Lewis Wilkenfeld News

Jukebox musical featuring Elvis Presley catalog is refreshing, funny, and has some of the most energetic, stellar choreography of the year.

Musical Theatre West's (MTW) Reiner Staged Reading Series (RRS) returns for its final season, with its premiere performance of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Pipe Dream, Sunday, September 17, 7pm at the Beverly O'Neill Theater, located at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center.  Tickets are now on sale online at www.musical.org, by visiting the MTW West Ticket Office, or by calling (562) 856-1999, ext. 4.  Advance general admission tickets for each performance are $27.  Seating is general admission with early admission for season subscribers.  Season subscriptions for all five Reiner Staged Reading Series performances are available for $140.  This season's lineup includes Once Upon a Mattress (Sunday, November 17, 2017), Louisiana Purchase (Sunday, February 11, 2018), Do Re Mi (Sunday, June 3, 2018), and The Most Happy Fella (Sunday, August 19, 2018). 

Cabrillo Music Theatre Changes Its Name To 5 Star Theatricals

Loosely patterned after 'an audition process', this 11th annual fully produced event is geared to discovering new talent between the ages of 18 and 32 for the musical theatre stage. This year once again the contest is generously sponsored/presented by Princess Cruises. As has become the standard, approximately 20 contestants compete for the title, a $2500 cash prize, a headlining engagement at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal during the New Year, professional representation in the business of  musical theatre, and other valuable prizes. To date, over a dozen former contestants have already made their Broadway and/or Off-Broadway debuts; while nearly another 100 have either starred in Broadway U.S. National Tours; Regional U.S. Musical Theatre productions; Las Vegas Hotel sit-downs of Broadway Musicals; on board in lavish production shows presented by some of the world's most prestigious cruise lines; or have starred on stages at numerous Southern California Theme Parks such as Disneyland's California Adventure and Lego Land. Internationally, Tokyo Disney is also host to Stage Star talent. 

After a relaunch of the company, Cabrillo Music Theatre's Board of Directors proudly announces new staff and board leadership, and a relaunched 2016-2017 season of shows.   The new season features three Cabrillo shows, all in the 1800-seat Kavli Theatre, with two Cabrillo debuts and one classic favorite not seen in nearly 15 years.  All of Cabrillo's productions are locally produced, auditioned and rehearsed in Southern California, and performed exclusively at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, August 6, 2016, at 6:30pm at Conejo Players Theatre -- located at 351 South Moorpark Road, Thousand Oaks, CA, 91361. There will be a champagne dessert reception immediately following; additionally, guests are encouraged to stay for that evening's hilarious Conejo Improv Players performance at 8:00pm.

When The Little Mermaid was released in 1989, it not only became one of the most popular Disney films to date, it was also the very first animated musical to use Broadway composers for its music - changing the direction of animated movies forever. Now Cabrillo Music Theatre brings this amazing story to life with The Little Mermaid, live on stage! This is not simply a children's show - it's a brand-new fully-developed Broadway musical, in the spirit of Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Mary Poppins, and Cabrillo Music Theatre's production will be the first in the region!

Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID opens today, July 15th, 2016, playing until Sunday, July 24th, 2016 at the 1,800-seat Kavli Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, located at 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. BroadwayWorld has a sneak peek at the stars in costume below!

Now Cabrillo Music Theatre brings this amazing story to life with THE LITTLE MERMAID, live on stage! This is not simply a children's show - it's a brand-new fully-developed Broadway musical, in the spirit of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE LION KING, and MARY POPPINS, and Cabrillo Music Theatre's production will be the first in the region!

One important and valuable aspect of Cabrillo Music Theatre's long tenure in Ventura County is its devotion to casting talented young local performers in as many of its productions as it can. Cabrillo's casts are usually laden with a mix of professional Equity lead performers, local and regional talent from Southern California (and sometimes elsewhere), but especially home-grown youngsters. We spoke with two of the latter during a rehearsal session recently, Lyrissa Leininger, 16, and Michael Kennedy, 19, who have already gotten their feet wet (an appropriate pre-requisite for The Little Mermaid!) in a number of Cabrillo productions.

Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID opens on Friday, July 15th, 2016, playing until Sunday, July 24th, 2016 at the 1,800-seat Kavli Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, located at 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. BroadwayWorld has a sneak peek at the stars in costume below!

