Tristan Griffin News

This is the last chance to vote for the 2021 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards! The 2021 Regional Awards honor productions which had their first performance between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

Time is running out to vote for for the 2021 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards! The 2021 Regional Awards honor productions which had their first performance between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

Our readers set the nominees, and now voting is open for the 2021 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards! The 2021 Regional Awards honor productions which had their first performance between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

Our readers set the nominees, and now voting is open for the 2021 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards! The 2021 Regional Awards honor productions which had their first performance between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

How a director envisions a production makes all the difference in its prestation to an audience, starting with casting and continuing through rehearsals and all technical aspects of the show. I spoke with Branda Lock on bringing her vivid imagination and directing skills to George Bernard Show’s PYGMALION, filled with unique Lock-inspired changes to the casting which promise to shed new light on this classic tale of class struggles in Shaw’s time.

The Foundation, a sketch team and former UCBTNY Weekend Team is streaming a BRAND NEW sketch show in the style of SNL at Home on YouTube Live this Sunday at 8pm.

At 2020 Vision: The Next Celebrity President, your favorite celebrities debate each other to become president! Comedians perform impressions of celebrities in this hour-long show, which features catchy slogans, campaign speeches, and opinions on hard-hitting issues from celebrities like Tracy Morgan, Kourtney Kardashian, Cardi B, Tom Hanks, Ice T, and more! Come prepared to vote for your favorite candidate - YOU choose the winner!

A fan of the romantic but put-upon-by-tradition women in Jane Austen novels and the witty men created by Oscar Wilde, Kathryn Farren has successfully woven those elements together in Victorian-era England with a modern perspective on female equality, the importance of family, standing in one's own truth, and the power of love to overcome fear and hatred in her World Premiere play EMBRIDGE at Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro.

Have you ever seen a LIVE impressions comedy show? Well, Thursday, November 21 at 8 pm at Improv Asylum NYC is your chance. In 2020 Vision: The Next Celebrity President, audiences will find their favorite celebrities debating to become president! The show features catchy slogans, campaign speeches, and opinions on hard-hitting issues from celebrities like Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Ice T, and Tom Hanks! Audiences should come prepared to vote for their favorite candidate -- as the show heralds: YOU choose the winner!

An Inconvenient Talk Show is coming to the New York Comedy Festival!

A prodigal son's return home is the focus of Dead Accounts opening at Little Fish Theatre on May 16 for a four-week run. LFT company member Branda Lock directs this story about boiling points and big money from Peabody and Writers' Guild Award winner Theresa Rebeck.

Everyone's favorite former vice president and environmental crusader, Al Gore, is now a late night comedy talk show host. And he's taking no prisoners in this riotous breakdown of the current state of climate change.

SHE LOVES ME, the 1963 Broadway musical with book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock, and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, was based on Miklos Laszlo's 1937 play, Parfumerie, a warm, gentle comedy that follows the tangled dating life of perfume shop employee Georg Horvath whose dating life goes awry when he discovers that the stranger he has fallen in love with through a secret correspondence is none other than Amalia Balash, a co-worker with whom he constantly bickers. This universal tale about mistaken identity and romantic love went on to become the inspiration for the classic films The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Ole Summertime, and Nora Ephron's 1998 box office hit You've Got Mail in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan took their secret romance online through emails.

In the years before computers and cell phones to assist Bernard with scheduling, he uses a datebook and the world globe sitting on his desk to keep track of where each of the three stewardesses he plans to marry will be travelling, and has managed to keep 'one up, one down and one pending.' But Bernard's life is about to get incredibly bumpy when his friend, Robert (pratfall expert Brian O'Sullivan), comes to stay and unexpected schedule changes bring all three women to Paris and Bernard's apartment at the same time. And with Robert meeting all these lovely ladies for the first time on the same day, he soon forgets which lies to tell to whom to keep Bernard out of the doghouse. Hilarity ensues!

Have you been waiting for the perfect musical extravaganza to which you can take your entire family, from the youngest to oldest member? Now is your chance by experiencing SEUSSICAL the musical at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica. It is such a fabulous production from its perfect cast, direction, lighting, set, and more incredible costumes than you can count, I guarantee you will walk out thinking just 'How Lucky You Are' to have seen it.

Surely most theatre folks have seen productions of the fabulous musical THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical, making the show the 2002 season's most awarded new show on Broadway, based on the original story and screenplay by Richard Morris for the 1967 Universal Pictures film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Julie Andrews. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, the current production directed by Anne Gesling for the Y.E.S. Youth/Teen Program at Santa Monica's Morgan-Wixson Theatre is just as good as many adult production I have seen, given the cast's talent, Gesling's spot-on fast-paced direction and fabulous 1920's costuming, Daniel Koh's musical direction creating wonderful cast harmonies, and creative choreography by Lauren Blair.

Before Peter had the last name Pan, he was a browbeaten 13-year old orphan shipped off with his two mates from Victorian England to a distant island ruled by the evil King Zarboff. The boys know nothing of the mysterious trunk in the captain's cabin, containing a precious, otherworldly cargo, given to a precocious young girl named Molly, a Starcatcher-in-training, who realizes that the trunk's precious cargo is starstuff, a celestial substance so powerful it must never fall into the wrong hands. During the journey, the ship is taken over by pirates - led by the fearsome Black Stache (who will later be known as Captain Hook in The Adventures of Peter Pan) - a villain determined to claim the trunk and its treasure for his own, making the journey quickly become a thrilling adventure. From marauding pirates and jungle tyrants to unwilling comrades and unlikely heroes, PETER AND THE STARCATCHER playfully explores the depths of greed and despair... and the bonds of friendship, duty and love.

When I heard the Morgan-Wixson Theatre was presenting THE FOREIGNER by Larry Shue, I was hesitant to review the show, wondering why anyone would want to produce a show I had found offensive and not at all funny the first time I saw it elsewhere. But I am happy to report director Michael Rothhaar has mined every moment of humor in Shue's play, keeping me and the audience in stitches throughout thanks to his obvious knowledge on how to present it, as well as his excellent casting of all roles.

Rivers and Sanders make a great team, bouncing bawdy one-liners off each other with fluid ease throughout the first act. There is lots of slapstick humor, ranging from the famous "walk this way" physical gag to several modern references that kept the audience entertained and laughing. There are moments of true hilarity in the production, especially the tango seduction dance performed by Sanders and Markus Cummings. That scene alone is worth the price of admission!