BULLSHOT CRUMMOND & THE INVISIBLE BRIDE OF DEATH

posted on January 2nd, 2011 at 5:51 PM by Steven Stanley


It’s been nearly four decades since British master police detective wannabe Hugh “Bullshot” Crummond made his stage debut, doing his darnedest to outwit fiendish German villain Otto Von Bruno and his seductive “niece” Lenya to the delight of audiences in England and the United States. Co-creator Ron House now brings back Bullshot, the Von Brunos, Bullshot’s blushing bride Rosemary, and a host of other outlandish 1930s characters in Bullshot Crummond & The Invisible Bride Of Death, getting its world premiere production at North Hollywood’s Whitmore-Lindley Theatre. The result is as hilarious and inventive a show as you’re likely to see this or any other holiday/New Year’s season.
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posted in Comedy, North Hollywood, WOW!

A CHRISTMAS TWIST

posted on December 27th, 2010 at 4:29 PM by Steven Stanley


What Blazing Saddles did to the western, what Young Frankenstein did to the 
horror movie, what High Anxiety did to Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre, this is what A 
Christmas Twist does to Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol … and the result is the 
funniest Christmas show of this year’s holiday season.
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, WOW!

ROCK WITH YOU – The King Of Pop Latin Style

posted on December 26th, 2010 at 3:19 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
The songs of Michael Jackson are performed to a Latin beat in ROCK WITH YOU – The King Of Pop Latin Style, a short but entertaining musical revue now on the main stage of North Hollywood’s historic El Portal Theatre.
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posted in Musical Revue, North Hollywood, Recommended

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!

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