THE LAUGH TRACK
Monday, November 9th, 2026
Situation comedy groundbreakers Bob Carroll and Madelyn Pugh deserve to be saluted, and the cast assembled on the International City Theatre stage to salute them definitely give it their all, but the sitcomish approach playwright Wendy MacLeod has taken in The Laugh Track ends up less successful in execution than it might promise to be on paper.
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WIVES
Tuesday, October 13th, 2026
I wish I could say I enjoyed Jaclyn Backhaus’s time-hopping feminist comedy Wives as much as I did the delightful performances and dazzing designs on display in its Southern California Premiere at East West Players.
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THE FEEL GOOD STORY AMERICA NEEDS RIGHT NOW
Saturday, October 3rd, 2026
Things get wild and crazy when six Americans held hostage by a band of Sudanese terrorists are reunited in New York for a 60 Minutes-style TV newsmagazine feature in The Feel Good Story America Needs Right Now, Mark Wilding’s latest World Premiere adventure in comedic mayhem at Theatre West.
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THE BED TRICK
Sunday, September 27th, 2026
HBO’s The Sex Life Of College Girls meets William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well in Chance Theater’s California Premiere of Keiko Green’s overlong but devilishly clever The Bed Trick.
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KAIJU
Saturday, September 26th, 2026
Playwright Dan Caffrey may have bitten off a bit more than he can chew in Kaiju, his satirical mashup of Godzilla-style creature features and pretentions/clueless post-performance talkbacks, but I so enjoyed the World Premiere comedy now playing at the Road Theatre on Magnolia that I can’t really complain.
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THE ARSONISTS
Saturday, September 5th, 2026
Max Frisch’s 1950s absurdist gem The Arsonists gets a strikingly staged and marvelously performed 21st-century update at the Skylight Theatre that welcomes to the L.A. theater scene an exciting new collective appropriately called The Firebugs.
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KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Sunday, August 16th, 2026
Theatre Palisades and director Cate Caplin have another winner on their hands with Kimberly Akimbo, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s quirky comedy about a soon-to-turn-16-year-old who’s got more on her plate than your average high schooler.
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WAITING IN THE WINGS
Monday, August 3rd, 2026
Dames don’t get any grander than the grandes dames taking centerstage at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Waiting In The Wings, Noël Coward’s charming 1960 salute to actresses of a certain age who’ve still got it in them to hold an audience spellbound.
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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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