Stephen Sondheim’s Follies in Las Vegas Stan Jenson April 2, 2024 Entertainment, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, NOW, On Stage, Orange County, Palm Springs, San Francisco FUNNY GIRL: Funny Girl first opened on Broadway in 1964 with Barbara Streisand leading the vaguely biographical story of Fanny Bryce. It ran for 1,348 performances, making it an undeniable hit, but it was... Read More...
Coachella Valley is Coming Back with Gay Theater Companies Stan Jenson October 4, 2023 NOW, On Stage GROSS INDECENCY: THE THREE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE. Last year an excellent theatre company called The Bent opened in Palm Springs. It also happened to be an LGBTQ+ company. In its first year, it produced three pl... Read More...
The Fantasticks Reimagined in West Coast Premiere at CV Rep Stan Jenson October 3, 2023 Entertainment, NOW, Palm Springs Quick, can you name the longest running musical in the world? Phantom of the Opera? Les Misérables? Did someone say Cats??? Nope, you’re all wrong. The trophy goes to a simple love story called The Fantas... Read More...
Cabaret, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, The Red Suitcase all Shine ON STAGE Stan Jenson September 1, 2023 NOW, On Stage CABARET: Cabaret opened on Broadway in late 1966 and ran for 1,166 performances – at the time quite a megahit. The show featured music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff, base... Read More...
CORTEO is on its Way to Palm Springs! Stan Jenson June 12, 2023 Entertainment, NOW, Palm Springs It has always been exciting when the circus comes to town and for the last four decades, “circus” has been defined by the Canadian company Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun). I’m excited that one of the compa... Read More...
Six Wives of Henry VIII Stan Jenson April 5, 2023 NOW, On Stage HAIRSPRAY: Okay, you wouldn’t be reading this column if you didn’t have at least a passing interest in musical theatre, and if you have a passing interest in musical theatre, you’ve almost certainly seen Hairsp... Read More...
From Dolly to Sondheim Stan Jenson February 1, 2023 NOW, On Stage 9 TO 5: A couple of long-time friends accosted me recently and said, “Why haven’t you written anything about Long Beach in a while?” They were correct, so here goes: Long Beach has a number of theatres of vario... Read More...
Five quirky nuns in NUNSENSE Stan Jenson January 4, 2023 Entertainment, Los Angeles, NOW, On Stage, Palm Springs MEAN GIRLS: The original national tour of Mean Girls, the new musical, was stopped by the Pandemic. Now it’s finally coming, and I couldn’t be more excited! Mean Girls is a ferociously funny new musical from an... Read More...
A Picture of Two Boys Stan Jenson November 21, 2022 NOW, On Stage MOULIN ROUGE: All right, already. This is probably the sixth time this year I have talked about this show plus we ran a terrific photo spread of it a couple of months ago. I’ll willingly confess tha... Read More...
Jugglers, Acrobats, Aerialists, and a Wheel of Death Stan Jenson October 4, 2022 Entertainment, On Stage MAD APPLE: When Cirque du Soleil opens a new show it is quite an event because the show might play for decades. Their first Vegas production, Mystere, opened in 1993 and is still going strong(ish).&... Read More...