TUNE IN
Wednesday, August 13th, 2025
Playwright Carlos Lacámara tackles university politics, mental illness, psychedelic drug therapy, childhood trauma, and women in academia in the early 1960s, stirs in at least one soap opera-worthy plot twist, and garners more than a few laughs along the way in Tune In, another fabulous Theatre Of NOTE World Premiere.
REEL TO REEL
Monday, July 28th, 2025Ever notice how the minutes can go by lickety-split or seem to move at a snail’s pace depending who you’re with? In the case of the octogenarian couple whose 55-plus-year relationship playwright John Kolvenbach has us spending an hour and a half with in his 2018 four-actor two-hander Reel To Reel, I found the latter to be the case.
(read more)
THE RESERVOIR
Saturday, June 28th, 2025
Two talented Jakes make stunning Geffen Playhouse debuts in The Reservoir, Jake Brasch’s hilarious, heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful look at alcoholism and Alzheimer’s that has rising star Jake Horowitz standing in for the playwright in one of the year’s most captivating performances.
(read more)
NICE GIRL
Monday, June 23rd, 2025
What’s a Nice Girl to do when she finds herself still living at home with her mother and rapidly approaching the age when singledom turns into spinsterhood? That’s the dilemma Jo faces in Melissa Ross’s tangy slice-of-1980s-life now captivating audiences on Rogue Machine’s uber-intimate Henry Murray Stage.
(read more)
A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2
Tuesday, May 20th, 2025
It’s a whole new A Doll’s House, Part 2 at the Pasadena Playhouse with director Jennifer Chang and an ab-fab foursome of TV/stage stars bringing to scintillating life comedic elements left mostly unexplored in the two previous productions I’ve seen of Lucas Hnath’s 2017 Broadway hit.
(read more)
FROU-FROU: A MENAGERIE OF SORTS
Monday, March 3rd, 2025
If Tennessee Williams were alive today, he might have written Frou-Frou: A Menagerie of Sorts, John Anthony Loffredo’s deliciously daring queer riff on Williams’ A Glass Menagerie, with a little bit of A Streetcar Named Desire testosterone (and some extended full-frontal male nudity) thrown in for seductive measure.
(read more)
EVANSTON SALT COSTS CLIMBING
Saturday, February 1st, 2025Characters whose eccentricities are carried to the extreme and a plot whose raison d’être escapes me are two reasons why Rogue Machine Theatre’s West Coast Premiere of Will Albery’s Evanston Salt Costs Climbing proves a major disappointment from the playwright and company who gave us one of 2023’s most critically acclaimed box office successes with Heroes Of The Fourth Turning.
(read more)
SLEEPING GIANT
Saturday, January 25th, 2025
All hell breaks loose when wedding-proposal fireworks unleash monstrous horrors on a lakeside community in Sleeping Giant, the latest dark comedy treat from macabre master Steve Yockey.
(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