DOUG CARPENTER 2010

posted on January 5th, 2010 at 3:54 PM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

THE GLASS MENDACITY

posted on January 2nd, 2010 at 5:51 PM by Steven Stanley


It’s a summer weekend in the Deep South, and the DuBois offspring have returned to Belle Reve, the plantation home of their dysfunctional childhood, to welcome back patriarch Big Daddy DuBois from his stay at the local hospital. There’s eldest daughter (and family loony) Blanche, married to the uncouth but undeniably sexy Stanley Kowalski.  Middle child Brick, a cipher of a man if there ever was one, is wedded to the sultry Maggie, appropriately nicknamed “The Cat.”  Youngest child Laura suffers from a bad limp (and bad hair.)  Along with family matriarch Big Amanda DuBois and narrator/gentleman caller Mitch O’Connor, the DuBois children have assembled to await Big Daddy’s doctor’s verdict. Does the master of Belle Reve have cancer, or is it merely a spastic colon?
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, WOW!

THAT PERFECT MOMENT

posted on January 1st, 2010 at 5:54 PM by Steven Stanley


It was 1969, aka the Summer Of Love, and an aspiring San Fernando Valley rock band was about to get its first big break as opening act for The Buckinghams, whose “Kind Of A Drag” had hit #1 two years before.  Ultimately, however, fame escaped The Weeds, and even now, twenty-five years later, that one summer remains the high point in the lives of its four members. True, all four 50something friends have gone on to varying degrees of career success, but as the years have passed, that summer a quarter century ago has acquired a golden glow for “the greatest rock band that nobody’s ever heard of.”  It was a summer filled with “cheap dope and easy women,” a time when the four friends gave themselves “permission to dream.”  If only they could go back in time, or somehow bring back that perfect moment in each of their lives.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, WOW!

DANIEL TATAR

posted on January 1st, 2010 at 3:41 PM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

SEE HOW THEY RUN

posted on December 30th, 2009 at 5:41 PM by Steven Stanley


What would regional and community theaters do without British farce? It’s hard indeed to imagine a theater season without a Ray Cooney comedy like Run For Your Wife, a Joe Orton confection, Michael Frayne’s Noises Off, or a laugh-getter by the almost impossibly prolific Alan Ayckbourn.  The granddaddy of all contemporary British farces may well be Philip King’s 1945 gem See How They Run, and those wanting to experience British humor at its funniest are hereby advised to catch the King classic’s spiffy new production at Glendale Centre Theatre.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, WOW!

WHITE CHRISTMAS

posted on December 26th, 2009 at 5:45 PM by Steven Stanley


Cabrillo Music Theatre’s December gamble—a four-day, seven-performance post-Christmas staging of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas—has paid off in a terrific production, directed with imagination and flair by Todd Nielsen and starring some of the Southland’s finest triple-threat talents.
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posted in Musical, Ventura County, WOW!

LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S PETER PAN

posted on December 22nd, 2009 at 5:51 PM by Steven Stanley

Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan has returned to Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre for the second Christmas in a row, good news for children from now through January 3.
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posted in Musical, Recommended, Santa Barbara County

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

posted on December 21st, 2009 at 5:52 PM by Steven Stanley


After 45 years of staging Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol around holiday time, the folks at Glendale Centre Theatre have learned how to do Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim right. Brenda Dietlein’s adaptation, with original music and lyrics by Steven Applegate and Byron Simpson, is bright, funny, tuneful, faithful to the original, and never dull or stodgy.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical, WOW!

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