THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA

posted on April 26th, 2011 at 10:14 AM by Steven Stanley


Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s The Light In The Piazza is the most exquisite new musical to grace Broadway in the past ten years. How’s that for a reason to catch its first big-stage L.A.-area production since the National Tour played the Ahmanson in 2006—especially one as gorgeous as that of Civic Light Opera Of South Bay Cities?
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posted in Musical, South Bay, WOW!

COMPLETENESS

posted on April 24th, 2011 at 11:47 PM by Steven Stanley


The KISS principle tells us to “Keep it simple, Stupid!” In other words, it’s a simple design (or romance for that matter) that works best, unnecessary complexity being the enemy of a successful outcome.

Nerds-in-love Elliot and Molly learn the truth of KISS in Itamar Moses’s Completeness, the popular young playwright’s latest World Premiere comedy, now playing at South Coast Repertory. If only the computer scientist and the molecular biologist could just keep it simple, maybe their fledgling romance might have a chance of not imploding.
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, WOW!

THE BOY IN THE BATHROOM

posted on April 23rd, 2011 at 11:25 PM by Steven Stanley


No theatrical genre is more quintessentially American than the musical. From Show Boat to Oklahoma to West Side Story to A Chorus Line to Rent to Spring Awakening, the American musical continues to evolve, breaking new ground and exploring new themes, and nowhere more so than in the intimate “chamber musical.” Daddy Long Legs, Adding Machine: The Musical, Hello Again, Loving Repeating, Group: A Musical, and Glory Days are but a half dozen chamber pieces raved about on these pages over the past half dozen months, and to this list can now be added The Boy In The Bathroom, currently getting its World Premiere at The Chance Theater.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

THE IDIOT BOX

posted on April 23rd, 2011 at 12:10 AM by Steven Stanley


Six 20somethings live in perfect harmony in a New York penthouse. Their lives are laugh track-accompanied, and canned audience “ooohs” and “aaahs” are heard at sentimental moments. They are cute, ditzy, dumb, wisecracking, and a bit dull.

No, this is not the latest network sitcom or a rerun of Friends, but rather Michael Elyanow’s clever, highly satisfying tour-de-force comedy The Idiot Box, one of my favorite new plays of the past ten years.
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, WOW!

THE CHINESE MASSACRE: ANNOTATED

posted on April 22nd, 2011 at 11:37 PM by Steven Stanley


Late 19th century Los Angeles history comes to vivid, complex, highly theatrical life in The Chinese Massacre (Annotated), award-winning playwright Tom Jacobson’s latest World Premiere, and once again (as with Jacobson’s Ouroboros, Bunbury, and The Twentieth Century Way), audiences are in for something special indeed.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

CHERRY SMOKE

posted on April 20th, 2011 at 11:30 PM by Steven Stanley


The going-nowhere existences of a quartet of 20somethings living in an unemployment-plagued Donora, Pennsylvania are brought to painfully vivid life by playwright James McManus in his award-winning Cherry Smoke, now getting a first-rate West Coast Premiere by the brand new Lucky Mellon Collective, an exciting addition to the Los Angeles theater scene.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

LITTLE ME

posted on April 18th, 2011 at 10:28 AM by Steven Stanley


Take music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, and a book by Neil Simon and what do you get?

You get Little Me, a 1962 Broadway gem that starred Sid Caesar in a septet of roles, scored ten Tony nominations (winning one for Bob Fosse’s choreography), closed way too soon due mostly to a newspaper strike, then toured the country with most of its original cast, its L.A. run one of the earliest musicals seen by a certain Steven Stanley just a year into his teens.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Concert Staged Reading, WOW!

THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE

posted on April 17th, 2011 at 11:52 PM by Steven Stanley


“The thing for you to give up is your affectations, your little put-on mannerisms that make you seem, well, slightly peculiar to people. You express yourself in fantastic high-flown phrases. Your hands fly about you like a pair of wild birds! You get out of breath, you stammer, you laugh hysterically and clutch at your throat.”
–Reverend Winemiller, The Eccentricities Of A Nightingale

It can’t have been easy for Tennessee Williams growing up gay in the South in the early 20th Century, and the above-quoted advice could easily have been given to him by a well-meaning father unaware of the hurt his words could inflict. In fact, words like these are probably still being heard, even in 2011, by gay youths whose outcast status leaves them very little faith that it will ever (in the words of a spate of recent YouTube videos) “get better.”
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Drama, WOW!

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