Author Archive
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
Woody Allen is back on screen—and better than ever—in his critically acclaimed box-office smash Midnight In Paris, making the Morgan-Wixson Theatre’s decision to program one of Allen’s earliest hits as part of their 2011-12 season a stroke of prescient genius. That Morgan-Wixson’s staging of Play It Again Sam, Allen’s late-1960s comedy about a Humphrey Bogart-obsessed nebbish, turns out to be quite a gem of a production is icing on the cake.
(read more)
THE 39 STEPS
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
A quarter century before Cary Grant found himself pursued across the United States by enemy spies mistakenly believing him to be a CIA agent in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller North By Northwest, a young man named Richard Hannay wound up in similar straits in The 39 Steps, one of the master of the suspense’s earliest hits, and one whose now iconic sequences include a train-top chase leading to Hannay’s daredevil jump onto the Forth Bridge, a seemingly fatal shooting of our hero midway through, hero handcuffed to Hitchcock Blonde heroine as he searches for a villain recognizable only by the missing top joint on one of his fingers, and a very public climactic scene at the London Palladium, much like the one Hitchcock later filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in The Man Who Knew Too Much.
(read more)
THE WATER’S EDGE
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
A man’s return visit to the wife and children he left behind seventeen years ago yields unexpected consequences in The Water’s Edge, Theresa Rebeck’s gripping family drama (with a twist), now getting a sensational Los Angeles Premiere at North Hollywood’s The Road Theatre under the inspired direction of Sam Anderson.
(read more)
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE
Friday, January 20th, 2012
The Tony-winning 2006 Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone proves the best possible showcase for more than twenty talented USC undergrads (and audiences lucky enough to catch it during its sold-out six-performance run through Sunday).
(read more)
OUR TOWN
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Rare is the theatergoer who has not seen at least one, if not half a dozen productions of Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s classic bit of Americana that first astonished audiences in 1938 with its innovative storytelling, even as it told a story as old as time itself—a story of birth, and life, and love, and death.
(read more)
LONESOME TRAVELER
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
There’s a hootenanny down yonder in Laguna Beach these days as the Laguna Playhouse presents the Rubicon Theatre production of Lonesome Traveler, a nostalgic trip down folk music memory lane, from the early part of the 20th Century to the mid-‘1960s, when the screeches of Bob Dylan’s electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival signaled the end of an era.
(read more)
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
Monday, January 16th, 2012
Emmy-winning writer JP Miller examines the devastation wrought by alcoholism on a young couple’s marriage in his best-known work, Days Of Wine And Roses, now being revived to powerful effect at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2026 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY