My favorite East West Players shows are their productions of well-known plays and musicals which offer Asian-American actors the opportunity to tackle roles for which they might not normally be considered. Whether dramatic fare, like Proof or Equus, or musicals like Little Shop Of Horrors or pretty much all of the Sondheim oeuvre, or a play with music like Master Class, these are the productions which have left the strongest, best impressions on me.

Their current attraction is just such a production.

Stephen Sondheim’s Marry Me A Little and Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years are customarily presented as separate “evenings of theater,” albeit rather brief ones. (The former runs 65 minutes, the latter 80.) In a daring move, East West Players stages them back-to-back as a double feature, making this a bargain “two-shows-for-the-price-of-one” evening of great musical theater.

Each show is reviewed separately here. Together, they make up an unforgettable double bill.

Click here to read the review of Marry Me A Little.
Click here to read the review of The Last Five Years.

East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theatre, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles. Through June 21. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00.  Sundays at 2:00. Reservations:  213 625-7000  www.eastwestplayers.org

--Steven Stanley
May 12, 2009
                                                               Photos: Michael Lamont