WHEN LAST WE FLEW
Monday, November 19th, 2012
Playwright Harrison David Rivers and Diversionary Theatre score a pair of coups, the former in having his award-winning* when last we flew get its West Coast Premiere at San Diego’s esteemed LGBT theater, the latter in giving Rivers’ mystical, magical dramedy its first major, fully-staged production since its limited-run debut at the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival. The result is one of the best (and most unique) coming of age stories I’ve seen onstage.
(read more)
EDITH CAN SHOOT THINGS AND HIT THEM
Monday, October 29th, 2012
How times have changed for gay American teens over the past two decades. Kenny Tolentino could scarcely have conceived of Gay Straight Alliances or “It Gets Better” videos or out celebrities like Ricky Martin and Zachary Quinto (Mr. Spock, no less!) when he was sixteen just twenty years ago, a coming of age now chronicled by A. Rey Pamatmat in his absolutely wonderful Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them.
(read more)
EURYDICE
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s magical, mystical, poetic retelling of the Orpheus myth from the point of view of his bride has arrived at South Coast Repertory in a production that, in addition to being exquisitely acted and directed, is likely to be remembered as one of the most stunningly designed SCR productions ever.
(read more)
BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK
Saturday, September 29th, 2012
The Motion Picture Production Code changed more than the sexual content of films made between 1934 and 1968. Not only did the Hays Code, as it was better known, ban “every profane and vulgar expression, any licentious or suggestive nudity, the illegal traffic in drugs, any inference of sex perversion,” and other cinematic sins which pre-1933 movies might have felt free to feature, it also restricted the ways blacks and whites could interrelate.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage looks back at the last pre-Code year and the effects the Code had on the life of Hollywood’s first (albeit fictional) African-American film star in her fascinating, funny, thought-provoking—though not entirely satisfying—By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, now getting its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse.
(read more)
GHOST-WRITER
Saturday, August 25th, 2012
Wikipedia defines a “ghostwriter” as someone who “writes books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person.” Add a hyphen and a “ghost-writer” is something quite different indeed—or so we learn in Michael Hollinger’s Ghost-Writer, now getting a classy West Coast Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
(read more)
THE GRÖNHOLM METHOD
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012
Catalan playwright Jordi Galcerán casts a cynical, bemused eye on the cutthroat world of international big business in his darkly comedic The Grönholm Method, the most exciting play to make the transatlantic crossing in an English translation since Yasmina Reza’s God Of Carnage stunned Broadway in 2009.
(read more)
THE IRISH CURSE
Friday, August 10th, 2012
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, anyone with the slightest doubt about the quality of Los Angeles theater could do no better than to check out Scott Conte, Austin Hébert, Shaun O’Hagan, Joe Pacheco, and Patrick Quinlan in the Andrew Barnicle-directed The Irish Curse, now heading into the final weeks of its justly lauded two-month run at the Odyssey.
(read more)
THE RETURN TO MORALITY
Saturday, August 4th, 2012
With the United States presidential election just three months away, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for The Production Company to present the Los Angeles premiere of Jamie Pachino’s political satire The Return To Morality, imaginatively directed by Mark L. Taylor and terrifically performed by Alias’s Kevin Weisman and five of L.A.’s finest supporting players.
(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 2025 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY