Showmag.com

  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size

The Marvelous Wonderettes:Caps and Gowns

Ben Miles Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

Roger Bean has found a formula for musical theater success. He first tested it with the premiere of his musical comedy, The Marvelous Wonderettes; it was a smash hit at the Laguna Playhouse, in 2008, before it moved on to a long and lucrative run in New York City. After that surprise success, Bean created a seasonal version of the show and called it The Winter Wonderettes. It too paid-off in pleased audiences and long runs. Now, Bean is at it again with his latest Wonderettes iteration, The Marvelous Wonderettes, Caps & Gowns, currently in its debut at the Laguna Playhouse, through August 12.

Read more...
 

Spamalot

Ben Miles Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

Spamalot is the musical comedy that is, as its creators assert, “lovingly ripped off” from 1975’s film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Monty Python player Eric Idle wrote the book and lyrics to the stage show, whereas John Du Perez composed its score. In fact, the title comes from a phrase in the movie: “We eat ham, and jam and spam a lot.”

Read more...
 

Fade to Blue

Melinda Schupmann Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles never disappoints. From great Christmas shows to innovative ventures into classical and contemporary music, they strive for quality mixed with lively entertainment. In this outing, they are presenting their first-ever, all-country music show with the added bonus of Lee Ann Rimes. Where they depart from the standard male chorus one expects to hear is in the Broadway-worthy production numbers delivered by the chorus members themselves.

Read more...
 

Blood and Gifts

January Riddle Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

War is not healthy for children and other living things. That 1970s mantra is as true today as it was the first day man emerged from the caves and declared, “Mine!” It is also true in the West Coast premiere of Blood and Gifts, J. T. Rogers’  1980s historical fiction drama of the secret spy war behind the official Soviet-Afghan War, keenly playing out on La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum stage. 

 

Read more...
 

The Addams Family

Melinda Schupmann Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

A production based on such iconic characters as those created by Charles Addams in his devilishly dark cartoons about ghoulish characters inhabiting the Addams family mansion has a tall order to fill. In this case, some elements are successfully portrayed and others fall disappointingly short.

 

Read more...
 

War Horse

Melinda Schupmann Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

For its range of powerful emotion and dazzling theatricality, this production raises the bar for what theater companies can produce when all the right elements are aligned. A searing indictment of war and its dehumanizing anguish is at the core of the story, and looking at it through the eyes of a boy and a horse is wrenching and poignant. Nearly a million horses were forced into cavalry combat against war weapons and most perished in the "war to end all wars."

Read more...
 

The Great American Trailer Park Musical

Ben Miles Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

Initially performed at the first annual New York Music Theater Festival in 2004, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, with a book by Betsy Kelso and music and lyrics by David Nehls, opened Off Broadway the following year. In 2006, Trailer Park had its premiere on the U.S. Regional Theater circuit. Two years later, Trailer Park began its first national tour.

Read more...
 

Measure for Measure

Ben Miles Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

William Shakespeare’s, “Measure for Measure,” written around1604, takes its title from a passage in Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2). Or, as the Beatles sang in 1969, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." Appropriately enough, the sexy sixties are also the decade in which Theatricum Botanicum has placed its latest staging of “Measure for Measure.”  What’s more, the Fab Four’s couplet not only coincides with the themes set forth in The Bard’s convoluted comedy, it’s also the sentiment that plays-out in the show.

 

Read more...
 

Les Miserables

Ben Miles Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

With nearly thirty songs – ranging from the regularly showcased "I Dreamed a Dream" to the cold-hearted "Dog Eats Dog" – Les Miserables is the musical derived from Victor Hugo’s renowned 1862 novel of the same title, which is set in France in the early 19th century. When it premiered in Great Britain in 1985 –with a musical score by Claude-Michel Shoenberg and an English language libretto by Herbert Kretzmer – Les Miz, as it’s commonly called, received tepid reviews from the drama critics of the day as well as London’s extant literati.

Read more...
 

