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)
THE BAT
Friday, August 3rd, 2012NOT RECOMMENDED
The swanky upstate New York home designed by Jeff G. Rack seems the ideal setting for murder, the kind written about by Queen Of Crime Agatha Christie or her American predecessor Mary Roberts Rinehart. Ric Zimmerman has lit the elegant upper class digs for maximum suspense, with candles taking the place of electricity when the lights go out (more than once as we know they will). Bill Froggatt’s sound design provides an eerie, suspenseful musical underscoring to this tale of mystery and impending doom.
If only direction and performances came anywhere close to the collaborative efforts of these three top L.A. design talents in The Bat, the latest production from Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
(read more)
D IS FOR DOG
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
What starts out as a clever, visually stunning satire of 1950s family sitcoms like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet turns into something a good more Twilight Zonesque in Rogue Artists Ensemble’s D Is For Dog, now returning to Los Angeles a year after its award-winning initial run, terrific news for those like this reviewer who somehow missed it the first time around.
(read more)
LANGUAGE ROOMS
Friday, June 15th, 2012
In his dramatic, suspenseful Back Of The Throat, Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi explored the plight of an Americanized young Arab who finds himself caught in the Hitchockean dilemma of being pursued for a crime he did not commit—in this case, of plotting terrorist acts in a post-9/11 world. By making Khaled an entirely likeable boy-next-door type with an American girlfriend and nary the trace of an Arabic accent, El Guindi got his audience firmly on the side of the accused before starting to plant seeds of doubt in our minds. Might Khaled actually be the terrorist he’s accused of being?
Language Rooms, El Guindi’s latest, takes a more comedic approach to the same post-9/11 world, but one no less powerful for the laughter it provokes, and has been brought down to Los Angeles lock, stock, director, cast, designers, and barrel by San Francisco’s Golden Thread Productions.
(read more)
STONEFACE
Monday, June 4th, 2012
Imagine you’re writer-director Jaime Robledo, and your play Watson won you just about every award in the book, including a pair of Scenies. Then imagine you’re writer-performer Vanessa Claire Stewart, whose Louis And Keely Live At The Sahara and its holiday spin-off won you just about every award in the book, including a grand total of four Scenies. Now try to think of what to do for an encore.
(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