Steel Magnolias
Provoked by the real-life death of his younger sister, Susan Harling Robinson, Robert Harling’s play, Steel Magnolias, premiered in 1987 at Off-Broadway’s WPA Theatre. Since then, this enduring melodramady has gone through several iterations, onstage (both in the U.S. and England), on film (1989), and twice on television – once in 1990 as a two-hour pilot for a possible run as a regular TV series – and, most recently, a 2012 Lifetime TV event, featuring an African-American cast led by Queen Latifah, Alfre Woodard, and Phylicia Rashad.
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The Parisian Woman
In 2008 Beau Willimon’s play, Farragut North, premiered on Broadway. Based on Willimon’s work with the Howard Dean presidential campaign of 2004, the Farragut script was later adapted by Willimon (with aide from Grant Heslov and George Clooney) into a screenplay for the film The Ides of March; when that movie was made, it was directed by and starred George Clooney. Though the play was more successful, dramatically speaking, than the languid and confusing film version, neither iteration of the story is especially memorable.
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The Circus is Coming to Town
No performers work harder than those who create children’s theater. And no company does children’s theater more creatively than Los Angeles-based Storybook Theatre.
Now, through July 6, Storybook Theatre is presenting an original and overtly optimistic production of the hour-long children’s musical, The Circus is Coming to Town, with book and lyrics by Lloyd Schwartz and music by Brian Feinstein.
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Master Class
Though Master Class was written by Terrence McNally just eighteen years ago, in 1995, it already has an illustrious history. Initially staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Company in collaboration with Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum, the show quickly ascended to Broadway where it ran for 598 performances, earning Tony Awards for its stars, Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald.
Since then, several luminaries of the theater have populated the roles in Master Class, including Patti LuPone, Dixie Carter and Tyne Daly. And now, So Cal’s own homegrown diva, Gigi Bermingham, takes on the mighty role of soprano extraordinaire Maria Callas at Long Beach’s International City Theatre, through April 14.
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Having It All
Though it debuted last year at the No Ho Arts Center, in North Hollywood, where as a premiere musical it was nominated for seven Ovation Awards, Having it All began in 1982 as a nonfiction book by Helen Gurley Brown. Its subtitle, "Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even if You’re Starting With Nothing, " elaborates on the late Brown’s feminist proclamation. "Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now,” Brown writes, “started out as some kind of schlep."
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Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
MGM's critically acclaimed 1954 film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is frequently mentioned as one of the finest musicals of all times. Starring Howard Keel and Jane Powell, it featured Michael Kidd's choreography, arguably some of the most exciting to date. It is no surprise that a stage production would follow. In 1979, after a successful national tour, it played on Broadway and failed to attract an audience. In 2005 and 2007 it was revised again and has become this successful vehicle for national tours.
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Happy Hour with Dean Martin
He was the King of Cool, and he played straight man to Jerry Lewis’ fool in the seventeen films they made together between 1949 and 1956. In fact, Dean Martin was an undisputed star in quadruple domains of showbiz: concerts & nightclubs, music recordings, movies, and TV. The second son of an Italian immigrant, Martin (born in 1917, as Dino Paul Crocetti) spoke only Italian until he started school in his hometown of Steubenville, Ohio. Nevertheless, the high school dropout went on to become one of the most familiar faces, if not voices, of midcentury pop-culture America.
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Cinderella/ La Cenerentola
For generations Rossini's La Cenerentola was a seldom performed rarity hidden in the shadow of his perennially popular, Barbiere di Siviglia. Luckily for us the bel canto revival of last half-century and the rise of well trained singers, particularly mezzos in Rossini's case, who can handle the opera's musical challenges means that his enchanting version of the Cinderella story has become an operatic staple. However, this is not the familiar Disney version of the tale. It's not even Rodgers and Hammerstein. There's no Fairy Godmother, no pumpkin and nary a glass slipper in sight.
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End of the Rainbow
Elvis Presley and Judy Garland are two shining multimedia stars whom imitators and impersonators have made careers out of embodying. What’s more, throngs of adulating fans will surely keep the artistry of these unique performers alive much longer than their ill-fated lives actually endured.
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Tribes
Billy is deaf, born into a hearing family. He has never learned sign language, instead lip-reading the manifold mealtime conversations swirling around him. As he admits late in Nina Raine’s play, he has long been unable to grasp much of those conversations.
Unfortunately, in this production, directed by David Cromer, at least one audience member was likewise unable to grasp much. Or, perhaps like some of the pretentious statements passing for conversation among the family members, the substance wasn’t there for the grasping.
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