ELEVATOR

posted on June 20th, 2010 at 8:51 PM by Steven Stanley


Take a bunch of strangers and trap them in an enclosed space for a significant enough length of time and it’s a sure bet they’ll come out changed by the experience—if plays and movies are to be believed. Take the jurors in Twelve Angry Men, Tom Hanks and assorted others in You’ve Got Mail, or the high school kids in The Breakfast Club. Eleven jurors changed their verdict, Tom decided to leave Parker Posey for Meg Ryan, and the Princess, Jock, Brain, Criminal, and Basket Case all revealed themselves to be night-and-day different from our first impression of them and bonded in the process. Such is the stuff of stage and screen fiction.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

ARCADIA

posted on June 19th, 2010 at 8:47 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
The venerable Sierra Madre Playhouse challenges its subscribers and theatergoing regulars with something quite different in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, an intellectual comedy whose characters discuss physics, thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, and chaos theory—as well as others of a slightly less scientific bent.
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posted in Drama, Recommended, San Gabriel Valley

AMADEUS

posted on June 18th, 2010 at 8:39 PM by Steven Stanley


For the past several years, August Viverito and T L Kolman have been stripping down big stage, big budget Broadway productions to their brilliant essentials on the matchbox stage of the Chandler Studio Theatre in North Hollywood. Now, to the ranks of their superb downscalings of M Butterfly, Equus, and Sweeney Todd can be added The Production Company’s equally outstanding re-envisioning of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus.
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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, WOW!

AIN’T WE GOT FUN

posted on June 18th, 2010 at 7:40 PM by Steven Stanley


Ain’t We Got Fun, Ben Hensley and Michael Montiel’s nostalgic look back at early 20th Century vaudeville, makes for forty-five of the brightest minutes you’re likely to enjoy this year. 
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical Revue, WOW!

A SHAYNA MAIDEL

posted on June 17th, 2010 at 7:33 PM by Steven Stanley


On the surface, Rose White would appear to be the quintessential All American New Yorker circa 1946. She has her own West Side apartment, a good job, a fashionable wardrobe, and an independent lifestyle. Scratch a little deeper, however, and you’ll discover that Rose White is European-born Rayzel Weiss, the daughter of Polish Jews born just a decade before Hitler’s rise to power. Papa Mordechai and four-year-old Rose emigrated to America in the mid-1920s, but older sister Lusia came down with scarlet fever shortly before the family’s planned departure, so Mama and Lusia stayed behind. Then came the Nazis, and mother and daughter were shipped off to Auschwitz along with everyone else in their extended family. Only Lusia survived. Now, a year after the declaration of peace in Europe, older sister has come to America at last.
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posted in Drama, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

PATRICK STAFFORD

posted on June 15th, 2010 at 11:53 PM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

DAS BARBECÜ

posted on June 14th, 2010 at 7:25 PM by Steven Stanley


Musical Theatre Guild concluded its 2009-10 season with a one-night-only concert staged reading of Das Barbecü, a show you’ve probably never heard of before, but one that proved a delightful discovery.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Concert Staged Reading, WOW!

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS

posted on June 13th, 2010 at 10:51 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
The Relevant Stage, which bills itself as San Pedro’s Musical Theatre Company, has come a long way since Bat Boy, its freshman offering of a year and a half ago. Though its current production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels qualifies more as high-end community theater than as a fully professional staging of the Tony Award-winning hit, there are enough good to excellent performances (plus the show’s terrific songs and absolutely hilarious book) to make this an entertaining two and a half hours of wild and crazy fun.

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posted in Musical, Recommended, South Bay

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