Author Archive
NO EXIT
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
Matthew Hannon and two other grads of LACC’s prestigious Theatre Academy have mounted Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit as a tribute to their late teacher/director Brett Gandy. It is Gandy’s concept which director/star Hannon has remounted in a production of the French existentialist classic playing Tuesdays at the Lounge Theatre.
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THE INJURED PARTY
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
South Coast Repertory has a bonafide hit on its hands. Richard Greenberg’s latest, The Injured Party, is one of the most exciting plays I’ve seen since John Guare’s Six Degrees Of Separation, a work which it shares a number of common themes with. Both deal with family, love, art, money and ambition among New York’s very rich. Both are exceedingly smart without being pretentious. Like Six Degrees, The Injured Party features a gay lead character whose sexual orientation is not central to the story. Both plays keep you riveted from curtain up to curtain calls.
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I’D RATHER BE RIGHT
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
The folks who revived George and Ira Gerswhin’s 1925 Tip-Toes last year are back with another Broadway musical from days gone by, this time one by Rodgers and Hart. Is it Pal Joey? Babes In Arms? Think again. The Boys From Syracuse? A Connecticut Yankee? Wrong again.
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EMERGENCY
Saturday, April 26th, 2008RECOMMENDED
A 400-year-old slave ship rises out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty and all of New York is riveted. As one African-American man swims out to climb atop it, his grandchildren watch from the shore. Many are inspired to think about their lives, and the lives of black people who came before them. No one remains untouched by this miraculous event.
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LADY
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
Craig Wright may be most familiar as the writer/(executive) producer of TV’s Dirty Sexy Money and Six Feet under, but theatergoers know him as a prodigious playwright, the author of such radically different fare as Orange Flower Water, Grace, and Recent Tragic events, all three of which have had superb L.A. productions over the past two years. Orange Flower Water is a harrowing drama of adultery, Grace mixes that theme with evangelical Christianity, and Recent Tragic Events dares to imagine a screwball comedy taking place the day after 9-11. Now comes the West Coast Premiere of 2007’s Lady, and the trio of outstanding local productions of Wright’s work is now a quartet.
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A PIECE OF TIN
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
Who would have thought that an original musical about Queen Victoria, with book, music, and lyrics by an unknown writer, would turn out to be a tuneful, funny, and emotionally moving surprise?
A Piece Of Tin, by Rhett Judice, is all three.
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DINNER WITH FRIENDS
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
“You never know what couples are like when they’re alone.”
Thus speaks one of the characters in Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends, a play which allows us, the audience, to see what its two couples are like behind closed doors. Like flies on the fourth wall, we observe Gabe and Karen’s (and Tom and Beth’s) most private moments. We also see each couple as they see the other, and what they see is often quite different from the other couple’s intimate reality.
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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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