Take
your favorite numbers from successful musicals, use them as the songs for a
contemporary love story and voila! You’ll have a musical of your own. Wrong. It
doesn’t work that way. The dynamic songs from Jekyll & Hyde, Cats, Les Miserables,
Sunset Boulevard, and others, will drown out a tepid book with their passion and
power. However, all the performers chosen to act out this modern love story are
powerful singers and actors who are clearly ready and able to perform in these
chosen musicals.
 |
| Cynthia Caldwell |
 |
| Jonathan Colunga |
The
love story by Randall Gray, who also directs, concerns a former Broadway star
moving to Hollywood with her son, her meeting a famous film director with a
daughter, the two love affairs that ensue and the question of what we sacrifice
for a career. It’s a simple and familiar tale that requires songs to match not
show stoppers such as these.
Forget
the loose thread that tries to make sense of these marvelous songs. They stand
alone, starting with Cynthia Caldwell’s beautiful rendition of Memory, through Jonathan Colunga’s
dynamic Sunset Boulevard, and then
his raging duet with Beth Goldberg in It’s
A Dangerous Game. Then enjoy Courtney Daniels and Michael Marchak’s delicate
love duet, The Last Night of the World, and
be challenged fore and aft with the entire company dramatically facing us in
full voice with the rousing Façade.
 |
| Courtney Daniels |
 |
| Michael Marchak |
Presented
by Stages of Gray Theatre Company, and produced by Mike Abramson, with superb musical
direction by Denise Fuller. At Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd, Los
Angeles. Through August 24.
 |
| Beth Goldberg |
Tickets: (323) 960-7776 or online at www.plays411.com/HollywoodFacade
No comments:
Post a Comment