Les Spindle – LA Stage Times Next month, LA will again play host to Radar LA. Following its debut in June 2011, the international theater festival returns September 24 for a second edition. This collaborative project is presented by REDCAT and its parent institution, CalArts, in association with Center Theatre Group and a consortium of … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. During the 1970s, dinner theaters were popular throughout the nation, offering least-common-denominator entertainment served alongside overcooked roast beef and weak cocktails. It wasn’t as much about going to the theater as a quest for chuckles that didn’t tax the brain. Yuppie patrons dined on semi-digestible grub while getting buzzed.Read more… … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net The latest cabaret offering produced by Bruce Kimmel’s Kritzerland Records at Sterling’s Upstairs at the Federal in North Hollywood, is “The Music Men: Meredith Willson and Gene de Paul,” a pleasing array of vintage show tunes from two gifted songwriters.Read more…
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical adaptation of writer-director Billy Wilder’s legendary 1950 film classic Sunset Boulevard is perhaps as well known for its behind the scenes melodrama as its Gothic-flavored narrative about faded Hollywood glamour and unrequited love. Read more… Shirle Gottlieb – Gazette Newspapers It’s no wonder that “Sunset … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers Veteran playwright-screenwriter-director Del Shores (Sordid Lives, Yellow) dons a producer’s hat for an encore production of Matthew Leavitt’s raucous sex comedy, The Boomerang Effect. This episodic play, charting the subtly interrelated lives of five couples in five separate bedrooms, premiered at the Odyssey Theatre in April 2012. Read more Now running through July … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA The first extended run of the tuner A Man of No Importance is a matter of some importance, as it inaugurates—in this era of folding companies and theaters in transit—a new enterprise: the Good People Theater Company, under the direction of the gifted veteran stager-choreographer Janet Miller. Taking on the countervailing winds (money … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA It’s not every day you get to be heavyweight champion of the world—for a professional sportsman it’s a once in a lifetime event, at least the first time is… In 1964, at the tender age of 22, boxing legend Cassius Clay (soon thereafter known as Muhammad Ali) ascended to the pinnacle … Read more
Les Spindle – LA Stage Times Dámaso Rodriguez, who has served as co-founding artistic director for LA’s ever-adventurous Furious Theatre Company since its origin in 2002, is helming his last LA production before he relocates to Portland, Oregon. He recently began his new job as artistic director for that city’s distinguished professional group, Artists Repertory … Read more
THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS – music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, book by David Thompson Les Spindle – Edge Los Angeles The 2010 musical “The Scottsboro Boys” now in its L.A. premiere, is among the most innovative and thrilling shows to have graced Broadway in recent years, justifiably earning 12 Tony nominations. Yet it lost … Read more
THE CRUCIBLE by Arthur Miller. Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Arthur Miller’s play, first produced on Broadway in 1953, was Miller’s impassioned response to McCarthyism and the witch-hunts launched by the House Un-American Activities Committee. But the fact that it has become an oft-produced American classic and the basis for two films (including a French version with … Read more