SPIKE HEELS

posted on January 24th, 2010 at 12:01 PM by Steven Stanley


Prolific, popular playwright Theresa Rebeck made her first splash off-Broadway in 1990 with Spike Heels, a darkly funny drama about the war between the sexes in the changed/changing world of the late 20th Century. Set in the Boston apartments of two upstairs-downstairs neighbors in their early thirties, Spike Heels looks perceptively (and bitingly) at the ways men and women exert their power in business, in personal relationships, and in sex.  
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

SHAKESPEARE UnSCRIPTED

posted on January 24th, 2010 at 11:56 AM by Steven Stanley


The talented folks of Impro Theatre and Combined Artform (aka the best improv actors in town) are back with their latest confection, Shakespeare UnScripted, and like its predecessors Jane Austen UnScripted and Tennessee Williams UnScripted, it adds up to two acts of improvised madness and merriment.  
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

tick, tick … BOOM!

posted on January 23rd, 2010 at 12:13 PM by Steven Stanley


Musical theater lovers under the age of forty may find it hard to imagine a time when Jonathan Larson’s Rent wasn’t part of our national musical theater lexicon. 12 years and 5,124 performances on Broadway, a still ongoing National Tour, a major motion picture, and since its Broadway closing, regional theater productions galore—Rent has truly conquered the musical theater world.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE

posted on January 22nd, 2010 at 12:18 PM by Steven Stanley

Paula Vogel tackles pedophilia in her 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned To Drive, and if the sexual abuse of an eleven-(to seventeen)-year-old sounds like unpleasant subject matter for an evening of theater, you’re absolutely right. Told by its heroine Li’l Bit as a series of flashbacks, How I Learn To Drive is a play that had me squirming almost from its first moment. Notwithstanding, The Production Company’s current revival is as superbly performed, directed, and designed as they get.
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posted in Drama, North Hollywood

URINETOWN

posted on January 21st, 2010 at 12:23 PM by Steven Stanley


USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory proves once again (in the immortal words of The Who) that “the kids are alright” with their latest production, the 2001 Broadway hit musical Urinetown.  
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!

SYLVIA

posted on January 20th, 2010 at 9:51 PM by Steven Stanley


Sylvia is A.R. Gurney’s tale of an adorable mutt who finds herself a new master in a Manhattan park and a new home in a New York City brownstone.  This comic tribute to Man’s Best Friend has become a regional audience favorite since its first staging in 1995 with Sarah Jessica Parker as Sylvia, and its latest incarnation at Hermosa Beach Playhouse is one of the Playhouse’s best.
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posted in Comedy, South Bay, WOW!

CAMELOT

posted on January 20th, 2010 at 11:42 AM by Steven Stanley


If you’re an avid musical-theatergoer like this reviewer, you’ve probably seen at least one production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot that made you think, “Bo-ring.” Then there are those Camelots that feature a 60something King Arthur, forgetting that Richard Burton was but 35 when he originated the role on Broadway and Richard Harris all of 36 when he made the movie. Dozens of lords, ladies, and “simple folk” in 6th Century garb may be gorgeous to look at (the original Broadway production of Camelot had a cast of 55!), but they have tended to bog down Camelot’s romantic triangle under the weight of all those costumes. Besides, what theater can afford a cast of even 25 these days?
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posted in Musical, Pasadena, WOW!

GLORIOUS!

posted on January 17th, 2010 at 12:27 PM by Steven Stanley


“People may say I can’t sing, but no one can say I didn’t sing.”
–Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944)
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posted in Musical, San Diego County, WOW!

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