japanese, and Korean. As for Mamma Mia!’s Broadway run, just a couple weeks ago it hit 4000 performances and counting. All this is to say that a) you shouldn’t expect your local CLO to mount its own production in the foreseeable future and b) if you want to see Mamma Mia! live on stage, you’d better head on down to Costa Mesa where the North American tour is making an all-too-brief one-week stop.
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posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, WOW!

THE WILD PARTY

posted on June 19th, 2011 at 11:13 AM by Steven Stanley


Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party is a tough show to nail. In fact, one of the few times I’ve left a production at intermission was a well-intentioned but mostly disastrous attempt at meeting TWP’s many challenges. That’s why Theatre Out’s intimate staging down Santa Ana way comes as such a thrilling surprise, one which marks director-choreographer Frankie Marrone as One To Watch and spotlights a revelatory performance by a never better Andrea Dennison-Laufer.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

BASH’d: A GAY RAP OPERA

posted on June 18th, 2011 at 7:13 AM by Steven Stanley


If the words Gay Rap Opera sound to you like a three-way oxymoron, then you haven’t heard Feminem and T-Bag rap to the sounds of DJ Jedi in BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera, now playing at Hollywood’s Celebration Theatre. Take rhymes like “Get off my fuckin’ back okay, I like to suck dick / Now fuck me in the ass and I’ll write rhymes about it,” set them to a gangsta beat, find a pair of hip-hopping triple threats like Sean Bradford and Chris Ferro to bust those rhymes, give the whole shebang one of the most exciting stagings in town, and you’ve got another great big Celebration hit to shout out about.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, WOW!

FOUR CLOWNS: ROMEO AND JULIET

posted on June 18th, 2011 at 12:41 AM by Steven Stanley


When you think of clowns, you probably don’t think of Romeo And Juliet, and when you think of Romeo And Juliet, you probably don’t imagine Juliet telling her beloved, “You are the sun in the sky. I can’t wait for you to be that guy … who fucks me tonight.”
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

THE LAST FIVE YEARS

posted on June 17th, 2011 at 7:37 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
His story starts with their first meeting and ends with a farewell note left behind with his wedding ring. Her story begins when she finds the ring and reads the note. Only at the halfway point do the two 20something characters’ onstage lives coincide; only then do they sing to each other, look each other in the eyes, touch.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Recommended

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