The La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts is a lovely theater that puts on very good shows. I like everything about it except its location which is too damn close to Disneyland for the traffic to not be a big drawback. Still, I may try to get down there before October 13 to see their latest offering, the musical of the movie Grumpy Old Men.
This a musical that has yet to make it to Broadway. Maybe it will and maybe it won't. It pops up in regional productions here and there and will probably continue to do so until someone with bottomless pockets decides it's ready for the big time. It has a book by Dan Remmes and music by Neil Berg…and no disrespect to those gents but what interests me is that the songs have lyrics by my pal, the late Nick Meglin.
Nick, after he retired as editor of MAD magazine, worked long and hard on this show and it's very, very sad that he left us, especially when he was but a few months from seeing it actually produced in an actual theater with actual actors. The actual actors in this production include Hal Linden, Cathy Rigby and Ken Page. See? Here they are in a piece of its advertising artwork…
I wasn't particularly a fan of the movie on which it's based but I'm a fan of those three performers. And of course, I'm a fan of Nick's. Traffic or no traffic, I would certainly drive down there to have another lunch with him.