1969: A FANTASTICAL ODYSSEY THROUGH THE AMERICAN MINDSCAPE
Monday, April 2nd, 2012RECOMMENDED
Ovation Award winner Damon Chua takes audiences on an LSD trip through the year 1969 in his ambitious new play 1969: A Fantastical Odyssey Through The American Mindscape, and though he may have bitten of more than any play or playwright can chew, some particularly fine performances and what could well be the year’s most exciting video design make this a psychedelic voyage that adventurous theatergoers may want to take a chance on.
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DEATHTRAP
Monday, April 2nd, 2012
Ira Levin’s spine-tingling thriller Deathtrap is back, and while it’s not in fact “the first Los Angeles production in 20 years” as proclaimed in press materials (San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre revived it terrifically in 2009), its arrival at the Davidson/Valentini Theatre is exciting news indeed, particularly since the Ken Sawyer-directed production is a prime example of L.A. theater at its all-around finest.
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THE INDIANS ARE COMING TO DINNER
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
Imagine what might happen if you crossed a screwball comedy clan like the one George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart created in You Can’t Take It With You with the Greekly tragic family Arthur Miller wrote about in Death Of A Salesman. What you’d end up with would doubtless be something quite like Jennifer W. Rowland’s highly original and thoroughly entertaining tragicomedy The Indians Are Coming To Dinner, now getting its World Premiere at Venice’s Pacific Resident Theatre.
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HUNGER: IN BED WITH ROY COHN
Monday, February 27th, 2012
If you’re a theatergoer under retirement age, you probably first learned about Roy Cohn from Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, which featured the real-life anti-Communist witch-hunting AIDS-decimated, closet-case lawyer among its cast of otherwise fictional characters.
Playwright Joan Beber now gives Roy Cohn a play he can call his own, one that features supporting appearances by Roy’s mother Dora, his rumored longtime lover G. David Schine, convicted American spy Julius Rosenberg (whom Cohn made sure got sent to the electric chair), Roy’s Hispanic housekeeper Lizette, and none other than Ronald Reagan and Barbara Walters themselves, all of the above in fantasy sequences that make those in Angels In America seem positively realistic by comparison.
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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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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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