Northwestern Press

Barry Glassman has played iconic roles in Lehigh Valley regional theater on stage and offstage.

On stage, he’s played the nasty but redemptive soul, Scrooge, nine times in “A Christmas Carol”; Roy Cohn, the disgraced and presumably not so redemptive Atty. Roy Cohn, twice in “Angels in America”; the irascible but charming Morrie in “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and the glum but wise Norman in “On Golden Pond,” all at Civic Theatre of Allentown.

It’s good to revisit the classics of theater. “Amadeus,” written by Peter Shaffer, is certainly a classic.

The Northampton Community College Theatre production of “Amadeus,” through Oct. 23, Lipkin Theatre, Green Pond Campus, Bethlehem Township, merits revisiting for several reasons.

The production of “Amadeus,” which opens the NCC Theatre 2019-2020 season, is beautifully-directed by William Mutimer with several commendable performances by students and a veteran Lehigh Valley regional theater performer.

“Sunset Boulevard” is a storied and legendary place, the proverbial street of dreams, brought to the stage in the perfect venue, Nineteenth Street Theatre, Allentown, where the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has its Lehigh Valley debut through Oct. 27 to open Civic Theatre of Allentown’s 2019-2020 season.

It’s a jewel of a show in a jewel of a venue.

It’s a grand performance in a grand setting.

“Sunset Boulevard” is a storied and legendary place, the proverbial street of dreams, brought to the stage in the perfect venue, Nineteenth Street Theatre, Allentown, where the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has its Lehigh Valley debut through Oct. 27 to open Civic Theatre of Allentown’s 2019-2020 season.

It’s a jewel of a show in a jewel of a venue.

It’s a grand performance in a grand setting.

“Judy” is a marvelous and complex biographical portrait of movie icon and pop singer Judy Garland.

The movie is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Judy Garland, best-known for her starring role as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) and her rendition in that movie of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a song with which she would always be identified.

Garland, born Frances Ethel Gumm, June 10, 1922, died at age 47 on June 22, 1969, in London from an apparent accidental barbiturate overdose.

“Mamma Mia!” is one of those fun musicals: serious, but not too serious, frivolous, but not too frivolous, and nearly all-singing and all-dancing, from beginning to end.

It’s fun in the sense that the stage musicals “Hairspray” (2003) and “Bye Bye Birdie” (1960) are fun. You can’t help but get caught up and depart with a smile on your face.

Munopco Music Theatre’s production of “Mamma Mia!,” in its Lehigh Valley community theater debut, through Oct. 20 at Scottish Rite Cathedral, Allentown, opens Munopco’s 2019-2020 season.

When “Mamma Mia” became available for community theaters to stage, Rody Gilkeson didn’t waste any time helping to secure the rights to be the first in the Lehigh Valley to direct it.

“When ‘Mamma Mia!’ got released, Munopco grabbed it because it’s an extremely popular show,” says Gilkeson.

“Once it got released for community theater two years ago, if you were in an area where the national tour was going through, you had to wait.

The Lehigh Valley is ready for its close-up of “Sunset Boulevard” when the musical makes is Lehigh Valley premiere, Oct. 11-27, Civic Theatre of Allentown.

Sunset Boulevard stretches 21 miles from Figueroa Avenue in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Palisades.

It makes a beeline through Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel-Air and Brentwood before descending with often wicked curves to Pacific Palisades and dead-ends at the Pacific Coast Highway.

Everybody has a Linda in their life.

For many of a certain age, there was Linda Ronstadt, whose voice soared across the Top 40 radio airwaves as lead singer for The Stone Ponys’ “Different Drum,” a song written by Mike Nesmith of The Monkees, that went to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1967.

The movie, “Downton Abbey,” is the comfort food of cinema, albeit fine dining.

The big-screen version of “Downton Abbey,” the popular BBC television series (2010-2015) seen on PBS stations in the United States can be enjoyed by non-fans and especially by fans.