REBORNING
Sunday, April 29th, 2012
The past continues to haunt the present of the two women whose lives intersect in Zayd Dohrn’s powerful personal drama Reborning, now getting its Southern California Premiere—and only its second production—at Orange County’s illustrious Chance Theater, with Resident Artists Casey Long, Jennifer Ruckman, Karen Webster doing some of their best work ever under Artistic Director Oanh Nguyen’s inspired direction.
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THE FIX
Saturday, April 28th, 2012
When Senator Reed Chandler dies in flagrante delicto, his Spiderwoman of a widow and his embittered, crippled brother connive to make the Senator’s handsome but dim son the next President of the United States.
No, this isn’t an upcoming Meryl Streep flick or nighttime network series created to coincide with this election year, though it well could be. It is instead the setup that John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe use to open their highly topical and equally entertaining musical The Fix, now getting its official West Coast Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre (though Angelino theater buffs will recall its Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only concert staged reading our last big national election year).
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THE GIRL MOST LIKELY TO
Friday, April 27th, 2012
By day, he is a schoolteacher in the Philippines. By night, he becomes the gowned and bejeweled drag entertainer known to all Luzon as Mama Cid.
Across the world, an American high schooler dons girls’ clothes too, but for a very different reason. “This is how I have to be,” he tells his mother. “Otherwise I die.”
Playwright Michael Premsrirat takes these two characters—separated by an ocean and several decades—and ties their stories together quite extraordinarily in The Girl Most Likely To, now getting its World Premiere production under the truly inspired direction of Jon Lawrence Rivera.
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MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
It takes you thrillingly by surprise, that first glance at Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins onstage together, and from then on the excitement never lags in Million Dollar Quartet, Tony-nominated as Best Musical of 2010 and now touring the country, its latest stop at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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CLOUDLANDS
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
Adam Gwon and Octavio Solis might well have subtitled Cloudlands, their World Premiere chamber musical now playing at South Coast Repertory, An American Musical Greek Tragedy, not all that bad an idea considering how much darker its story turns out to be than the airy romance its one-word title suggests. Regardless, if the idea of divinely preordained doom seems apter subject matter for Euripides or Sophocles (had the two tragedians teamed to write a musical with elements of both Medea and Oedipus), so it might be without Gwon’s gorgeous, haunting melodies to propel the tale of a suicidal San Franciscan teen whose depression is compounded by the discovery that Mom has been cheating on Dad.
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LITTLE WOMEN THE MUSICAL
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
Few recent Broadway shows offer as many fine roles for theater majors as Little Women The Musical, making it a terrific showcase for students of Cal State Fullerton’s illustrious BFA in Musical Theatre program. That CSUF’s spring musical 2012 also happens to be a delightful, entertaining family treat makes it well worth a drive down to the OC.
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ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
Saturday, April 21st, 2012
For musical theater fans in search of something out of the ordinary, Cabrillo Music Theatre has just the show for you, a star-studded revival of the 1959 Broadway hit Once Upon A Mattress and a terrific companion piece to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which Cabrillo just happens to have staged two summers ago.
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THE BEWILDERED HERD
Saturday, April 21st, 2012
Among political commentator Walter Lippmann’s best known quotes is the following: “The public must be put in its place…so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.” In other words, if you want democracy to work, you’ve got to control the minds of the masses, something which political consultant Charlie “Bingo” Bingham, the (anti)hero of Cody Henderson’s World Premiere The Bewildered Herd knows only too well. You might even call it Bingo’s mission in life to keep the bewildered herd (i.e. the people in his life—and you and me) in line.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Awards.
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