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W E E K L Y
February 13, 2019 Vol. 14 No. 13
The McCallum Theatre
Image courtesy of The McCallum Theatre By Pamela Price The McCallum Theatre welcomes spring with a stunning array of performances from Catskills on Broadway starring Freddie Roman and The Letterman to Rhapsody in Blue and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. The diversity is dynamic with a rainbow of entertainers that catering to all tastes. Joshua Bell, pianist
performance with San Hayward, pianist on Feb. 4 kept the audience in rapt attention with a program of that began with Brahms and concluded with Prokofiev. That’s the proverbial tip of the musical iceberg. Fans of mid-century music will find The Letterman (yes, they still wear ‘letter sweaters’) have one performance only on February 24th; for the record, there first hit in 1661,
“The Way You Look Tonight” has endured, like all of through several generations. If you’re still in that mid-century time warp, grab tickets for Neill Berg’s Fifty Years of Rock & Roll, March 5 and 6. This nostalgic look back to Broadway’s greatest rock musicals relives the era of legends from Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry to Stevie Wonder and The Beach Boys. On to The Desert
By Desert Star Staff Sunny Thompson is a singer/actress/ recording artist best known for her award-winning one-woman portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in the long-running play with music, “Marilyn Forever Blonde.” Sunny performed the play for a decade, more than 700 performances, from the West End in London to Auckland, New Zealand, while crisscrossing the United States and Canada many times over. Sunny finally retired
the role in 2017 by saying “I can’t play 36 forever!” “I wasn’t a big Marilyn fan before I started playing her onstage,” said Sunny, “but after spending more than ten years saying her words on stage, night after night, helped me understand the difficult life she led and why so many people love her so much! Performing a one-woman play about someone so lonely and desperate to be loved showed me how lucky I am to have a husband and a family to love
and support me. I feel like I’ve become incredibly close to Marilyn Monroe over the years and it’s ironic that I am getting a star on The Palm Springs Walk of Stars right next to Marilyn. I hope she knows how much I love her!” The London Times said Sunny as Marilyn Monroe was, “Astonishing! Seldom do you see something so authentic!” The Boston Globe said Sunny was “Breathtaking! Picture
Actress Sunny Thompson added to Palm Springs “Walk of the Stars.”
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Symphony’s “Pops Concerts“ now in its 30th season. There is still time to reserve seats for John Mueller’s Winter Dance Party, a tribute to The Big Bopper, Richie Valens and Buddy Holly, An Evening with Matthew Morrison, March 21st and their final performance for this season, Big Band Broadway Starring Debbie Gravitte, April 11. The Palm Springs Friends
of the Philharmonic 20182019 series concludes their season with The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, April 2 with my personal favorite, Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Thomas Sondergard, conductor. For the complete schedule www,mccallumtheatre. com. Box Office hours Monday -Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., 760-340-2787.