BARBECUE
Friday, September 16th, 2016
Trailer trash knows no color in the sordid lives brought to booze-chugging, drug-snorting, profanity-spewing life in Barbecue, Robert O’Hara’s outrageously twisted, hysterically funny new comedy now making its West Coast debut at the Geffen Playhouse, and that’s just Act One.
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ARCADIA
Monday, September 12th, 2016
Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia can prove quite a head-scratcher when not done right. Fortunately, despite brain-teasing elements that can challenge even the sharpest intellect, all-around superb acting and incisive direction make A Noise Within’s 25th-season opener as entertaining and accessible as Arcadias get.
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DRAMA QUEENS FROM HELL
Sunday, August 21st, 2016NOT RECOMMENDED
Significant trimming and tweaking is needed to make Peter Lefcourt’s Hollywood-spoofing Drama Queens From Hell the comedy hit it aspires to be despite some occasional insider hilarity and several deliciously scene-stealing performances.
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GO BACK TO WHERE YOU ARE
Thursday, August 18th, 2016
There’s a whole lot of fourth-wall-breaking going on in Go Back To Where You are, David Greenspan’s magical seventy-five minute bit of meta-theatrical romance and whimsy now getting an admittedly brain-challenging but absolutely captivating West Coast Premiere by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.
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PETER AND THE STARCATCHER
Monday, August 15th, 2016
Theatrical magic doesn’t get much more magical than the magic being made at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center as Actors Repertory Theatre Of Simi enchants audiences of all ages with their supremely imaginative albeit scaled-down production of Broadway’s Peter And The Starcatcher.
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D DEB DEBBIE DEBORAH
Friday, August 12th, 2016RECOMMENDED
Twilight Zone meets Theater Of The Absurd in D Deb Debbie Deborah, Jerry Lieblich’s trippy journey to a land where no one, not even the title character, is who they seem, and though it’s anyone’s guess what Lieblich is getting at throughout most of his play’s seventy-five minutes, confusion hardly matters till a sudden eleventh-hour try for profundity takes Quadruple D from entertaining to exasperating.
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BABY DOLL
Saturday, July 30th, 2016
A just-right darkly comedic tone and pitch-perfect performances turn minor Tennessee Williams into major summer entertainment as the Fountain Theater gives West Coast audiences their first taste of Pierre Laville and Emily Mann’s streamlined, Williams-estate-approved adaptation of the 1956 movie potboiler Baby Doll.
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SPACE
Saturday, July 30th, 2016
Disproving the oft-suggested notion that a playwright should never direct his own work, Stefan Marks not only scores a double bulls-eye at the Stella Adler; in never leaving the stage as Space’s riveting protagonist, the Ovation Award-winning director-writer-actor proves himself a bona fide triple-threat in this brain-teasing dazzler of a play.
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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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