Posts Tagged ‘Musical Theatre Guild’
ROAD SHOW
Monday, June 15th, 2015
You’re unlikely to see a fully-staged local production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s twice-flopped Road Show any time soon, all the more reason for those in attendance yesterday at Musical Theatre Guild’s one-performance-only concert staged reading to count themselves lucky, particularly since the nearly fully-staged “reading” turned out quite spectacularly indeed under Richard Israel’s ever imaginative direction.
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GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
Monday, April 13th, 2015Gentlemen Prefer Blondes may have played nearly 750 performances on Broadway, turned Carol Channing into a star, featured hit songs like “Bye, Bye, Baby” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” and got turned into a Hollywood Movie Classic starring Marilyn Monroe, but when’s the last time you saw it onstage?
The answer may well be “Never,” because that’s what happens to 60something Broadway hits that aren’t Kiss Me Kate, South Pacific, or Guys And Dolls … or rather that’s what would happen without Musical Theatre Guild’s much-loved concert staged readings, the latest of which brings that “little girl from Little Rock,” aka blonde bombshell Lorelei Lee, and her brunette chum Dorothy Shaw, back to entertaining 21st-century musical life.
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TRIUMPH OF LOVE
Monday, November 17th, 2014Frothy Broadway musical comedy romps don’t get any frothier than the frothy Broadway musical comedy romp Triumph Of Love, a fact made amply clear last night by Musical Theatre Guild’s one-performance-only concert staged reading of the 1997 gem.
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SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
Tuesday, September 16th, 2014There’s nothing at all sweet about the sleazy, smarmy, downright despicable protagonist of Sweet Smell Of Success, the Broadway musical adaptation of the 1957 Burt Lancaster/Tony Curtis pic, which may well be the main reason the 2002 John Lithgow-starrer flopped, the last of its mere 109 performances (plus 18 previews) less than two weeks after Lithgow won a Best Actor Tony.
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RUTHLESS! THE MUSICAL
Tuesday, April 8th, 2014The Bad Seed met Gypsy met All About Eve met Mame met a tickled-to-death audience of musical theater lovers on Sunday as Musical Theatre Guild presented their latest, a one-night-only concert staged reading of the murderously funny cult off-Broadway spoof Ruthless! The Musical.
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DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY
Tuesday, February 11th, 2014
A gorgeous if derivative score and creaky book did not add up to off-Broadway smash status (or a Broadway transfer) for 2011’s Death Takes A Holiday, but with a cast chock-full of L.A. musical theater stars and director Calvin Remsberg providing expert guidance, Musical Theatre Guild’s first concert staged reading of 2014 garnered a deserved standing ovation this past Sunday at Santa Monica’s spiffy new Moss Theatre.
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