COULD I HAVE THIS DANCE?
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010RECOMMENDED
To the outside world, sisters Monica and Amanda would seem to have it made. They’re attractive, successful 30something businesswomen with active sex and/or love lives. Together they run Grapevine, the successful showbiz p.r. firm passed down to them by their mother Jeannette. Monica has a long-term boyfriend who adores her, while Amanda prefers to play the field dating much younger men on a one-night-stand basis. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?
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LOST IN YONKERS
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Back when Neil Simon started writing plays like Come Blow Your Horn and Barefoot In The Park for the Broadway stage, few could have imagined that the author of such lightweight fare would go on to one day be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Then came Brighton Beach Memoirs and the rest of the “Eugene Trilogy” and critics were forced to admit that Simon was a playwright of unique, remarkable gifts. His 1991 masterwork Lost In Yonkers impressed audiences and reviewers alike and from that play forward Simon would forever be referred to as Pulitzer Prize Winner Neil Simon.
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SEASCAPE WITH SHARKS AND DANCER
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
A young man pulls a young woman out of the ocean and brings her back to his rundown Provincetown beach house. He says she was drowning; she says she was dancing. From the get-go, romantic sparks seem to be flying between them. Their repartee recalls those screwball comedies of the 1930s, but the year is 1975 and there are hints that the young woman’s playfully argumentative nature hides a darker side. There’s also the engagement ring she finds hidden in a desk drawer that suggests that the young man too may carry emotional baggage.
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SPIKE HEELS
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
Prolific, popular playwright Theresa Rebeck made her first splash off-Broadway in 1990 with Spike Heels, a darkly funny drama about the war between the sexes in the changed/changing world of the late 20th Century. Set in the Boston apartments of two upstairs-downstairs neighbors in their early thirties, Spike Heels looks perceptively (and bitingly) at the ways men and women exert their power in business, in personal relationships, and in sex.
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SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
Friday, January 8th, 2010
I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It’s a profound thought.”
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AN OAK TREE
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
A grieving father confronting the driver responsible for his 12-year-old daughter’s death is a premise almost certain to create gripping theater. It’s hard to imagine a loss greater than a parent’s of a child, or a greater feeling of culpability than that of a person who has caused a child’s death. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree proves gripping theater. What makes it quite out of the ordinary is its unusual format, one absolutely deserving to be called “unique.”
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PO BOY TANGO
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009RECOMMENDED
East meets West in Kenneth Lin’s Po Boy Tango, a culture-clash dramedy now getting its West Coast premiere at Little Tokyo’s East West Players.
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JUST 45 MINUTES FROM BROADWAY
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Start with quite possibly the most gorgeous set ever designed for a 99-seat theater production, add to that an intelligent, witty script which reads like a 21st Century version of Kaufman and Ferber’s The Royal Family, cast it with some of L.A.’s finest stage and screen talent—and the result is Henry Jaglom’s Just 45 Minutes From Broadway, one of the best new plays I’ve reviewed on StageSceneLA.
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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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