Cary Ginell has been writing theater reviews in Ventura County since 1996. He joined the staff of the Ventura County Acorn in 2007 and since then, has written over 500 reviews. In 2013, he started his own theater arts blog, VC On Stage (www.vconstage.com), which includes reviews of musicals and plays from Calabasas to Ojai. From 2005 to 2010, Cary was Broadway project manager for Alfred Publishing, producing all of the publisher's piano/vocal songbooks. He is the author of 9 books on music, including "Broadway Musicals: Show By Show," published by Applause Books.
Everyone knows that the director is the person responsible for the look and content of a musical or play, but once the cast has been selected, sets and props are delivered, and all the technical elements are in place, who puts it all together? The week prior to a show's opening is called 'Tech Wee
Before Mamma Mia!, before The Marvelous Wonderettes, and before Jersey Boys, there was Return to the Forbidden Planet, an Off-Broadway space farce that was one of the first musicals to incorporate pop hits into its score.
The title of All My Sons, Arthur Miller's riveting play of guilt, heartbreak, and tragedy, refers to 21 young World War II combat pilots, who were needlessly killed when cracked cylinder heads were unknowingly installed in their airplanes.
If you have the opportunity to see Cabrillo Music Theatre's splendid production of Evita this weekend, you will no doubt be drawn to the electrifying performances by its stars, Cassandra Murphy, as Eva Peron, and Marc Ginsburg, as Che (profiled in our October 4 story - http://vconstage.
In Cabrillo Music Theatre's new production of Evita, the role of Che, the narrator figure based on Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, is played by Marc Baron Ginsburg.
His day job is as associate justice of the Second District, Division Six of the California Courts of Appeal, but Steve Perren's passion for the stage has seen him appear in a variety of shows in Ventura County over the years.
Last Sunday, we ventured into Los Angeles to see two Ventura County theater alumni in a production of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's Next to Normal, the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that is being staged at the Pico Playhouse.
Last week we spoke with Fearless Shakespeare director Joseph Fuqua, dramaturg Jonathan Drahos, and Musical Theatre Intensive director Brian McDonald about their production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
One important and valuable aspect of Cabrillo Music Theatre's long tenure in Ventura County is its devotion to casting talented young local performers in as many of its productions as it can.
The grand rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his erstwhile mentor Antonio Salieri is mainly apocryphal, generated for dramatic effect by playwright Peter Shaffer in his 1979 play, 'Amadeus,' but the idea was, nevertheless, a brilliant one.