THICKER THAN WATER
Friday, May 6th, 2011
Three-time Best Actress Emmy-winner Barbara Bain and well-known film/TV actor D.B. Sweeney are among the baker’s dozen performers headlining Thicker Than Water, an entertaining, perceptive evening of one-acts by Dale Griffiths Stamos at Santa Monica’s Promenade Playhouse.
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THE MALCONTENT
Friday, May 6th, 2011
An overthrown national leader sneaks back into to his country in disguise, hoping to engineer a return to power. To do so, he must match wits with the new leader’s ruthless, ambitious young protégé, who is having a secret affair with the new leader’s beautiful young wife, who is in turn being pursued by a second handsome, unprincipled schemer. And that’s just the start of two and a half hours of lust, intrigue, betrayal, passion and politics in John Marston’s The Malcontent.
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THE ESCORT
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
The title character of Jane Anderson’s The Escort isn’t a policeman assigned to guard a VIP or an older bachelor providing a spare arm to a wealthy widow at a society function, and she’s not that Ford compact car that ceased production back in 2002. (That would just be silly.) The title character of Jane Anderson’s The Escort (getting its World Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse) is a young woman of the sort who used to be called a hooker, a lady of the evening, a whore, or just plain prostitute. That being said, the escort Anderson introduces us to in the person of actress Maggie Siff is so all-American adorable that any of those crude monikers would seem as out of place as a, well, as a whore in church on Sunday.
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STANDING ON CEREMONY: THE GAY MARRIAGE PLAYS
Monday, March 28th, 2011
A rotating cast of Hollywood celebrities. Eight or nine short plays by some of the country’s finest playwrights. Tons of laughs and more than a few tears. And all this to promote the cause of marriage equality. What progressive theatergoer could pass up a chance like this?
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PURSUED BY HAPPINESS
Friday, March 25th, 2011
There’s good news for hopeless romantics, those of us who truly believe in the redemptive power of love. Keith Huff’s Pursued By Happiness can now be added to the list of terrific plays written about wounded souls who somehow manage to find salvation in each other.
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GIRLS TALK
Thursday, March 24th, 2011
What screenwriter/playwright/director Roger Kumble did to wealthy New York teens in the movie Cruel Intentions, he does now to four (Very) Real Housewives Of Bel Air in the hilariously venomous Girls Talk, a World Premiere production at the Lee Strasberg Theater.
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NERVE
Saturday, February 5th, 2011
“Ask somebody to love you. Takes a lot of nerve. Ask somebody to love you. You got a lot of nerve.”
–Paul Simon
Can a couple of 20somethings on a blind date from hell find happiness ever after? That’s the question asked by playwright Adam Szymkowicz in Nerve, his disturbing but oh-so-romantic comedy now getting its West Coast Premiere at The Chance Theater.
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MLLE. GOD
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Though Frank Wedekind’s name may not be as well-known as Bertolt Brecht’s, the German playwright is making a comeback nearly a hundred years after his death, first with the Broadway smash Spring Awakening and now with Nicholas Kazan’s Mlle. God, a contemporary stage adaptation of Wedekind’s Lulu Plays, perhaps best known as the basis for silent film star Louise Brooks’ most famous flick, Pandora’s Box.
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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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