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!

UPRIGHT CABARET LA MIRADA

posted on April 17th, 2011 at 11:06 AM by Steven Stanley


Chris Isaacson and his Upright Cabaret are back for their second season of New York-style cabaret at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts, and if I Want To Hold Your Hand, the recent Beatles tribute is any indication, pop music aficionados are in for some great evenings of entertainment at future shows.
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posted in Cabaret/Concert/Variety, Downey/La Mirada, WOW!

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

posted on April 16th, 2011 at 10:35 AM by Steven Stanley


Audrey II, the “strange and interesting plant” that made his/her/its? first appearance way back in 1960 in Roger Corman’s Z-movie classic, is back once again, this time at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts, with human flesh on his/her/its? cannibalistic mind—and you all know what that means. “They may offer you lots of cheap thrills, fancy condos in Beverly Hills, but whatever they offer you, don’t feed the plants!”
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, Musical, WOW!

THE TEMPERAMENTALS

posted on April 15th, 2011 at 11:02 AM by Steven Stanley


Wikipedia calls the 1969 Stonewall riots “the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities” and “the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.”

Sorry Wikipedia, but you’ve got it wrong. The movement for gay rights actually began about two decades earlier right here in Los Angeles, the brainchild of a man named Harry Hay, and Jon Marans’ The Temperamentals sets the record straight (or gay, if you wish).
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

SONDHEIM UNSCRIPTED

posted on April 14th, 2011 at 10:53 AM by Steven Stanley


They’ve improvised William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Jane Austen, and Film Noir to side-splitting success. Now, the comic geniuses that call themselves ImproTheatre strut their musical comedy stuff in Sondheim UnScripted, running in rep with their Will and Williams shows at the Odyssey Theatre.
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posted in Comedy, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

RETURN FROM THE ASHES

posted on April 13th, 2011 at 10:46 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
Fabienne Wolf has ”un petit problemme,” and she has come to her father Dr. Pierre Le Bigan for help. The beautiful young Frenchwoman believes the time has come for her missing-person mother Elizabeth Wolf Pilgrin, once Pierre’s lover, to be declared dead, and the only one with the legal authority to do so is Pierre. Naturally, the physician’s refusal to accede to his daughter’s request does not sit well with Fabienne, set to inherit a vast fortune upon her mother’s death, money she plans to share with her stepfather Stanislaus Pilgrin, her mother’s much younger husband and Fabienne’s current lover.
(read more)

posted in Drama, Recommended, West Side/Beverly HIlls

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