Author Archive
SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO MOTOWN
Sunday, December 13th, 2015
The Troubadour Theater Company is back at the Falcon Theatre for their once-a-year Christmas fun fest, a reprise of the smash 2004 hit Santa Claus Is Coming To Motown, and though I only counted two actual Motown songs (plus a brief medley) amongst Santa’s dozen or more R&B/soul hits, the Troubies’ latest annual year-end offering remains a hilarious holiday treat.
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DNA
Friday, December 11th, 2015
The attempt by a group of high-school students to cover up the not-quite-accidental death of a bullied classmate makes for dramatic fireworks and multiple unexpected turns in Dennis Kelly’s twisted black comedy DNA, a largely impressive first production from Red Cup Theatre Company.
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PETER PAN AND TINKER BELL – A PIRATES CHRISTMAS
Friday, December 11th, 2015RECOMMENDED
The distinctively English form of musical entertainment known as Panto is back for its fourth annual visit to the Pasadena Playhouse as Lithgoe Family Productions bring Southland audiences their delightfully performed and choreographed Peter Pan And Tinker Bell – A Pirates Christmas, a surefire child-pleaser, albeit one less likely than pantos past to attract audiences thirteen and older.
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CASH ON DELIVERY
Monday, December 7th, 2015
The words “Oh what a tangled web we weave” have rarely been truer than they are about out-of-work landlord Eric Swan, whose multiple attempts to deceive the British Department Of Social Security are about to be found out in Michael Cooney’s side-splitting farce Cash On Delivery, now getting a sensationally performed big-stage revival at the El Portal Theatre, directed by (and co-starring) none other than Cooney’s celebrated playwright dad Ray.
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A VERY DIE HARD CHRISTMAS
Sunday, December 6th, 2015
One of America’s most beloved holiday movie classics is back … and live on stage in Theatre Unleashed’s West Coast Premiere of Josh Carson’s A Very Die Hard Christmas, the Bruce Willis megasmash as seen through a Saturday Night Live lens, with puppets and songs thrown in for hilarious measure.
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GUYS AND DOLLS
Sunday, December 6th, 2015
“Fresh” and “new” are probably not the first words that spring to mind when you think about the 65-year-old Broadway classic Guys And Dolls, that is unless the Guys And Dolls you’re thinking about is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival revival now wowing audiences at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts.
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RIO HONDO
Saturday, December 5th, 2015
Earlier this year in their brilliantly spoofy Entropy, playwright Bill Robens and Theatre Of NOTE managed somehow to stage a gazillion-dollar Hollywood space-travel epic inside a 40something-seat theater. Robens and NOTE now work the same magic on that most American of movie genres—the Western—in their World Premiere comedy Rio Hondo, to my knowledge the very first L.A. theater production presented “in CinemaStage” and one that no horse opera lover will want to miss.
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PERFECT TIMING
Thursday, December 3rd, 2015
Audiences in search of a perfectly marvelous time at the theater could hardly make a more perfect choice than the latest from Theatre 40, Kristi Kane’s Perfect Timing, a play so perfectly delightful that you’d expect it had run a decade or more on London’s West End and not a mere six months in Van Nuys way back in the mid-80s before fading into unjust obscurity.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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