Posts Tagged ‘Orange County Theater Review’

bare the musical


Orange County’s premier LGBT theater, Theatre Out, opens its first complete season in its spiffy new 4th Street Artist Village space (appropriately just down the block from trendy Santa Ana gay club Velvet Lounge) with a powerfully staged OC Premiere production of Jon Hartmere and Damon Intrabartolo’s bare.
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THE SECRET GARDEN – THE MUSICAL


Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s Tony-winning The Secret Garden – The Musical has returned to The Chance Theater just in time for the holidays, terrific news for those as young as Mary Lennox, folks every bit as grown-up as gruff old gardener Ben Weatherstaff, and everyone in between.
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A CHRISTMAS MEMORY


A much loved autobiographical short story by Truman Capote makes its holiday season comeback as a full-length musical as the Laguna Playhouse offers audiences the West Coast Premiere of Duane Poole, Larry Grossman, and Carol Hall’s overlong but entertaining—and ultimately quite moving—A Christmas Memory.
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EVITA


There’s no place quite like Broadway when it comes to reviving musical theater classics, as the recent national tours of Anything Goes and West Side Story have made abundantly clear. Now, as if further proof were necessary, comes Michael Grandage and Rob Ashford’s spectacular re-envisioning of the 1978 Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice blockbuster Evita, a revival that debuted in London’s West End in 2006 before transferring to Broadway in 2012, where it received three Tony nominations, including Best Revival Of A Musical and Best Choreography.

Southern California audiences now get the chance to see what all the hoopla’s been about as the revival’s First National Tour pays a two-week visit to Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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ILLYRIA


A gifted young cast directed by one of SoCal’s finest, a gorgeous score, and romance and comedy in equal measure are several of the best reasons to catch Cal State Fullerton’s blackbox staging of Illyria, Peter Mills’ musicalization of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night*. Add to that the unlikelihood of a major L.A. theater miraculously discovering Illyria’s existence, and anyone who loves musicals should make it a point not to miss this largely unknown gem.
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BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON


The Occupy Wall Street spirit of 2011 lives on in 2013 as a dozen-and-a-half phenomenally talented UC Irvine triple-threats give the politics of two centuries ago a thrillingly contemporary feel in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, now in its final performances at UCI’s Claire Trevor Theatre.
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4000 MILES


When was the last time you saw a comedy in which an elderly female character wasn’t made the butt of the joke? When was the last time you saw an intergenerational relationship depicted in all its potential richness? When was the last time you saw a family drama that managed to grip you without resorting to soap opera melodramatics?
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PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT


The rainbow-colored bus known around the world as Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert has just pulled into the Costa Mesa station (make that Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts), and as anyone who’s seen Stephen Elliott’s 1994 cult hit movie of the same name can tell you, that’s just about the most fabulous news any OC resident or neighbor to the north could possibly ask for this week.
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