Leading Ladies

Ben Miles Reviews - Theater
E-mail Print

 

Master farceur (and Harvard Law School Alum), Ken Ludwig directed the world premiere of his cross-dressing comedy, Leading Ladies, at Houston’s Alley Theatre. That was in October, 2004. Since then Ladies has traveled north, for stagings in Canada, and across-the-Atlantic (and translated into Czechoslovakian), for a production in Prague.

Read more...
 
More Articles...


Page 6 of 14

Spotlight

Blank Theatre Presents Young Writer's Festival

Professional actors and directors present 12

winning plays by young playwrights from

across the nation during this prestigious

four-week festival. Three different plays are

presented each week.

 

WEEK ONE   June 6 – 9

THE GATES

By Margaret Abigail Flowers (age 17),  Interlochen, MI

MOM, PUT YOUR FLASK AWAY

By Eliana Pipes (age 16), Altadena, CA

DOWNSIZING

By Nick Mecikalski (age 19), Madison, AL

WEEK TWO   June 13 – 16

SOX

By Spencer Emerson Opal-Levine (age 10), Sarasota, FL

EVE

By Patric Verrone (age 17), Pacific Palisades, CA

SURVIVAL STRATEGY

By Nicole Acton (age 19), Galesburg, IL

WEEK THREE   June 20 – 23

SAM’S BIRTHDAY PARTY

By Tanner Laguatan (age 17), Coto de Caza, CA

REVE D’AMOUR

By May Treuhaft-Ali (age 17), Jackson Heights, NY

BLACK ICE

By Max Friedlich (age 18), New York, NY

WEEK FOUR   June 27 – 30

NOT A GOOD TIME

By Hanel Baveja (age 16),  Ann Arbor, MI

GAY MEANS HAPPY

By Rachel Kaly (age 17), Forest Hills, NY

THE EMPTY MAN

By Danny Rothschild (age 19), Interlochen, MI

#   #   #

05-10-13

 
Neil Patrick Harris Directs Nothing to Hide
 

Earlier this year, an unlikely series of events led two of the world’s most gifted sleight-of-hand artists, Derek DelGaudio (2011 Close-Up Magician of the Year) and Helder Guimarães (2011 Parlour Magician of the Year), to share a stage. Fresh from sold-out performances at the Magic Castle, DelGaudio and Guimarães have joined forces with director Neil Patrick Harris to present Nothing to Hide, a unique and unprecedented theatrical event. Abandoning the antiquated notions of a traditional magic show, Nothing to Hide takes the audience on an imaginary journey through a series of diverse and engaging vignettes brought to life solely from the words and hands of the two masterful magicians.
Read more...
 
Wonderettes Sequel Releases New Cast Album
 Roger Bean’s The Marvelous Wonderettes: Caps and Gowns, the eagerly awaited sequel to the popular off-Broadway jukebox musical The Marvelous Wonderettes, has a brand new cast album. The show opened July 7th at Laguna Playhouse to sparkling reviews. "You could tell immediately that the audience was enamored," wrote Paul Hodgins of the Orange County Register. Wonderettes creator Roger Bean has selected 32 songs for the new show and each one, from beloved classic to hidden treasure, has received the signature Wonderettes touch for the new album.
Read more...
 
HBO's "Ethel"

Emmy Award-winning documentarian Rory Kennedy – Ms. Kennedy won Television’s top trophy of achievement for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special for her 2007 HBO film, “Ghost of Abu Ghraib” – has now created a most moving celluloid account of her mother, Ethel. Titled simply “Ethel,” the film is an account of Ethel Kennedy’s life and times.

Married to Robert Kennedy in 1950, Ethel Skakel, unlike the Kennedys, comes from a self-made family. Her father

Read more...
 
Son of Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History

First there was Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History. It was a thin but readable study of character actors from cinema’s Golden Age. Now, author Manny Pacheco gives us more of the same in his sequel treatise, Son of Forgotten Hollywood Forgotten History. The names are (slightly) different but the premise is the same. Pacheco lets us in on the stories behind the familiar faces of actors and actresses we’ve seen on the silver screen over the years but may not have known their names – much less the lowdown on their lives.

 
Read more...