The Venturas Music

Bubbling and sparkling Sweet Charity

The origin of the play was Fellini’s 1957 film, Notte di Cabiria , starring Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina (which I thoroughly enjoyed). Neil Simon, who has won multiple Tony Awards and Emmy Awards, etc., wrote the book for this play based on Fellini’s film script. The music is by Cy Coleman with lyrics by Dorothy Fields. The star of the stage musical was Gwen Verdon, choreographer Bob Fosse’s wife. The original show opened on Broadway on Jan. 29, 1966 and closed after only 10 previews and 68 performances, but it garnered nine Tony nominations and won the Best Choreography award for Fosse. The movie version, filmed much later, starred Shirley MacLain.

The quality of dancing of the latest production was very good. (You could say I am a Fosse fan since I have seen, on Broadway, the musical Fosse at least four times with different stars, Chicago at least five times, Dancing and Pippin once, and All that Jazz plus Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Pajama Game .) The Fosse-style choreography was very good, entertaining and surprisingly good. Congratulations go to choreographer Deana Aquino. The big numbers were really show stoppers and that evening the audience cheered at the end of every one of them and gave the cast a very well-deserved thunderous round of applause at the end of the show.

To single out the performers, I would have to choose Nikki Gil (who played the lead, Charity Hope Valentine, a taxi dancer with such a positive outlook that, in spite of her bad choice in men, she thinks that things will be better in the future) as the most outstanding performer of the night. She can sing, dance and act with total ease and is beautiful. Her timing was excellent. Her energy level was very infectious since the rest of the cast was at an all time high. She played the last scene very well so that you did not leave the theater sad. Congratulations Nikki keep it up.

Good Good Good Good Vibrations at Ventura County Fair's Seaside ...

The Ventura County Fair every year offers “free” Grandstand Entertainment with your $12 paid admission to the Fair!

But even better, if you’ve had your fill of the fair and you don’t want to pay $12 just for the “free” entertainment, you can ride your bike along the beach bike trail and find a spot where you can hear the concert and even watch it on the jumbotron which is what we’ll be doing tonight for The Beach Boys concert!

You are cordially invited to join us on the sand with our picnics and our kids and our shoes off and dancing and singing loud! The concert starts at 7:30 and goes until 9 or so; we’ll ride there on our bikes between 7 and 7:30pm. The fair fireworks go off at 10pm weeknights this year so you can hang out a little longer and see the ocean light up as the fireworks reflect on it.

Today also at 1pm you can catch The Four Tops . It’s wrist band day too which means for $25 you can go on all the rides you can stomach!

Here’s the line-up of entertainment for the rest of the Ventura County Fair:

REO Speedwagon : Wednesday, August 10th, 7:30pm

Lifehouse with Toy : Thursday, August 11th, 7:30pm

Trace Adkins : Friday, August 12th, 7:30pm

Saturday is either the rodeo or speedway…

The Guinness encyclopedia of popular music. 6. Threepenny Opera - Z.Z. Top

Spoiling for a fight, third-party politics in America

CMJ New Music Report

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties, California

A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers