LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
Saturday, April 16th, 2011
Audrey II, the “strange and interesting plant” that made his/her/its? first appearance way back in 1960 in Roger Corman’s Z-movie classic, is back once again, this time at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts, with human flesh on his/her/its? cannibalistic mind—and you all know what that means. “They may offer you lots of cheap thrills, fancy condos in Beverly Hills, but whatever they offer you, don’t feed the plants!”
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THE MELODY LINGERS ON
Friday, February 18th, 2011RECOMMENDED
In his 101 years on this planet, Irving Berlin wrote somewhere between 1250 and 1450 songs, 850 of which make up Wikipedia’s “Best Of Berlin” list. From very early 20th Century standards like “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to 1966’s “An Old Fashioned Wedding,” written for the 20th Anniversary Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun, Berlin’s music and lyrics are synonymous with American Musical Theater.
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DADDY LONG LEGS
Saturday, November 6th, 2010
“An exquisite gem of a musical” is how I described Daddy Long Legs in its world premiere engagement at the Rubicon last year. Since then, Paul Gordon and John Caird’s adaptation of Jean Webster’s 1912 novel has had several more engagements across the country, allowing the writers the opportunity for fine-tuning, a must in the creation of any new musical. It’s this adeptly tweaked Daddy Long Legs that returns to Southern California for a three-week engagement at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts, an even more polished gem of a musical than it was before, and not just one for the kiddies. Though Webster’s novel fits squarely in the Children’s Books section of your local library or Barnes And Noble, its musical adaptation proves absolutely right for ages eight to eighty.
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THE TALE OF THE ALLERGIST’S WIFE
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010RECOMMENDED
Things haven’t been going all that well recently for New York matron Marjorie Taub. The death of her beloved therapist has left her with a feeling she describes as “Perdu. Utter damnation. The loss of my soul.” Though the Disney Store has fortunately decided not to press charges for the six porcelain figures she just happened to drop following her shrink’s memorial service, Marjorie can’t seem to get off the living room sofa and attend her usual mix of lectures, gallery exhibits, and opera symposiums. “I’m a fraud,” she moans to her allergist husband Ira. “A cultural poseur. To quote Kaafka, ‘I am a cage in search of a bird’”
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NO, NO, NANETTE
Friday, October 1st, 2010
“Tea For Two” and “I Want To Be Happy,” two of the biggest hits of the 1920s, made their Broadway debut eighty-five years ago in No, No, Nanette, a show that won a grand total of four big Tony Awards—not in its original Broadway engagement but forty-six years later in a revival that ran almost three times longer than the original. For this reason alone, No, No, Nanette is worthy of attention, even in 2010, and 21st Century theatergoers now have the chance to discover this little bit of Broadway nostalgia at the Downey Civic Light Opera.
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TOO OLD FOR THE CHORUS
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
Something awful happens in America when you turn 50. You get a letter from
AARP which, according to the five Baby Boomer stars of Too Old for the Chorus,
notifies you that you are “officially old.” You see John Travolta on the cover of
AARP Magazine and think in shock, “When I was 23, he was the same age as
me!” This is the dilemma in which “Shirley,” “Glenn,” “Bobby,” “Faith,” and
“James” find themselves in TOFTC, the tuneful musical revue currently playing at
the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.
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DINNER WITH FRIENDS
Saturday, June 5th, 2010
There’s a moment in Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends when one of its characters comments, “The thing is, you never know what couples are like when they’re alone; you never do.”
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CAROUSEL
Saturday, May 29th, 2010
If all you knew about Rodgers and Hammerstein was The Sound Of Music, you might expect an R&H show called Carousel with its big production numbers like “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” to be all “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” especially considering its 1945 Broadway debut, over a decade before shows started getting dark and dramatic with Bernstein and Sondheim’s West Side Story.
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