Characters

Melissa Meyer walked past a pair of rabid rats and into a spinning tunnel. Unfazed, she stepped out onto a swirling yellow- and red-brick pathway leading into a dark entryway. ?This is what would have happened if Dorothy had gone down the red brick road,? Meyer said. The setup is part of the haunted house experience Meyer ? along with family and friends ? has been working on since August. A twist of the classic story of Dorothy?s homeward adventure down the yellow brick road, the stand-alone structure that currently occupies the Meyers?

I just finished reading "Intwine," Burbank author Christina Moss' debut novel, and for the life of me I cannot tell if I loved or hated it. "Intwine" tells the story of Juliette Greenmoss, a Burbank resident whose life is flipped upside-down when she falls in love with an interstellar rock-star prince named Seth. Think "Twilight," but with aliens. Moss calls the genre "young adult science fiction romance. " Like many others, I'm personally sick of seeing vampires everywhere, but instead of being a departure from the zeitgeist, forbidden alien love feels like more of the same.

Gobs of sentiment Matt Verboys of Glendale works as a researcher for a television company. Put "one good turn deserves another" into action and the world becomes a better place. "Pay it Forward" force-feeds this message with gobs of sentiment and TV movie-ish contrivances. But it's all so earnestly executed, its heart worn so proudly on its sleeve, only the Grinch could hate it. After goofy actioners like "The Peacemaker" and "Deep Impact," director Mimi Leder thankfully re-discovers her flair for character-driven drama that she cultivated during her "ER" days.

Amy Dominguez, Enjoy! GLENDALE -- The Glendale Centre Theatre is known for great children's productions, especially for captivating adaptations of classic fairy tales. But its production of "The Princess and the Pea" is not the theater's usual dynamic effort. The singing is weak, the acting average, and the adaptation left laughter behind. However, children will still enjoy the familiarity of the story and the goofy antics of some of the characters.

To children it was a popular comic strip, but to adults Li'l Abner was cutting-edge political satire. In 1956, "Li'l Abner" achieved a long run on Broadway playing 693 performances. Musical Theatre Guild is celebrating the musical comedy/political satire's 50th anniversary with a series of three productions in Southern California. One of the stops for the traveling company is on Monday at Glendale's Alex Theatre. The stage musical, which was made into a film in 1959, is based on the hillbilly characters who inhabit the city of Dogpatch from Al Capp's comic strip, which enjoyed a 43-year run that started in 1934.

Two local filmmakers have a vision for an animated film loosely based on Armenian legends, but just making a trailer to sell it to prospective investors will be a financial stretch for them. So two local artists are helping them raise money. Hayasa Pictures' director Hayk Manukyan, of Burbank, and Glendale producer Henri Hovhanessyan want to produce "David of Sassoon." The filmmakers have received donations of about $10,000 to begin production on the trailer, but need $40,000 more to complete it, they said.

“Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks,” currently at Burbank’s Falcon Theatre, could as easily have been named “Six Sermons in Six Weeks.” It’s hard to relate to characters so intent on preaching to us, without giving us a little space to like them first. It’s not the fault of the show’s two first-rate performers. Constance Towers is perfect as Lily — regal, cool and lovely. Jason Graae is great as Michael — a rude, foul-mouthed, gay, former chorus boy with a heart of gold.

Glendale resident Sevak Ohanian recreates the problems of growing up in an Armenian American family in his new film ?My Big Fat Armenian Family? but adds a twist of humor. The film, which will premiere July 12 and 18 at Glendale High School, tells the story of a family of four ? a father, mother, son and daughter. The son can?t seem to do anything right in his father?s eyes, and there is a constant air of friction between them. The parents, Robert and Rima, are played by one man, Ajmin Baghramian, Ohanian said.

There is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when two people are seated side-by-side, traveling together. There's no logical explanation for it, but humans tend to speak openly and meaningfully to complete strangers on airplanes, and perhaps more so on longer train rides. Such is the premise, at least, in a new play at the Alliance Theater in Burbank titled "Westward Expansion." Playwright and teen-novel author Cecil Castellucci has used the clever device of having two such conversations go on at the same time.