HALO

posted on October 27th, 2008 at 5:07 PM by Steven Stanley


Coming to Beverly Hills as a delightful pre-holiday treat, Josh MacDonald’s Halo combines the quirky charm of TV’s Northern Exposure and Picket Fences with more than a bit of Christmas spirit. 
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posted in Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

THE HEIRESS

posted on October 26th, 2008 at 5:11 PM by Steven Stanley


Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Martha in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Sally in Cabaret.
 
Cast the right actress in one of these roles and you’re sure to get a brilliant performance, the kind that gets nominated for an Oscar or Tony, and maybe even wins. It happened to Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh, to Uta Hagen and Elizabeth Taylor, to Natasha Richardson and Liza Minnelli.

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posted in Drama, Orange County, WOW!

MARY’S WEDDING

posted on October 25th, 2008 at 5:16 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
It is 1920 and the night before Mary’s wedding.  Dreams take her back several years to the night of a thunderstorm, the night when the young Englishwoman first set eyes on Charlie, a strapping young Canadian farmer and horseman, and the love of her life.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Drama, Recommended

LOVE’S OLD SWEET SONG

posted on October 24th, 2008 at 5:19 PM by Steven Stanley


The Syzygy Theatre Group joins in the International Centennial Celebration of William Saroyan with an captivating production of one of the Armenian-American writer’s lesser known works, 1940’s Love’s Old Sweet Song. Like Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, Love’s Old Sweet song is both sentimental and idealistic, and all the more wonderful for being so. Like the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks, it involves mistaken identities, culture clashes between haves and have-nots, some fast-talking, witty repartee, and ridiculous, farcical situations. It is this blend of the screwball and the sentimental that makes Love’s Old Sweet Song such a magical piece of theater.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, WOW!

OKLAHOMA!

posted on October 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 PM by Steven Stanley


As the orchestra plays the final notes of the overture, the curtain rises on a middle-aged woman sitting alone on stage in front of a butter churn, her hands around the plunger, methodically moving it up and down. Behind the woman is a farmhouse and fields of corn as high as an elephant’s eye, and her long country dress tells us we are in the early 1900s.  From offstage comes a male voice singing a capella, “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…” The voice grows louder until the man enters, wearing a cowboy hat and chaps. “Oh what a beautiful morning… Oh what a beautiful day,” serenades the man to the farm woman, who continues her churning.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

THE RAINMAKER

posted on October 22nd, 2008 at 5:28 PM by Steven Stanley


There aren’t many plays from the 1950s that hold up as well as L. Richard Nash’s 1954 folksy romance The Rainmaker. Not only does The Rainmaker not seem dated, it’s as funny and heartwarming as any play being premiered today, and despite its 1950s Midwest setting, it might as well be taking place somewhere in middle America circa 2008. As the second production of A Noise Within’s “Season Of Awakenings,” The Rainmaker is sure to charm audiences of all ages.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, WOW!

BLITHE SPIRIT

posted on October 21st, 2008 at 5:37 PM by Steven Stanley


As long as there’s been theater, there have surely been comedies about ghosts come back to haunt the people on stage and amuse those in the audience who are watching their shenanigans.  Movies like the 1937’s Topper, which spawned not one but two TV series (and is scheduled for a 2010 Steve Martin remake) have continued the tradition on the big and small screen. When there’s only one character who can see the ghost(s) in question and the people around him/her suddenly find our hero(ine) talking to the air and see objects floating around the room, hilarity is sure to ensue.
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posted in Comedy, South Bay, WOW!

THE KING AND I

posted on October 19th, 2008 at 5:41 PM by Steven Stanley


What would CLOs do without Rodgers and Hammerstein?  There’s scarcely a season in which a regional Civic Light Opera doesn’t present at least one of their Big 5—Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I, or The Sound Of Music.  Fortunately for lovers of contemporary musicals, these Golden Oldies do hold up rather well, thank you. Theatergoers are assured of recognizing most if not all of the songs, the roles created by R & H offer actors some of the best in musical theater of any era, and the themes which R & H snuck in (racism, domestic violence, cross-cultural understanding, etc.) remain valid even half a century or more later.
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posted in Musical, Ventura County, WOW!

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