Michael L. Quintos News

It's a great week around our Broadway World!  In addition to featuring our Top 10 regional stories, we have now opened public nominations in over 40 regions so far for our annual BroadwayWorld Regional Awards, including: Austin, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boise, Boston, Buffalo, Central Pennsylvania, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Connecticut, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Long Island, Los Angeles, Madison, Maine, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, WI, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Jersey, New Orleans, Omaha, Palm Springs, Philadelphia, Philippines, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, Rhode Island, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Seattle, South Africa, St. Louis, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Washington, DC, and Wichita.  Be sure to nominate your favorites through October 31st!  Look for more cities coming soon!

So does FIRST DATE---the relatively new musical comedy now playing its Southern California regional premiere at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts through October 11---merit an outing? Sure! If you're looking for a cute, charming little musical that's giddy and entertaining and features a pop-tastic score performed by a superb ensemble, then the answer is yes... you'll definitely want to swipe right on this match up.

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in Washington DC, Los Angeles, Spain and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include Arena Stage's DESTINY OF DESIRE, THE SOUND OF MUSIC National Tour in LA, and BLOOD BROTHERS in Chicago, just to name a few.

To put it succinctly, be ready to laugh your ass off. A brilliant, witty melange of slapstick, sight gags, silly absurdity, hyperbolic acting, and even bits of good ol' reliable audience participation, ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS, Richard Bean's exceedingly hilarious comedy of errors, misdirections, and misunderstandings is now receiving a superb West Coast premiere production at Orange County's Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory theater through October 11.

To kick off Segerstrom Center for the Arts' brand new 2015-2016 Spotlight Series, the O.C. theatrical institution will welcome cast members of the Tony Award-winning New York company of the hysterical FORBIDDEN BROADWAY for the show's latest touring incarnation entitled Alive and Kicking! for a limited four-performance engagement at the Center's Samueli Theater from October 1-4. One of the show's longtime stalwarts is Trisha Rapier, a 12-year veteran of the show who also happens to hail from Orange County! She agreed to answer a few questions from BWW So. Cal. contributing editor Michael L. Quintos before her O.C. homecoming.

The Hollywood Bowl's production of Monty Python's SPAMALOT (which won the Tony for Best Musical in 2005) played last weekend at the legendary venue.

Definitely one of this current millennium's funniest stage shows, the world-famous Hollywood Bowl certainly chose wisely in its decision to stage the hit musical comedy Monty Python's SPAMALOT as this year's all-star annual summer stage musical spectacular, which was welcomed with plenty of sustained, hearty laughter and a well-deserved standing ovation during its opening night performance on Friday evening, July 31st. The nearly 18,000-seat venue's truncated, yet still enormously entertaining re-staging of the 2005 Tony Award winner for Best Musical continues with two additional weekend performances, August 1-2.

Bravo to Chance Theater for taking on this mainstream hit and making it actually feel like a fresh, awesome little indie. Now playing through August 9, the latest offering from Orange County's bold, award-winning regional theater company is their own 'intimate' theater re-staging of HAIRSPRAY, the 2002 hit Tony Award-winning musical comedy. The results? Quite simply a more compact production that is an absolutely undeniable, all-around rousing winner. Under the direction of Kari Hayter, the celebratory production's immersive, semi-theater-in-the-round minimalist approach actually thrusts the show's outstanding music and comedy out front, wonderfully blanketing the audience in the show's pro-integration, pro-acceptance storyline about a rotund young lady with big hair and big dreams who sets off to change the world.

OC's award-winning regional theater company 3-D Theatricals' latest effort is a remarkably admirable, visually-stunning iteration of Disney's TARZAN® THE MUSICAL that defiantly dazzles and entertains despite the inherent, unavoidable shortcomings of its licensed source material (a problematic book and mostly forgettable score). Thanks to the incredible combined efforts of the show's creative team of brilliant theatrical artisans, its richly striking orchestra, and its top-notch, super-talented ensemble cast (led by Devin Archer and Daebreon Poiema), this ultimately winning local production has certainly earned all its well-deserved cheers. Under the showmanship-style guidance of director Rufus Bonds Jr., 3DT's vividly colorful TARZAN manages to rise (at times literally) high above the original show's weak plotting, Hwang's sometimes stale dialogue, and Collins' run-of-the-mill lyrics... and triumphantly emerge as a wonder-filled, visually-stunning treat for all ages.

