Monday, February 7, 2022
With the worst of the pandemic hopefully in the rear view mirror, Young Artists Ensemble is back in action with another stellar introduction to children's theatre. Joseph Robinette's The Jun…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:50PM[SHARE]Monday, December 6, 2021
When producers of country music decided to try and appeal to pop audiences sixty years ago, the main recipient of this shift to a more accessible sound was Patsy Cline, a rough-and-tumble, t…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:10PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 4, 2021
It's one of the most common themes found in Broadway musicals: a culturally stagnating town is rejuvenated when an outsider arrives on the scene, affecting everyone in the process. You've se…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:57PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 17, 2021
After watching Conejo Players' production of "Baby," which plays through November 21 at the company's newly reopened theatre in Thousand Oaks, a better title for the musical might have been …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:25PM[SHARE]Monday, November 1, 2021
If you've ever worked in an office, you might be familiar with experiencing the panic of running late for an important meeting for which you are designated to play a key role. That is the pr…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:23PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 20, 2021
To show you how little importance the plot for the jukebox musical Mamma Mia! is, the printed program lists no scenes from the show, only an alphabetical checklist of the 22 songs inserted i…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 02:36PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 17, 2021
In 5-Star Theatricals' current production o Mamma Mia! the role of Sam Carmichael is played by veteran soap opera star Eric Martsolf. Although he's known to his fans mainly for the roles he'…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 07:19PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 3, 2021
On October 15, 5-Star Theatricals becomes the next theatre company to emerge from its COVID-induced hibernation with its production of the feel-good musical, Mamma Mia! Playing the central r…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 02:15PM[SHARE]Thursday, August 5, 2021
Of all elements of society hit by the pandemic, the one that got hit the hardest was the performing arts. Many theatre companies were forced to close their doors while those that managed to …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 09:48AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 1, 2021
Welcome back, regional theatre! For the past 16 months, we've been sporadically seeing a variety of virtual and drive-in plays, musicals, and revues, but it's great to get back to live, in-p…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 03:26PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 29, 2020
It's time once again for the annual "Vee-Cee" Awards, in which we honor some of the most memorable performances on Ventura County stages over the course of the past year. Because of the COVI…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 02:34PM[SHARE]Friday, March 6, 2020
In The Revolutionists, Lauren Gunderson's 2017 black comedy about four (in)famous women of the French Revolution, comedy meets tragedy in a fictionalized what-if? premise that brings to mind…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 08:13PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 1, 2020
It's hard to believe, but 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, one of the prime community theaters in Ventura County. In 1995, the center's first producti…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 04:03PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 29, 2020
An interview with David Krassner, director of Agoura High School's current production of Rent. Krassner uses his experience as an actor on Broadway and in national tours to guide young actor…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 06:59PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 27, 2020
Can a play about cancer be uplifting? That's the question posed by Margaret Edson in her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Wit, currently showing at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard. The play …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:04PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 22, 2020
Occasionally, Broadway audiences miss the target. Such is the case with It Shoulda Been You, a musical that somehow lasted less than five months before slinking off into tours and community …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:51PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 20, 2020
On Wednesday, February 26, Agoura High School's drama department, under the direction of David Krassner, will be staging the high school production of Rent, Jonathan Larson's groundbreaking …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 06:06PM[SHARE]Friday, February 14, 2020
The appeal of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which arrived in Thousand Oaks on February 13 for a four-day run, can be summed up by the comments of an elderly couple leaving the Fred Kav…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:03PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Beautiful, the musical that chronicles the life of singer/songwriter Carole King, comes to the Conejo Valley for the first time in American Theatre Guild's national tour. Many performers hav…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 08:51PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 30, 2020
The sudden death of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant on Sunday cast a pall over not just Southern California basketball fans, but people around the world who admired Bryant for his devoti…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:31PM[SHARE]Monday, January 20, 2020
Steven Dietz's play, Bloomsday, which made its debut at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard January 17, is a Twilight Zone-like story that mixes past and present, using James Joyce's novel U…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 03:28PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 18, 2020
In Finding Neverland, reality is blurred by imagination as J. M. Barrie, the creator of the characters and the original play version of Peter Pan, struggles with writer's block as he tries t…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 05:32PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 25, 2019
It's time once again for the annual "Vee-Cee" Awards, in which we honor some of the most memorable performances on Ventura County stages over the course of the past year. As I explain each y…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:57PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 24, 2019
For sheer timeless comedy, there are few plays better than The Man Who Came To Dinner, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's hilarious love letter to owlish American theater critic Alexander Woo…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 04:47PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Toward the end of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, traveling salesman Harold Hill tells Marian Paroo, "For the first time in my life, my foot got caught in the door." A few weeks ago, 5-Sta…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 03:23PM[SHARE]Friday, November 8, 2019
Bandstand is a musical that most people are not familiar with, but should be. Its plot deals with a group of musicians who come back to the U.S. after serving in World War II and finding it …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 09:18PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Good news for theater fans! Rubicon Theatre Company's current production of Big River has been extended until November 17. Its success is due in part to Beverly and Kirby Ward's evocative…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 02:34PM[SHARE]Monday, November 4, 2019
Bringing a show as expansive as Big River to the small stage of the Rubicon Theatre Company was a daunting prospect, but Kirby and Beverly Ward thrive on such problems and ended up producing…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 11:20PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 31, 2019
There is one word that best describes the motivation of the two main characters in the 1985 musical Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The word is "freedom." Both Huckleberry Fin…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 07:32PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 29, 2019
In this first of three features on the Rubicon Theatre Company's production of Big River, co-producers/directors Beverly and Kirby Ward discuss their vision for bringing the Tony Award-winni…
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 12:18PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 24, 2019
Every so often an actor emerges who is what I call a "five-tool-player," a term borrowed from baseball, describing someone who can run, hit, field, throw, and hit for power. In the theater, …
SOURCE: vconstage.com at 01:06PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
