YOU CAN GO BACK AGAIN The award-winning Musical Theatre Guild, a company of professional performers who present concert-staged readings of seldom seen musicals, will continue its 15th season with Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s rarely-produced classic One Touch of Venus (1943). I have been attending MTG for years and their one-night stands are more professional…

TO SAVE A MELODRAMATIC SCRIPT Harper Lee’s 1960 story about lawyer Atticus Finch, who defends Tom Robinson, a black man wrongfully accused of rape in 1935 Alabama, has lost none of its appeal. Although some have argued that many of the poor white Southerners and victimized black characters are one-dimensional (and that Atticus’ daughter, six-year-old…

MORE PHALLUS, PLEASE I don’t know about you, but if I were a 5th century Greek who had just witnessed three back-to-back tragedies at the Festival Dionysus, only one thing could lift my spirits: Party! The Greeks loved to party as much as they loved theatre, so why not combine the two? The “party†became…

STORIES BY AND FOR THE HEART At the start of the second half of Stories By Heart, John Lithgow tells us that, originally, the first half was all there was; but his audience, like children, having heard one story, wanted “more.†In this instance, more proves to be less. If I had left at intermission,…

OH, DADDY, POOR DADDY, SOMEONE’S TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF YOUR GOOD NATURE (AND GUESS WHO IT IS?) When you watch Dan Via, the actor, play the part of a wise-cracking, heart-lonely “best friend,†you will get an idea of what the style of Dan Via, the playwright, consists. He acts earnestly and straight-forwardly and totally without…

EGGOLD SUNNY-SIDE UP Here’s a switch: in the ever-increasing saga of showcase-as-play in Los Angeles theatre, 90210 star Ryan Eggold has not only written Amy & Elliot, a genuinely funny play, but delivers a beguiling performance and manages to direct it with comical nuances that showcase the talent of his 3 co-stars. True, the sit-com…

SUTTON FOSTER IS READY FOR A CABARET CLOSE UP Sutton Foster, one of Broadway’s most loved and talented leading ladies, will make her Orange County Performing Arts Center debut January 6 – 9 in the star-studded Cabaret Series. I first encountered Miss Foster in the titular role of Thoroughly Modern Millie on Broadway; she was…

RETURN TO LOVE The inability to eradicate grief can eat away at you like a cancer. Society has come up with a multitude of ways (such as the Catholic confessional) to release the steam from a pressure cooker of heartache. For some people, all of the psychological tools developed to deal with regret are useless;…

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO BETHLEHEM When three slapstick wise guys – Gold (Matt Walker), Frankenstein (Morgan Rusler) and Myr (Brandon Breault) – show up in Bethlehem for the arrival of the Prince of Peace, innkeeper Nicholas (Jack McGee) sees gold coins, so he touts his impregnated and unwed daughter Letty (Katie…

MOON – LOST; SUBLIME COMEDY – FOUND For those of you who love old time radio variety shows, sketch comedy and great music, you are in for a treat. Lost Moon Radio, a collection of experienced writers, performers and musicians, has assembled to bring us something that has been sorely missing from the world of…