Old Globe Theater San Diego

BACKSTAGE: 'American Idol' in town looking for singers

This week, more than 50,000 aspiring "idols" will converge on Petco Park to take a shot at auditioning for Fox television's "American Idol" contest.

This is the second time "Idol" producers have held auditions in San Diego. While the local auditions have failed to produce a winner yet in the 10-year-old singing contest, San Diego did produce one of the series' best-known finalists ---- 2009 runner-up Adam Lambert, who grew up in Rancho Penasquitos and graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in 2000.

Preliminary auditions were held Wednesday, semifinals are today and the finalists will go before the celebrity judge panel on Friday.

La Jolla's Bird Rock neighborhood is the setting for the 26th season of MTV's "The Real World," the reality series that places seven unchaperoned, college-age men and women in a house together with cameras rolling (heavy drinking, fighting and hookups are hallmarks of the show). In recent television interviews, residents of the quiet, residential Bird Rock area have expressed dismay about the disruption the show is likely to cause. In past "Real World" series, fans of the top-rated show have congregated around the homes in hopes of meeting the reality television stars.

The show will premiere at 10 p.m. Wednesdays sometime this fall.

MiraCosta College's music department will host a fundraiser Saturday for one of its own, music professor Branden Muresan , whose wife Kimberly was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. To help the family raise money for mounting medical bills, a number of MiraCosta music ensembles will perform a benefit concert at 6 p.m. Saturday. On the bill are the MiraCosta College Orchestra, a jazz combo, klezmer band, Brazilian guitar group and individual performers. There will also be a silent auction. The concert takes place in the new Concert Hall (Building 2400) at MiraCosta College, 1 Barnard Drive in Oceanside. Although there is no cover charge, donations will be accepted at the door. Call 760-434-7466.

The San Diego Children's Discovery Museum announced Monday it plans to move to a new building a block east of its current location at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido.

The 10-year-old museum, formerly known as the Escondido Children's Museum, will relocate to a city-owned building at 320 Broadway, which is across the street from Grape Day Park. The new location will allow the museum to expand, with 6,000 square feet of interior space and another 6,000 square feet of outdoor space for a children's garden and exhibits.

Out West Arts: Fairy Tail

With its relatively few props and empty stage. Right from the beginning he creates perhaps one of the most exciting shipwrecks I’ve seen in this play with nothing more than some light blue parachute material, basic percussion and his cast. His sinking sailors flap their own costumes in the wind of the make believe storm in a way that references period practices in a modern way. This instinct for theatricality remains throughout with the cast providing much of their own artifice in a play at its very heart about magic. At the center of the show is Miles Anderson’s Prospero, who remains at all times somewhat above the fray going on around him. In this production, Prospero often seems on an even footing with Ariel played here by Ben Diskant. I’ve seen a lot of Ariels in my time and Diskant is certainly the most ripped abs-wise I’ve come across. And when he appears winged with his blue mane standing on end there is no doubt about the fear he can manage to conjure up in the hearts of Prospero’s targets. The other standouts in the production were the comic pairing of Adrian Spark’s Stephano and John Cariani’s Trinculo whose drunken carousing provides the counterpoint to the play. The play itself call for music, so employing a composer is always seen as a good idea. The Old Globe brought in Shaun Davey to write music for the songs in the text as well as a few additional pieces at other points in the show. It’s atmospheric and provides needed structure for scenes such as the masque in Act IV, which in Noble’s version is conducted by a trio of puppets maneuvered by the members of the cast acting as island spirits. As with Much Ado About Nothing, sometimes the vocal and musical abilities of the cast didn’t quite live up to the music they were given to perform, but the cast was invested in those aspects of the performance throughout as well. I also wanted at times a bit more edge to the proceedings. Prospero comes off as more as kindly grandfather than a usurped nobleman. Meanwhile the tortured Caliban is more of a comic inept conspirator than a vengeful enemy of Prospero. And the ending of the show is awash in a squishy, feel-good air sprinkled with perhaps a bit more fairy dust than is necessary, ending with a valedictory song and the cast entering the audience to shake hands before returning to the stage like it was a Unitarian service.