Very polished preview. Only one stop per act. Really good caliber performances from the leads…even by non-high school standards. Obviously they can’t say f***. The big problem song obviously is La Vie Boheme: They can say masturbation but they can’t say erection? They can’t say dyke. They jumped a section with lyrics right before the talking interlude…marijuana? Roger is phenomenal and this is his first onstage performance ever! He’s a sophmore varsity football player and he’s got a really good voice. 30 hi-quality cordless mics! Fancy LED footlights and high end lighting throughout! Really good show! Check it out before the protests shut it down!

Yay! We got Brian Benoit (the original Trekkie Monster, et al.)! I was lucky enough to see him AND John Tartaglia when I first saw the show in Vegas (before it was trimmed down to 90 minutes), and it’s awesome that he loves doing the show so much that he’s now on the national tour. Great production. Obviously I can (and will) complain about things, but first and foremost, I had a great time! Why didn’t the orchestra play the final hit of “My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada”? Rod was even sitting there waiting for it?!?!?! Why were lyrics cut from “Schadenfreude”? Straight-A students getting B’s? Ex-es getting STD’s? Watching tourists reading maps? Seeing doormen taking naps? CEO’s getting shackled? Watching actors never reach the endings of their Oscar speech? Brian and Christmas Eve didn’t say that they sold all their wedding gifts for money… Why didn’t the ensemble … Continue reading →

Great individual performances, horrible combination. Great sounding tracked orchestra. Oscar was a real piano player with bad hair (not period hair I mean), and also played weird interludes during the barfly scene. Speaking of that scene, Abner Dillon wasn’t heavyset with a handlebar mustache, so he was a cobra and a hick instead of cobra and a walrus….boo! Although the theatre was well used because they had a balcony set piece for Dorothy’s hotel room. And speaking of the balcony, they cut the doctor scene at the top of Act 2 and opened with Sunny Side (To Every Situation)…what the deuce! And the worstest part is after Sunny Side they ran up to the other balcony where they could have done the damn doctor scene!!!! WTFH!?!?!?!!!! Just doesn’t make any damn sense… Oh! And they mixed up Shuffle Off To Buffalo! Traditionally, Bert Barry gets married to Anytime Annie and … Continue reading →

A+ for the cast, D- for the technical Maybe it was that day’s performance…maybe the economy forced their hand…or maybe they shelled out way too much money for the cast (most of whom did the show on Broadway, in Las Vegas, or both) and had to hire a deficient tech crew that hobbled together a set out of spit and bailing wire (MacGyver they ain’t)* and forgot half their cues…I don’t know! The most disappointing thing about this production is Ulla’s “tidy up” gag. Near the end of Act 1, Max and Leo hire a hot Swedish girl as their secretary/receptionist. They instruct her to tidy up the office. When everyone comes back for Act 2, the entire office and furnishings are painted white, and when asked when she did all this, Ulla says intermission. At least that’s what happened on Broadway, in the movie adaptation and every national tour…not … Continue reading →

A fairly decent youth production (although it was Starlight’s first “audition only” show) of this delightful Menken-Ashman show. Mushnik was a little over the top for me, but as Laira explained, you hve to balance over the top performances with high energy…don’t want the kid diluting his/her performance to catatonic when they’re asked to tone it down. I know this is a youth production, but do we really need an announcement telling us that it’s intermission when the lights just came up? Or an announcement saying, “weren’t those kids great?” after we just gave them a standing ovation?!? Really??? Presented in the George Nakano Theatre at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center.

*starts choking on cough drop* They destroyed it. This was probably the worst college production I’ve seen to date. Which is unfortunate when you actually know people in the cast….because at some point you know you’re going to have to talk to them. My biggest problem is that the show is supposed to be a radio broadcast in the 1940’s (gee, hence the title?)…and there is no way on God’s green earth that what we saw was capable of going over the air in any manner of acclaim. There was enough dead air to bring a corpse back to life, there were people 20 ft from a mike thinking they were being heard loud and clear, there was foley going on 30 ft from the mike…it was disastrous…absolutely nothing like the show I saw growing up. Mic troubles. I didn’t care about the main character’s arc. Johnny the singer was … Continue reading →

Delightful! Based on the short story Ninotchka by Melchior Lengyel, adapted into a film of the same name (with Greta Garbo) and later adapted to a Broadway musical with music by Cole Porter (his last Broadway musical) and later adapted to film with Cyd Charrise and Fred Astaire (in his last dancing role), this is actually a reworking of the movie musical placing it in the 60’s to capitalize on US/USSR relations at the height of the Cold War. Having seen the other film versions, it is still a delightful story that stays delightfully true to it’s source material while still being relevant and romantic. Starring Stuart Pankin as one of the Russian Arts Commisars. I didn’t recognize his name at first either, but his voice and face made me go wait a second….then I realized he was in Honey We Shrunk Ourselves as Wayne Szalinski’s brother Gordon and he … Continue reading →

Took the Metro up to Hollywood and Vine because the Pantages teamed up with Metro to offer discount tickets on Tuesday night performances. We stand in a line thinking it’s the box office line. I go forward to investigate while Laura saves our place in line, and I find out that there’s no line for the box office. When I get back, Laura had learned that the line was for the Wicked Lottery, which picked half a dozen names and sold front row tickets that you can’t buy any other way. After the lottery they offer half off tickets. Laura suggests that we wait and I reluctantly agree. We get all the way through the line and fill out one lottery ticket for each of us. They make an announcement that you need cash on hand if you win, so we ask where the nearest ATM is (there’s one in … Continue reading →

The musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2” is wonderfully pulled off by the capable and talented cast and crew. Rarely produced it was a treat to be able to see it, especially when the understudy (Tony Torrico) gets his chance to shine as Guido Contini, a filmaker with as many lovers as creative ideas.