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“RAIN” at The Old Globe

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Aired on KSDS-FM on 4/8/16 RUN DATES: 3/24/16 - 5/1/16 VENUE: The Old Globe In adapting a piece of literature, there’s an obligation to maintain the spirit of the original. W. Somerset Maugham’s riveting 1921 short story, “Rain” (originally titled “Miss Thompson”), has certainly provided fertile ground for adapters: three films, and an aborted musical, called “Sadie Thompson,” created in 1944 with Ethel Merman in mind. Now, along come composer/lyricist Michael John La Chiusa and librettist Sybille Pearson, with a Read More →

“curtain Calls” #208

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By Pat Launer www.sdtheatrescene.com 08/31/07 Time is slippery in this week’s plays; Forward and backward, in ways that amaze. So Come Back, Jimmy Dean, through Communicating Doors; Isaac ’s online, set to even some scores. Read More →

Review: “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

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PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 8/11/15 Sedaka Songs go Catskills: Premiere Productions’ “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” My grandmother is rolling in her grave. Premiere Productions is doing a show set in the Catskills, circa 1960, with a main character who’s a classic Borscht Belt comic. Both onstage and offstage, characters have blatantly Jewish names, and some are written in obvious New York/Jewish dialect. Yiddishisms punctuate the dialogue. The two leading ladies, one smart but klutzy, the other Read More →

“OUR LADY OF KIBEHO” at Moxie Theatre

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Aired on KSDS-FM on 5/13/16 RUN DATES: 5/1/16 - 5/29/16 VENUE: Moxie Theatre It wasn’t all that long ago that Moxie Theatre staged a play about young girls who have visions, and go into trances, and get accused of being witches. That drama, presented 18 months ago, was “Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World,” which takes place ten years after the Salem witch trials in the 1700s. Now comes the West coast premiere of “Our Lady of Read More →

“RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN” at San Diego Repertory Theatre

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Aired on KSDS-FM on RUN DATES: 4/21/16 - 5/15/16 VENUE: San Diego Repertory Theatre Freud wasn’t the first to ask the question, but he may be the most quoted: What do women want? Eighty years later, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Gina Gionfriddo is confronting the same question – with a feminine spin, but not much more of a definitive answer. “Rapture, Blister, Burn,” her 2012 comic drama, gives us four females, three generations, and tons of conundrums, like ‘What Read More →

“9 TO 5” at San Diego Musical Theatre

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Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 2/18/17 RUN DATES: 2/10/17 - 2/26/17 VENUE: San Diego Musical Theatre at the Spreckels Theatre There probably isn’t a Working Stiff alive who hasn’t, at one time or another, had a Boss Revenge Fantasy. The 1980 movie, “9 to 5,” took that fancy to the ultimate extreme – and threw in female empowerment, to boot. Many people have a warm, fuzzy, nostalgic recollection of the film. But having just seen it again, despite its Read More →