ROUNDING THIRD
Thursday, August 8th, 2013
Playwright Richard Dresser pits Little League Coach Don (“Winning is everything”) against Assistant Coach Michael (“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”) in his hilarious two-hander Rounding Third, now being given a crowd-pleasing intimate-stage production at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre.
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Friday, August 2nd, 2013
Take a superb cast and an inspired pair of directors and have them put on one of William Shakespeare’s most audience-friendly plays in the woodsy Topanga hills on a dreamy midsummer Thursday night … and you’ve got Theatricum Botanicum’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Friday, July 26th, 2013
Kimberly Levaco is not your average, everyday teenager. After all, how many teens do you know who are saddled with an alcoholic dad, a hypochondriac mom, and a con artist of an aunt? And how many of them suffer from all of the above, plus a body that’s aging at supersonic speed? Sixteen-year-old Kimberly lives her life in the body of someone more than four times her age, someone with a life expectancy of sixteen, give or take a year or so. How many teens do you know who are saddled with that?
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire makes Kimberly the heroine of his funny, touching 2000 dramedy Kimberly Akimbo, the latest offering from The Theatricians, a company of actors whose youth turns out to be the only major strike going against an otherwise excellent production.
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THE 39 STEPS
Saturday, July 20th, 2013
Glendale Centre Theatre proves that you don’t need a cast of dozens and a seven-figure budget to bring John Buchan’s The 39 Steps to life, despite a plot that takes hero-on-the-run Richard Hannay on an adventure from London to Edinburgh to the Scottish moors and back (during which he crosses paths with a hundred fifty characters or so). All you need are four crackerjack actors, an inventive design team, a tireless stage crew, and directorial whiz Todd Nielsen on hand to bring Buchan’s classic spy novel to vibrant, hilarious life.
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ABSOLUTELY FILTHY
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013
For anyone who has ever wondered how the Peanuts gang might have turned out later in life, Brendan Hunt’s Absolutely Filthy now joins Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God in answering just that question; and though Royal’s Peanuts-As-Teens satire ends up more to my liking than Hunt’s Peanut-At-Thirty parody, it’s easy to understand why Absolutely Filthy became such a hit for Sacred Fools that they brought it back for five performances at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
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STEEL MAGNOLIAS
Saturday, June 29th, 2013
A trio of L.A. busiest community and 99-seat theater veterans, a pair of musical theater triple-threats, and one relative newcomer to our Los Angeles stage scene join forces to bring Little Fish Theatre’s revival of Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias to effervescent life.
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NATALIE PORTMAN THE MUSICAL
Tuesday, June 18th, 2013NOT RECOMMENDED
Natalie Portman The Musical has arrived at the Hollywood Fringe Festival following last year’s successful run (and return engagement) at Chromolume Theatre At The Attic in what appears to be a considerably stripped-down-for-The-Fringe production.
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YES, PRIME MINISTER
Friday, June 14th, 2013
The country is England, the time is now, and the PM’s country house retreat Chequers is in crisis mode. The coalition government finds itself representing a divided electorate, the British Pound Sterling is waning in value, and an ongoing European Council conference seems headed for disaster. With all these problems and more on his table, what’s a Prime Minister to do?
In Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s hilariously farcical Yes, Prime Minister (now getting its US Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse), the answer comes in the form of a potential ten-trillion dollar bailout from a former Soviet republic the authors have dubbed Kumranistan. All the PM has to do is provide the Kumranistani foreign secretary with a trio of call girls for a totally illegal (and immoral and unethical) sex orgy.
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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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