City of Angels

City of Angels is the rarest of musical comedies; one that is not only loaded with music and written in the contemporary jazz idiom, but also filled with sidesplitting comedy. Set in the glamorous, seductive Hollywood of the 40’s, a world of film studios and flimsy negliges, the show chronicles the misadventures of Stine, a young novelist, attempting a screenplay for movie producer/director Buddy Fidler.

While Fidler professes to be a fan of Stine’s work, his gargantuan ego forces Stine to make endless compromises in the script he’s writing. The script is an adaptation of one of Stine’s novels, which features his Raymond Chandleresque hero, a private investigator named Stone.

Each movie scene that Stine writes is acted out on-stage by a group of characters whose costumes are limited to various shades of black and white. The same is true of the sets in which they appear and the props that they use. With music scored in the genre, we are, treated to a live version of a 1940’s private eye film. It is a tale of decadence and homicide, with a liberal sprinkling of femme fatale.