STANDING ON CEREMONY: THE GAY MARRIAGE PLAYS
Monday, May 23rd, 2011
Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays is back—in a terrific new venue and featuring a hilarious newcomer to its roster of one acts. What hasn’t changed is the excitement of both its concept and its execution.
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DOOLEY
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Sometimes no matter how much a production has going in its favor, it simply doesn’t work for a reviewer, no matter the quality of the talent onstage. Diversionary Theatre’s World Premiere play Dooley is just such a production.
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THE CHAIRS
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
A pair of nonagenarians are the only characters visible throughout most of The Chairs, but who knows how many invisible ones there are on stage by the end of Eugène Ionesco’s “tragic farce,” the latest production from A Noise Within—and a terrific one as might be expected from California’s Home For The Classics.
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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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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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