RENT

posted on December 2nd, 2010 at 3:15 PM by Steven Stanley


Cal State Fullerton’s exceptional production of Jonathan Larson’s Rent makes it amply clear why the university’s Musical Theater program is one of the country’s most highly recommended. Performed by a uniformly outstanding cast of future stars and directed with supreme imagination and style by Kari Hayter, this is a Rent that deserves to be seen by Rent aficionados and newbies alike. For the latter, it will prove a terrific introduction to the groundbreaking rock opera which became an honest-to-goodness contemporary classic during its twelve-year New York run. For the former, it will provide proof positive that a director with a vision and a cast of Broadway-bound triple-threats can take a fourteen-year-old show and make it a fresh new theatrical experience worthy of audience cheers from start to finish.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

CINDERELLA

posted on November 28th, 2010 at 10:49 PM by Steven Stanley


Now here’s something you don’t see every day in North Hollywood—the Cinderella story as a “modern musical extravaganza” starring Harry Potter heartthrob Freddie Stroma of the UK, TVLand’s very own (Leave It To) Beaver (the now 62-year-old Jerry Mathers), a teenage discovery named Veronica Dunne (who snagged the title role in a talent competition at a local Westfield Shopping Mall), Broadway belter Jennifer Leigh Warren, British comedian Benny Harris as Buttons (Buttons?), the very male duo of Eddie Driscoll and Mark Edgar Stephens as Cinderella’s ugly sisters Cowel and Seecrest (Cowel and Seecrest?), and “guest starring” a miniature horse named Little Man in the role of Blitzen—all of this choreographed by Mark Ballas of TV’s Dancing With The Stars.
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posted in Musical, North Hollywood, WOW!

UPTOWN DOWNTOWN

posted on November 23rd, 2010 at 9:15 PM by Steven Stanley


Not quite two years ago, the legendary Leslie Uggams electrified audiences at the Pasadena Playhouse as the legendary Lena Horne in the award-winning bio-musical Stormy Weather. Sadly, less than a year later, the Pasadena Playhouse announced that it was closing its doors. Fast forward to November of 2010 and both Leslie and the Playhouse are back—reunited (and it feels so good) in Uptown Downtown, a two-hour nightclub act-like musical bio of Miss Uggams herself—and a fabulous evening of song it is!
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posted in Musical Revue, Pasadena, WOW!

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

posted on November 21st, 2010 at 11:16 PM by Steven Stanley


Over the past two decades, Glendale’s A Noise Within has tended to offer three kinds of plays, one each per Fall or Spring season. There’s something by Shakespeare, something by Ibsen, Moliere, Shaw, or an ancient Greek or Roman, and something more contemporary, say a play by Odets, Anouilh, Williams, Miller, or O’Neil. Now, with Neil Bartlett’s 2007 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel Great Expectations, California’s Home For The Classics gets the chance to merge the classical and the modern for an evening of classical contemporary (or contemporary classical) theater at its finest.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Drama, WOW!

EQUUS

posted on November 20th, 2010 at 11:05 PM by Steven Stanley


Peter Shaffer’s Equus presents a greater than usual challenge to a university drama department choosing to undertake a production of the Tony Award-winning Best Play of 1973. Roles like those originated on Broadway by Anthony Hopkins and Peter Firth require a depth of talent and life experience that not all drama majors possess. Shaffer’s ideas about God, sex, and morality might easily whoosh over the heads of actors in their late teens and early twenties. Finally, there is the play’s much publicized nudity, doubtless an important factor in the show’s more than 1200 performances in its original Broadway run, but an element that might prove problematic in a student production.
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posted in Drama, Orange County, WOW!

THE SECRET GARDEN (THE MUSICAL)

posted on November 20th, 2010 at 9:08 PM by Steven Stanley


The Chance Theater puts its quality stamp on Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s The Secret Garden, a musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

A CHICAGO CHRISTMAS CAROL

posted on November 19th, 2010 at 10:42 PM by Steven Stanley


What do you get when you combine Charles Dickens’ classic tale of Christmastime redemption (you know the one) with The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s exposé of meat packing conditions in early 20th Century Chicago, then add a musical score with much of the stark dissonance of Kurt Weill’s collaborations with Bertolt Brecht?
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posted in Musical, North Hollywood, WOW!

PATRICK ALAN CASEY CD

posted on November 19th, 2010 at 4:44 PM by Steven Stanley

Singer-songwriter Patrick Alan Casey makes a memorable recording debut with Leaving California, a terrific alternative adult rock CD filled with some of the most gorgeous, powerful rock ballads you’re likely to hear this or any year. 
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posted in Musical, WOW!

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