Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’

CABARET

It takes a combination of inspiration and chutzpah to reinvent a 58-year-old musical theater classic that’s been reinvented time and time again—but director Gary Lamb has done just that with Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, his creative touches adding up to the best of the five intimate Cabarets I’ve seen and one of the top two or three of the ten productions I’ve experienced in all.
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KISS ME KATE

A stellar, (almost) all-African-American cast breathe new life into the 1948 William Shakespeare-meets-Cole Porter classic Kiss Me Kate, an innovative Pasadena Playhouse revival that works to perfection for all but about ten minutes of its thrillingly reinvigorated two acts.
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LOST: THE MUSICAL – WE HAVE TO GO BACK

RECOMMENDED*
*For Lostaways

Some snappy SNL-style writing and a cast of sixteen’s often sharp comedic chops could well make Lost: The Musical – We Have To Go Back a cult hit despite a currently way-overlong three-hour running time and quite a few not-ready-for-musical-theater voices.
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MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT

Rare is the musical that can delight and satisfy both Broadway buffs and those who would never be caught dead at My Fair Lady, The Sound Of Music, or heaven forbid, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Monty Python’s Spamalot is that rare Broadway show, and therefore a supremely savvy follow-up to Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s recent Smokey Joe’s Café. That it happens to be served up in an all-around splendid production is like whipped cream on one of Executive Chef Juan Alvarado’s scrumptious desserts.
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GOOD PEOPLE

What better way could there be of following David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole (La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts’ recent Scenie-winning Production Of The Year) than with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s latest hit? Simply put, Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People makes for an evening of Great Theater.
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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

Following its pitch-perfect intimate staging of Broadway’s 110 In The Shade, Hollywood’s Actors Co-op returns just four months later with a visit to the 19th Century London Musical Hall in their charmingly cheeky, crowd-pleasing revival of Rupert Holmes’ 1985 Tony-winning The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.
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SPRING AWAKENING

See Deaf West Theatre’s Spring Awakening. See it if you’ve never seen Spring Awakening before. See it if like this reviewer you’ve seen nearly a dozen Spring Awakenings in all. Just do it, because you won’t see direction more brilliant nor a cast more gifted nor a production more awe-inspiring than the Spring Awakening now being staged by Deaf West.
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COCK

It’s time for John to stop letting M down (and standing him up and cheating and lying and failing and generally cocking things up), or so the 20something gay Brit’s lover informs him upon learning of his younger partner’s serious fling with a member of the opposite sex in Mike Bartlett’s provocative (and provocatively titled) dramatic comedy Cock, now getting an imaginatively directed, thrillingly acted West Coast Premiere at Rogue Machine.
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