As the cliche goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That is perhaps partly the philosophy behind the rather faithful stage adaptation of the gloriously wonderful movie musical SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, now once again charmingly replicated in a smile-inducing local production at Musical Theatre West that continues through July 26 at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach. An almost scene-by-scene, note-for-note recreation of the superb cinematic masterpiece, the musical theater iteration of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN smartly and painstakingly reenacts every key moment and memorable musical happenstance from the 1952 movie that many have since heralded as one of the best movie musicals of all time. With MTW's latest revival specifically, director/choreographer Jon Engstrom has helmed a joyful production worth experiencing, whether it's your first or hundredth time. And, yes, it rains on stage... and it's a sight to behold!

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in Raleigh, Sacramento, St. Louis and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include an 'awesome' INTO THE WOODS at The Muny, PETER PAN at Music Circus, and BUDDY - THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY in Raleigh, just to name a few.

For nearly three vigorous hours, MOTOWN - THE MUSICAL provides one helluva show. More like a CONCERT rather than your typical book musical, this dazzling, high-octane extravaganza of music and dance is a visual and aural feast that gamely crams in more than 60 hits from the groundbreaking record company's discography. The story---penned by Motown founder Berry Gordy himself---may be its lone weak spot, but there's no denying how fun it is to see and hear this impressive cast of quintuple-threats recreate these greatest hits live on stage. The rousingly entertaining, exuberantly-performed stage spectacular continues at Costa Mesa's Segerstrom Center for the Arts through June 28.

The charming new regional production of the Disney/Cameron Mackintosh musical spectacular MARY POPPINS---currently playing at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts through June 21---has found a lovely, practically perfect Poppins in Hart of Dixie's Brandi Burkhardt, who confidently channels the nanny we all love with her lovely singing voice and a pitch-perfect demeanor that's at times bold, at times cheeky, and altogether beguiling. As for the show itself, it's quite a delightful crowd-pleaser, filled with colorful first-rate visuals, spectacular dancing, festive songs, and an infectiously enthusiastic cast that tries its best to win over its audience. And, boy, they definitely do!

This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in Long Island, Kansas City, San Diego, and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include a World Premiere in Long Island, MOTHER FREAKING HOOD! in Kansas City, and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN at San Diego Musical Theatre, just to name a few.

Let's first get this very necessary accolade out of the way: South Coast Repertory's brand new production of Rick Elice's PETER AND THE STARCATCHER is, hands down, one of the most enjoyable, most thrilling, and most engagingly imaginative plays I have seen all season---a fitting capper to the Tony Award-winning Orange County theater's 51st year. This delightfully revised production---which continues performances in Costa Mesa through June 7---re-calibrates the play's hyperactive mixture of mirth and mayhem by further emphasizing its seemingly 'bare-bones' storytelling devices, resulting in one entertaining night of theater that both kids and adults will find endearingly beguiling. Motivated by imagination, I seriously cannot recall the last time I laughed this boisterously and had this much unabashed joy from sitting through a play in quite some time.

A safe, inoffensive, cutesy crowd-pleaser for the young and the young-at-heart, the brand new non-Equity touring revival of the Broadway classic ANNIE is eager to please and pretty much does so. The show is, by all accounts, a cute if standard-issue charmer, filled with hummable ear-worm music (via lyricist/book writer Martin Charnin and composer Charles Strouse) and enjoyably hyperbolic characters that audiences will delight in either cheering or jeering. Sure, ANNIE may not be the best or most groundbreaking musical ever created, but it certainly has its heartwarming place in the genre. The tour continues at Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through May 24.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa will be hosting Platinum Award-winning singer-songwriter and Tony Award®-nominated actress Ann Hampton Callaway for a series of cabaret concerts celebrating the music of living legend---and her personal musical heroine---Barbra Streisand. The intimate show will take place May 7-9, 2015 at the Center's Samueli Theater.

Summer is just around the corner which means Segerstrom Center for the Arts' FREE MOVIE MONDAYS will soon return for its ninth year. The five films in this year's line-up include: Little Shop of Horrors, Pitch Perfect, The Sandlot, My Best Friend's Wedding, and ET: The Extra Terrestrial.

South Coast Repertory's latest offering, MR. WOLF---now on stage in Costa Mesa through May 3---is a high-quality presentation of an intriguingly audacious if not quite fully-gestated new world premiere play from Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph, the playwright behind the celebrated BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO. In Mr. Joseph's enticing new drama, the play employs a ripped-from-the-headlines plot that feels more like a stand-alone episode of any given TV procedural drama, which, unfortunately, by their very nature leaves very little room for real character development, yet provides enough juicy (and at times soapy) melodrama to pique an interested audience.

Surprise! This brand new, non-equity national tour of GUYS AND DOLLS---currently onstage at Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts for a limited week-long run through April 19---is a winning, nicely-nicely done charmer. Of course, it helps a lot that this traveling production comes equipped with Broadway-caliber sets and costumes and, most satisfying of all, a really talented, engaging ensemble cast.