SHAKE

posted on August 7th, 2010 at 12:42 AM by Steven Stanley


There’s something about Reverse Chronology that can work magic with a tale of innocence lost. Take for example Harold Pinter’s Betrayal or Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, the former beginning with the end of a marriage and ending with the characters’ first meeting, the latter starting off with three irreparably estranged friends and climaxing with the threesome as starry-eyed best-friends-forever.  There’s something particularly poignant about a happy ending when you already know the disillusionment yet to come.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

posted on August 6th, 2010 at 12:39 AM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Ben Brantley, the chief drama critic of the New York Times (i.e. the most important theater reviewer in the United States) called Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog “as exciting as any new play from a young American since Tony Kushner’s Angels In America.” It was nominated for a Best Play Tony Award and won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. I found it one of the two longest evenings I’ve spent in a theater in the past year.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood

BOYS’ LIFE

posted on August 5th, 2010 at 12:33 AM by Steven Stanley


Howard Korder writes insightfully—and hilariously—about the male psyche in his 1988 comedy Boys’ Life, smashingly revived (and smoothy updated to the 21st Century) by Crown City Theatre Company. Impeccably acted and directed, this is a production which ought to disprove once and for all any notion of Los Angeles not being the great theater town it is. 
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posted in Comedy, North Hollywood, WOW!

IN THE HEIGHTS

posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 12:28 AM by Steven Stanley

When West Side Story premiered on Broadway in 1957, one might have assumed that sometime over the following half century, another hit Broadway musical would center on Latino life in New York City, or on Latino life anywhere for that matter. It would, after all, make sense for a musical as revolutionary as West Side Story to engender others that followed its ground-breaking example, right?
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posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, WOW!

DANNY BOLERO

posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 11:44 PM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

THE GOOD BOOK OF PEDANTRY AND WONDER

posted on August 1st, 2010 at 12:21 AM by Steven Stanley


In 1879, British lexicographer James Murray was hired by Oxford University Press to edit a new dictionary of the English language, a task expected to take about ten years and result in a 7,000-page tome. Holed up in a corrugated-iron garden shed on the grounds of Mill Hill School, Murray began the monumental undertaking with the help of a small team of assistants. Neither the linguist nor the dons of Oxford could have imagined that it would take until 1928 for the dictionary to be completed (nearly a decade after Murray’s death) and that the final product would end up a twelve-volume tome instead of the initially planned four volumes.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, WOW!

WEST SIDE STORY

posted on July 31st, 2010 at 12:24 PM by Steven Stanley


If ever a Broadway musical deserved to be called a classic, that musical is West Side Story.  What must Broadway audiences have felt as they first discovered it back in 1957?  This was, after all, a Broadway whose most recent Tony-winners were My Fair Lady, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game.  What must audiences who were accustomed to this sunny fare have thought about a show whose leading man and leading lady didn’t have the proverbial happy ending, and whose characters lived dismal lives in the worst parts of Manhattan and hated anyone whose differences threatened their go-nowhere existences? What must they have thought about Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy, operatic score, about Stephen Sondheim’s poetic lyrics, about Arthur Laurents’ Romeo and Juliet inspired book, and above all about Jerome Robbins’ truly revolutionary choreography? How must West Side Story have rocked the world of those Eisenhower-era 1950s New Yorkers and, even more so, of the out-of-towners who make up so much of a Broadway show’s audience?
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posted in Musical, Santa Barbara County, WOW!

THE EXISTENTS

posted on July 30th, 2010 at 12:19 PM by Steven Stanley


If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to witness the coming together—and ultimate breakup—of a superstar rock band like, say, Fleetwood Mac, you won’t want to miss The Existents, the new rock musical by Ty Taylor, Douglas Crawford, and Jason Wooten.  
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, WOW!

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