ENTERTAINMENT
February 20, 1991 | JAMES SCARBOROUGH, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
To director Sheryl Donchey's credit, her treatment of "Guys and Dolls" at Rancho Santiago College leaves this classic in recognizable form. It's not that the Frank Loesser musical is shoddily done by the college's Professional Actors Conservatory. The stage is fixed up in a Cubist style that serves to excite the eye in a confetti swirl of color and silhouetted forms. This effectively captures the vibrancy of a crowded city street scene.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 25, 1993 | T.H. McCULLOH, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Craig Lucas' "Prelude to a Kiss" is a story play rather than a play based on character. Actually it's a sort of modern fairy tale, simple in its structure and in its approach to its subject of one personality accidentally switching bodies with another and their struggle to effect a return trip. The play's value depends on how much depth and color the actors in the central roles add to the sketchy forms Lucas has given them.
ENTERTAINMENT
August 3, 1999 | T.H. McCULLOH, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Stephen Sondheim's 1962 "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" is a pseudo-bawdy affair, based on a lot of early stories of licentiousness in the ancient world, and it has always seemed a little thrown together at the last minute. In fact, the opening number, "Comedy Tonight" was thrown in at the last minute before its Broadway opening.
ENTERTAINMENT
October 14, 1993 | JAN HERMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Anybody expecting to meet Lady Di and Prince Charles in "The Royal Family," at Rancho Santiago College's Phillips Hall Theatre through Sunday, should be advised: The royalty in this grandiose comedy of theatrical manners are the Cavendishes, a family of New York actors originally conceived as a sendup of the Barrymores. Written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, the play premiered on Broadway in 1927, despite the threat of a legal suit by Ethel Barrymore, who took offense at being spoofed.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 11, 1995 | ROBERT KOEHLER, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Richard Harris' "Stepping Out" is one of those vehicles perfectly suited to a young, spunky theater group that wants to hop on board and take us on a ride somewhere. The ride is amusingly bumpy in director-choreographer Sheryl Donchey's staging (assisted by Robert G. Leigh) at Rancho Santiago College. Harris' play, about tap dancing as an escape from life's miseries, is at its best in the least "professional" setting.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 21, 1986 | CHALON SMITH
Rancho Santiago College has staged a sexy and playful "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," Stephen Sondheim's farcical ode to hedonism in ancient Rome. Director Sheryl Donchey emphasizes the bawdy in this 1962 musical, peopling it with bikini-clad courtesans, grubbing procurers, salacious noblemen and sly, opportunistic slaves. The lines are heavy with double-entendres, and the sight gags feature a fair amount of groping and shimmying.