Our highest recommendation: If you get anywhere near Las Vegas between September 13 and October 7, head for the Rio Suites Hotel, any afternoon except Monday. My pal Ronn Lucas is doing a daytime show show there and…well, how often do you get to see the best ventriloquist working today? If you saw Ronn on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, you know how funny he is. A whole hour-or-so of him and his puppet pals is a joy forever.
We also recommend: The Reprise! series, which stages musicals for short runs with scant scenery at U.C.L.A.'s Freud Playhouse has opened a terrific version of the Sherman Edwards-Peter Stone musical, 1776. Roger Rees plays John Adams, Orson Bean (with lotsa make-up) plays Ben Franklin and the cast includes Marcia Mitzman Gavin, Thomas Ian Griffith, John Scherer, Hamilton Camp, Larry Cedar, Stuart Pankin and other splendid performers. I enjoyed it a lot but, as is often the case with these hastily-mounted productions, you wish the cast had had another week or two of rehearsal and try-outs. A friend of mine who was in one of them once told me, "We did about a dozen performances and, by the last one, everyone knew what they were doing." 1776 closes September 16.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran an interesting article about the excisions that Richard Nixon obtained in the film version of 1776. We've talked about them on this site and this piece has more info. But it's one of those links where you'll have to hurry because they'll begin charging for access to it any day now. (Ignore the Times' review of the new production of the play, by the way. Their critic knows not of what he writes; at least not this time.)