"Rent: The Broadway Tour" stopped in Sacramento Wednesday night, bringing a slice of New York to the Community Center Theatre. An audience of over 2,000 sang along, hollered and gave a standing ovation to the play, which featured the male leads from the original Broadway cast, Adam Pascal (as Roger Davis) and Anthony Rapp (as Mark Cohen). Led by poignant performances by Pascal and Rapp, the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama featured powerful acting, dancing and singing. Watching the play was like viewing a prototypical hip-hop song come to life, describing characters in an urban New York City neighborhood dealing with a mosaic of issues including AIDS, drugs and homelessness.

On Monday, Cosmopolitan Cabaret announced its 2010 season, the cabaret's first scheduled season with a full lineup of shows. Nov. 30, California Musical Theatre, which runs the Cosmopolitan Cabaret as well as the Music Circus and Broadway Sacramento, will begin selling tickets for the three shows making up the season. The 2010 season will begin Jan. 26 with My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra, followed by a murder-mystery non-musical play called Shear Madness and end with Suds, an upbeat love story with a 1960s top-40 soundtrack. Last September, the cabaret began its first show, Forever Plaid, as an open-ended run. It ended after a year, earlier than had been hoped. But it lasted

Sex. It's controversial today, and it has been for more than a century. That's why Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play, Spring Awakening, which has strong sexual themes and language, was not produced in the playwright's native Germany until 1906. It opened to English audiences for the first time in New York in 1917, and closed after one performance. Times have changed. The winner of eight 2007 Tony awards including "best musical" and a 2008 Grammy for "Best Musical Show Album opens Wednesday as part of California Musical Theatre's Broadway Sacramento season. Well, sort of. Spring Awakening was not offered as part of the season subscription package, because the theater's executive producer, Richar

Many of humanity's most enduring stories have been told in the simplest ways. Folk tales tell the truths of societies in ways that are outside of time, outside of specific culture, even outside of "reality" itself. But they can be true in ways that more sophisticated, contemporary stories can't hope to be. Thus, the power of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical, "Into the Woods," which opened at the Music Circus Tuesday night and runs through Sunday. First performed on Broadway in 1987 with Bernadette Peters, and revived many times since, most famously with Vanessa Williams in the role of the Witch in 2002, "Into the Woods" has aged beautifully. Under Glenn Casale's able direction

One of the longest-running Broadway shows in history, "The Lion King" started another long Sacramento run Friday night at the Community Center Theatre. This is the touring production's second run here, a five-week stay that is already nearly sold-out. Friday night's show made it clear why this is an all-time favorite. From the very start, "The Lion King" captivates, the proverbial for-kids-of-all-ages show. Director Julie Taymor's dazzling backgrounds of the African savannah translate beautifully from the source material - Disney's animated feature film - and the costumes of various animals are breathtaking in their resourcefulness and versatility. Particularly amazing are the two giraffe

Single tickets for this summer’s Music Circus shows at the Wells Fargo Pavilion at 15th and H streets will go on sale to the general public on Monday at 10 a.m. This summer’s performances of such venerable Broadway staples as Thoroughly Modern Millie, Guys and Dolls and Into the Woods continue a Sacramento tradition that’s now 58 years old. Tickets will be available by phone at (916) 557-1999, at the Wells Fargo Pavilion box office window at 1419 H St., or online at sacramentomusiccircus.com. (Ticket orders made online are processed by Tickets.com and include additional convenience charges.) Tickets are also available by phone through Tickets.com at (800) 225-2277. Tickets are $50 for T