CASH ON DELIVERY
Monday, December 7th, 2015The words “Oh what a tangled web we weave” have rarely been truer than they are about out-of-work landlord Eric Swan, whose multiple attempts to deceive the British Department Of Social Security are about to be found out in Michael Cooney’s side-splitting farce Cash On Delivery, now getting a sensationally performed big-stage revival at the El Portal Theatre, directed by (and co-starring) none other than Cooney’s celebrated playwright dad Ray.
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A VERY DIE HARD CHRISTMAS
Sunday, December 6th, 2015One of America’s most beloved holiday movie classics is back … and live on stage in Theatre Unleashed’s West Coast Premiere of Josh Carson’s A Very Die Hard Christmas, the Bruce Willis megasmash as seen through a Saturday Night Live lens, with puppets and songs thrown in for hilarious measure.
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RIO HONDO
Saturday, December 5th, 2015Earlier this year in their brilliantly spoofy Entropy, playwright Bill Robens and Theatre Of NOTE managed somehow to stage a gazillion-dollar Hollywood space-travel epic inside a 40something-seat theater. Robens and NOTE now work the same magic on that most American of movie genres—the Western—in their World Premiere comedy Rio Hondo, to my knowledge the very first L.A. theater production presented “in CinemaStage” and one that no horse opera lover will want to miss.
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PERFECT TIMING
Thursday, December 3rd, 2015Audiences in search of a perfectly marvelous time at the theater could hardly make a more perfect choice than the latest from Theatre 40, Kristi Kane’s Perfect Timing, a play so perfectly delightful that you’d expect it had run a decade or more on London’s West End and not a mere six months in Van Nuys way back in the mid-80s before fading into unjust obscurity.
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ETHAN CLAYMORE
Saturday, November 28th, 2015A handsome young widower, a pretty new schoolteacher in town, a matchmaking neighbor, and a just-deceased older brother who’s been given one last chance to make amends in the few remaining days between now and Christmas add up to a crowd-pleasing holiday romcom as Little Fish Theater treats South Bay audiences to Norm Foster’s Ethan Claymore.
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OUTSIDE MULLINGAR
Saturday, November 21st, 2015A couple of long-feuding Irish neighbors find themselves moonstruck in John Patrick Shanley’s delightfully quirky romantic comedy Outside Mullingar, now charming audiences at the Geffen Playhouse.
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THE FEAST
Sunday, November 15th, 2015A suddenly meatless world serves as the pretext for what well may be the most bizarre dinner party in the history of contemporary theater in Celine Song’s absurdist black comedy The Feast, now being given a terrific Los Angeles New Court Theatre L.A. Premiere in precisely the kind of DTLA loft-with-view in which said dinner party might actually take place.
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CAKE
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015The lives of nine college town residents intersect in Wendy Gough Soroka’s World Premiere comedy Cake, the latest from Theatre Unleashed and a crowd-pleaser despite its unnecessarily lengthy scene changes.
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