Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theatre Review’

CONEY ISLAND LAND, OR THE GREAT EXISTENTIAL ACTUALITY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE


High school sweethearts reunite for the first time since their breakup thirty years earlier in Timothy Braun’s absorbing World Premiere two-hander Coney Island Land, or The Great Existential Actuality at The End of The Universe, a terrifically acted and designed guest production at North Hollywood’s Theatre 68 Complex.
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jackbenny: And on the 366th Day

When a date happens only once every four years, it acquires event status, which is why jackbenny’s February 29, 2020 one-nighter at the Luckman Fine Arts Center Intimate Theatre, cleverly dubbed “And on the 366th Day,” not only proved a musical extravaganza of epic proportions, the next time the singing, songwriting twins will be able to repeat the event won’t be for another 1461 days.
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DISNEY BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Laurie Veldheer and Todd Adamson are simply sublime in La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts and McCoy Rigby Entertainment’s Disney Beauty And The Beast, the all-around best and most spectacular of the six big-stage regional productions I’ve seen so far.
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THE MISSING PAGES OF LEWIS CARROLL

Playwright Lily Blau speculates on one of the most controversial real-life relationships in literary history—that of the then 31-year-old Charles Dotson, better known as Lewis Carroll, and Alice Liddell, the 11-year-old inspiration for Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland—in her provocative new play The Missing Pages Of Lewis Carroll, now getting a superbly acted and directed (and gorgeous-to-look-at) World Premiere at Pasadena’s The Theater @ Boston Court.
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THE BROTHERS SIZE

RECOMMENDED

The Fountain Theatre follows its multiple award-winning 2012 production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s In The Red And Brown Water with the Los Angeles Premiere of the 33-year-old playwright’s The Brothers Size, and while the production is as beautifully acted as they get, I am a good deal less enamored with the second in McCraney’s Brother/Sister Plays trilogy than I was with the first.
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ME AND MY GIRL


Here’s a Broadway trivia quiz for you. Which of the following musicals ran the longest on The Great White Way: How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Funny Girl, The King And I, Cabaret, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate, The Pajama Game, or Me And My Girl?

If you’re anything like this reviewer/Broadway buff, you may be astonished by the answer. 1986’s Me And My Girl trumps its far better known competitors with a grand total of 1420 performances, just one of many reasons to cheer the arrival of this largely obscure Broadway smash, now smashingly revived by L.A.’s premier theater-in-the-round, Glendale Centre Theatre.
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PETER PAN: THE BOY WHO HATED MOTHERS


He’s been the hero of a play, a novel based on that play, a prequel, a sequel, a silent film, several stage adaptations of the original play, an oft-revived and televised Broadway musical, a Disney animated feature (and its sequel), a live-action feature film, a Japanese anime, an animated TV series, a theme-park ride, and most recently a mammoth “360-degree” staging and a Broadway prequel, the winner of five 2012 Tony awards.

With all of the above behind him, you’d think that at the ripe old age of 109, Peter Pan, aka The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, would be ready to call it quits, but you’d be wrong, since just when most centenarians would be poised to take their final bows, along comes Michael Lluberes’ Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers, proving that a) there’s still life in the young/old boy and b) that you don’t need a gazillion dollars (or however much the budget of Peter Pan threesixty° was) to make theatrical magic.
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