Laura M Hathaway News

Chance Theater presents two shows for your Holiday entertainment, LITTLE WOMEN: The Broadway Musical with book by Allan Knee, music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, directed by Casey Long, music direction by Bill Strongin and choreography by Jessie McLean; and the ninth anniversary production of THE EIGHT: Reindeer Monologues, written by Jeff Goode and directed by Oanh Nguyen.

Long before the stage saw puppets having sex and Ugandans confronting Mormons, there was JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA, a joyously foul-mouthed stage musical that's as much of a hilarious guilty pleasure as its title suggests. The Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills is the latest American regional theater to take on this racy, over-the-top show. Due to popular demand--and, frankly, rightly so--this surreal musical's run has been extended through August 14. At the height of its popularity, Jerry Springer's eponymous TV program which inspired this reverent parody cornered the market in shocking reveals, loud on-stage brawls, and outrageous fringe parades. So the idea that this low-brow talk show-slash-circus sideshow has somehow been immortalized into a musical theater piece--specifically an Opera, perhaps the most high-brow of the Arts--attracts nothing less than amusing curiosity.

Met with some of Sondheim's harshest criticisms (a rarity within his top-notch career full of well-received hits), MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG-his musical play told in reverse-is quite a challenging piece to take in. As Chance Theater's current production (performing through March 7 in Anaheim Hills), theater co-founder and director Oanh Nguyen certainly lived up to his theater's name and took a respectable chance on mounting a musical that may not be everyone's cup of tea. Though the source material seems like it Merrily Trudges Along, Chance Theater's production is buoyed by a collective creative enthusiasm that's wonderfully palpable and exuberantly infectious all throughout the show's performance.

Almost a full decade after its initial Broadway production, the powerful award winning musical 'Parade' by Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry will receive its first fully staged professional production in Los Angeles at the Neighborhood Playhouse.