Posts Tagged ‘Orange County Theater Review’

A CHORUS LINE

It takes balls to reimagine a classic and an abundance of talent to pull it off, particularly when the classic in question is the 1975 megaclassic A Chorus Line. Fortunately, Chance Theater’s Oanh Nguyen and Hazel Clarke have both, resulting in an A Chorus Line that might provoke protests from purists who’d have Michael Bennett’s direction and choreography set in stone but will likely thrill everyone else, this reviewer included.
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GYPSY

RECOMMENDED

A weak first act, a considerably more successful second, and a terrific Tara Pitt throughout add up to a mixed bag of a Gypsy revival at Theatre Out, but one still worth checking out for Pitt’s powerhouse performance as (wonder of wonders) an age-appropriate Mama Rose.
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NEWSIES

When a flop movie musical becomes a home video hit, what better for Walt Disney Studios to do than turn it into a great big Broadway smash, or at least this is what happened with Newsies The Musical, now thrilling SoCal audiences with Christopher Gattelli’s breathtaking Tony-winning choreography, Alan Menken and Jack Feldman’s eminently hummable Tony-winning songs, and much much more at the Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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THE BIG MEAL

The meet-cute sequence that introduces us to 20somethings Sam and Nicole is but the preamble to The Big Meal, Dan LeFranc’s remarkable meditation on birth, death, life, love, and the whole damn thing, now getting a laughter-and-tear-filled Southern California Premiere that is one of Chance Theater’s finest intimate productions ever.
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TORCH SONG TRILOGY

RECOMMENDED International Stud
RECOMMENDED Fugue in a Nursery
Widows And Children First!

Andrew J. Villarreal gives the year’s most extraordinary performance as flamboyant but mush-hearted Jewish drag queen Arnold Beckoff in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, making Theatre Out’s rarer-than-rare revival well worth seeing despite the flawed execution of the first two of its three one-act plays.
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OFFICE HOUR

Sandra Oh and Raymond Lee give electrifying performances as a college adjunct professor and the student she suspects just might be capable of mass murder in Julia Cho’s ripped-from-today’s-headlines Office Hour, now riveting audiences in its World Premiere engagement at South Coast Repertory.
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RODGERS + HAMMERSTEIN’S CINDERELLA


A fresh new book by Douglas Carter Beane breathes exciting new life into a spectacular new production of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, now delighting audiences of all ages (and I do mean of all ages) at the Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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THE FULL MONTY

The sextet of laid-off upstate New York factory workers with plans to offer Buffalo gals a night of full-frontal fun are centerstage once more as 3-D Theatricals debuts its couldn’t-be-better revival of the 2000 Broadway hit musical The Full Monty.

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