Larry Raben is an accomplished actor and director who has added his prodigious abilities to a multitude of productions around the world. In addition to acting in a command performance before Queen Elizabeth II in London and producing Sweet Charity in Argentina, Raben has also graced Cabrillo Music Theatre's stages in productions of Singin' in the Rain, The Producers, and, most recently, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Raben is directing Cabrillo's summer offering this year, Disney's The Little Mermaid, which will prove to be the final production overseen by Cabrillo's longtime artistic director, Lewis Wilkenfeld. We talked with Larry not only about his plans for the show, one of Cabrillo's most challenging and ambitious productions, but also about working with the indefatigable Wilkenfeld.

As the day grows closer, more local businesses are lining up to partner with Cabrillo Music Theatre's PART OF OUR WORLD!  This free, family-friendly event, a collaboration between Cabrillo Music Theatre, PawWorks.Org, and Sheroes Entertainment, LLC, provides an afternoon of fun, adventure and music, as well as an opportunity to learn about animal adoption - and maybe even take home a new family member!   PART OF OUR WORLD takes place on Saturday, June 11th, from 1:00PM to 4:00PM, in Carpenter Park, directly outside Cabrillo Music Theatre's home venue, the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. 

Today, the Nederlander Organization and Hollywood Pantages Theatre announced the nominees for THE 5TH ANNUAL JERRY HERMAN AWARDS, a celebration of the achievement and excellence in high school musical theatre in Los Angeles.

Now Cabrillo Music Theatre brings this amazing story to life with THE LITTLE MERMAID, live on stage! This is not simply a children's show - it's a brand-new fully-developed Broadway musical, in the spirit of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE LION KING, and MARY POPPINS, and Cabrillo Music Theatre's production will be the first in the region!

Musical Theatre Guild, the winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critic's Circle Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in the theatre, will conclude their 20th Anniversary Season with the classic Broadway musical THE PAJAMA GAME.  The one-night-only concert will take place at Glendale's historic Alex Theatre on Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 7:00 PM.

With the angst over the immediate future of Cabrillo Music Theatre finally receding into the background, it's time to focus once again on what is happening on the Cabrillo stage. Its current production of Children of Eden, which made its debut last night at the Fred Kavli Theatre, proves how indispensable Cabrillo continues to be to the arts in this community. The high production values, sensitive direction, superlative casting, and, yes, insistence on live musicians in the pit, have made Cabrillo a consistently professional theater company in Ventura County for more than two decades, a streak that, thanks to some Frank Merriwell heroics by anonymous donors, will continue on for the time being.

Before his retelling of the Witches of Oz in WICKED, composer Stephen Schwartz took on a contemporary retelling of some of the most popular Biblical tales known to Man. CHILDREN OF EDEN uses these stories and characters to strike a universal chord in all of us. Beautiful music, story, humor, and imagery remind us of Spring, filled with new life bursting all around. CHILDREN OF EDEN opens today, April 8th, 2016, playing until Sunday, April 17th, 2016 at the 1,800-seat Kavli Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, located at 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks.

At the beginning of Act II of Ragtime, Terrence McNally's masterful musical adaptation of E. L. Doctorow's novel, journeyman pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr., decimated by the murder of his beloved Sarah, sings, 'Say goodbye to music / Say goodbye to light.' This sums up my feelings about Theater League's production of Ragtime, which arrived for a brief four-day stay at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on Thursday night. The original 1998 Broadway production won a Tony Award for Best Score, but many patrons who packed the Fred Kavli Theatre on opening night were dismayed to discover that Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's sumptuous, moving songs were being played from pre-recorded synthesized music tracks. Despite superb performances from the entire cast, Theater League's Ragtime suffers greatly from this omission, which was apparently a decision of Phoenix Entertainment, the independent theatrical producing and management enterprise in charge of producing the show.

Before his retelling of the Witches of Oz in WICKED, composer Stephen Schwartz took on a contemporary retelling of some of the most popular Biblical tales known to Man. CHILDREN OF EDEN uses these stories and characters to strike a universal chord in all of us. Beautiful music, story, humor, and imagery remind us of Spring, filled with new life bursting all around. CHILDREN OF EDEN opens on Friday, April 8th, 2016, playing until Sunday, April 17th, 2016 at the 1,800-seat Kavli Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, located at 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks.