ISLAND OF BRILLIANCE

posted on December 19th, 2010 at 1:29 PM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Eighteen-year-old Evie is reputed to be one of the top students in her New Jersey high school, but you wouldn’t know it from her college interviews. She tells the Princeton interviewer that she applied to the Ivy League school because her guidance counselor “thought I might get in.” She tells the Dartmouth interviewer that he applied there to see if the school is worth attempting suicide for. (Someone she knows tried to off himself when the school rejected him.) As for Yale, she tells the boy next door that she can’t remember whether she applied there or not.
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posted in Drama, Not Recommended, West Side/Beverly HIlls

BROADWAY HOLIDAY

posted on December 17th, 2010 at 11:10 PM by Steven Stanley


From the opening bars of The Four Seasons’ “Oh What A Night,” it’s clear that the Geffen Playhouse’s December offering isn’t going to be your traditional Christmas revue. In fact, Broadway Holiday splits its songs almost equally between the two words of its title, its cast of five Great White Way vets serenading their Westwood audience with a baker’s dozen of Broadway’s Greatest Hits and about as many holiday favorites.
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posted in Musical Revue, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS

posted on December 16th, 2010 at 11:00 PM by Steven Stanley


No child growing up in the 1950s or 1960s’ could consider his or her Christmas complete without an annual viewing of Gian Carlo Monotti’s Amahl And The Night Visitors, the first opera specifically composed for American television. This fifteen year tradition ended in 1966, when the rights to a 1963 taping reverted to Menotti, who refused to allow this version (one which he disapproved of) ever to be shown again, thereby depriving later generations of one of the most extraordinary of holiday memories. An imperfect VHS-to-DVD transfer of a 1955 black-and-white kinescope is currently the only in-print version available to parents wanting to share the Amahl experience with their children, or boomers wishing to relive childhood memories.
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posted in Musical, Pasadena, WOW!

PLAID TIDINGS

posted on December 15th, 2010 at 3:06 PM by Steven Stanley


The 1950s foursome (and eponymous 1990 musical) known as Forever Plaid, who’ve been entertaining audiences with their close-harmony vocals and amusing between-song patter for the past two decades, now make a Christmas season return to earth at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in a holiday spin-off cleverly titled Plaid Tidings.
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posted in Musical Revue, San Diego County, WOW!

THE FIRST JO-EL

posted on December 15th, 2010 at 1:23 PM by Steven Stanley


Here’s a bit of Biblical trivia for you. According to the Gospel According To The Troubies, there were not one but two pregnant women at the Bethlehem Inn on December 25th of the year 0. Joseph and Mary were there, of course, but unbeknownst until now, an unmarried couple named Manolo and Letty were about to give birth as well—or at least so we’re told in this year’s Troubadour Theatre Company holiday show, The First Jo-el.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

THE EIGHT: REINDEER MONOLOGUES

posted on December 13th, 2010 at 11:27 PM by Steven Stanley


Jeff Goode’s The Eight: Reindeer Monologues has been entertaining Orange County audiences at the Chance Theater for the past seven Decembers. In my review of last year’s production, I called it “the funniest (and filthiest) Christmas show in town.” As for its plot, “one by one, Santa’s eight reindeer weigh in on the sex scandal that’s been rocking the North Pole. Is it true that Jolly Old St. Nick (aka ‘that fat fuck’) sexually molested Reindeer Number 8 (aka Vixen), or is the sexiest of The Eight merely looking for her fifteen minutes of fame?”
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, WOW!

CELEBRATE ME HOME 2

posted on December 12th, 2010 at 11:17 PM by Steven Stanley


The second Sunday of the month turned out once again to be an evening to remember when Aaron Jacobs’ Spotlight Cabaret presented its second annual Christmas cabaret—Celebrate Me Home Deux—at downtown L.A.’s Café Metropol.
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posted in Cabaret/Concert/Variety, Los Angeles, WOW!

ELEVATOR

posted on December 11th, 2010 at 1:18 PM by Steven Stanley


Few L.A. theater success stories can rival that of Michael Leoni’s Elevator. Opening last June at the tiniest of the Hudson theaters for a mere seven performances at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, Elevator proved such a hit with audiences that it returned in July for a month-long run. Good fortune then struck with a Critic’s Choice review in the L.A. Times, and Elevator’s producers had themselves a bona fide hit. In September, the show re-reopened at the considerably larger Hudson Mainstage for another month of performances, ultimately re-re-reopening in October at the Macha, where it now heads into the homestretch of a smash two-week-turned six-month run fueled almost entirely by word-of-mouth—though the L.A. Times review certainly didn’t hurt.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

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