THE COST OF THE ERECTION
Friday, February 17th, 2012
Pulitzer Prize nominee Jon Marans plays headily with time and space—and two couples’ lives—in his tantalizingly complex new play The Cost Of The Erection, masterfully directed at Hollywood’s The Blank Theatre by its founding artistic director Daniel Henning.
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YOURS, ISABEL
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Playwright Christy Hall reinvents the epistolary play (one based on an exchange of letters) with her zesty, captivating World War II romance Yours, Isabel, now getting its official American Premiere at Hollywood’s Actors Co-op, and an all-around splendid one at that.
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THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE
Saturday, January 14th, 2012
Irish playwright Martin McDonagh might well have entitled his first play, The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, No Exit, for that’s how trapped its mother-daughter protagonists find themselves in the 1996 black comedy that put McDonagh on the playwriting map. Nominated for a 1998 Best Play Tony Award and winner of Best Play Drama Desk, Drama League, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, The Beauty Queen Of Leenane now gets an intimate Los Angeles staging that ends up easily The Production Company’s finest effort since moving into its larger Hollywood digs a year ago.
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NERVE
Friday, January 13th, 2012
Try to recall the most disastrous blind date you’ve ever had, then multiply that by ten, and you’ll have some idea of just how bad Elliot and Susan’s blind date is in Adam Szymkowicz’s quirky, romantic, highly original Nerve, now getting its Los Angeles premiere under the inspired direction of Michael Matthews.
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AFTER HOURS
Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Cancer patients and family members dealing with the Big C let down their hair (and occasionally their guard) at a bar called After Hours in E.M. Hodge’s aptly named After Hours, now getting its World Premiere at Theatre 68. Like Michael Christofer’s The Shadow Box, Hodge’s dramedy finds considerable laughter amongst the inevitable tears, and under Paul McGee’s assured direction, marks a promising full-length debut for the playwright.
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ROSES IN DECEMBER
Friday, December 9th, 2011RECOMMENDED
A formal invitation to a class reunion is but the first of dozens upon dozens of letters exchanged between the Assistant Director of Alumni Affairs at Prescott College and one of its most celebrated graduates, renowned author Joel Gordon, in Victor L. Cahn’s Roses In December, now playing at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
“It’s estimated that every two weeks, a language dies. I don’t know about you, but this statistic moves me far more than any statistic on how many animals die or people die in a given time, in a given place. Because when we say a language dies, we are talking about a whole world, a whole way of life.”
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THE VIOLET HOUR
Monday, November 7th, 2011
The first time I saw Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour back in 2008, I wrote, “It’s quite possibly a play requiring a second viewing in order to be fully appreciated.” Having now seen it a second time at Santa Ana’s Theatre Out, I’d like to amend that statement. Even two viewings may not be quite enough to grasp the playwright’s intentions, particularly in the play’s densely written second act. Nevertheless, it remains a (as I wrote back then) “funny and thought-provoking evening of theater.”
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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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