Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Sunday, September 18th, 2016
Take a classic novel by Victor Hugo, half-a-dozen songs from a favorite Disney film, and the inspired casting of a deaf actor as Quasimodo and you’ve got three, though hardly the only reasons for The Hunchback Of Notre Dame to top any musical theater lover’s must-see list as summer turns to fall.
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THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY
Sunday, September 18th, 2016The Road Theatre Company opens their 2016-2017 season with an imaginatively directed, beautifully acted, gorgeously designed Los Angeles Premiere of Edward Albee’s The Play About The Baby, though whether Albee’s play will speak to you or not will depend on how you feel about abandoning the realistic for the allegorical.
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BARBECUE
Friday, September 16th, 2016
Trailer trash knows no color in the sordid lives brought to booze-chugging, drug-snorting, profanity-spewing life in Barbecue, Robert O’Hara’s outrageously twisted, hysterically funny new comedy now making its West Coast debut at the Geffen Playhouse, and that’s just Act One.
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A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
Thursday, September 15th, 2016Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, this year’s Best Revival Tony winner, has arrived at the Ahmanson in a production likely to leave audience opinion split between “brilliantly innovative” and “pretentiously boring.” Though it took me a while to get there, I ended up veering towards the former point of view. Still, unless you’re lucky enough to be sitting either onstage (an option here) or up close (if you’ve got the bucks), the Ahmanson proves far too large a venue for a production as intimate as this one.
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THE FANTASTICKS
Tuesday, September 13th, 2016
The world’s longest-running musical (aka The Fantasticks) makes for a crowd-pleasing Pasadena Playhouse season opener thanks not only to its time-tested appeal but also to an excitingly contemporary director’s concept and cast choices that celebrate diversity in the most refreshing of ways.
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ARCADIA
Monday, September 12th, 2016
Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia can prove quite a head-scratcher when not done right. Fortunately, despite brain-teasing elements that can challenge even the sharpest intellect, all-around superb acting and incisive direction make A Noise Within’s 25th-season opener as entertaining and accessible as Arcadias get.
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ANDREW LIPPA’S WILD PARTY
Sunday, September 11th, 2016Kristina Miller ignites the stage as Queenie in Quentin Garzón’s passion-project intimate staging of the 2000 off-Broadway musical adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 epic poem The Wild Party, one which Garzón and company have redubbed “Andrew Lippa’s Wild Party,” the better to distinguish it from the Michael John LaChiusa Wild Party that played on Broadway the same year.
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CHARM
Saturday, September 10th, 2016
Edward J. Olmos’s Jaime Escalante did it in Stand And Deliver. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Louanne Johnson did it in Dangerous Minds. Sidney Poitier’s Mark Thackery did it in To Sir With Love. And now Lana Houston’s Mama Darleena Andrews does it in Charm, transforming the lives of a classroomful of rebellious teens, only this time round the teacher in question is a transgender sexagenerian and her students an unruly bunch of homeless LGBT teens. Talk about a setup for an edgy, funny, and (you guessed it) heartstrings-tugging crowd-pleaser, the latest all-around winner from Celebration Theatre.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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