PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
Friday, November 1st, 2013
Following in the footsteps of last year’s award-winning Cymbeline, A Noise Within returns for a new season of classical theater with one more of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” once again prompting the question, “What on earth could the so-called ‘problem’ be?” when the play in question yields results as magical as these?
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THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP
Saturday, October 26th, 2013
The next laugh is never more than a few seconds away as the Falcon Theatre presents Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery Of Irma Vep, one of the most hilarious comic spoofs ever—and a showcase for director Jenny Sullivan and its two brilliant leading men/women Matthew Floyd Miller and Jamie Torcellini.
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FAST COMPANY
Thursday, October 17th, 2013
The Rag, the Spanish Prisoner, the Pig-in-a-Poke, the Badger Game, and the Glim Dropper are just five of the games that H, Blue, and Francis learned at their mother Mable’s knee—which will give you an idea of just what kind of family the three siblings grew up in in Carla Ching’s exhilarating World Premiere comedy Fast Company, the latest from South Coast Repertory.
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THE LIAR
Monday, October 14th, 2013
Silliness has rarely been cleverer or cleverness sillier than in David Ives’ translation/adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 1644 comedy The Liar, The Antaeus Company’s end-of-season offering and quite possibly the classical theater masters’ frothiest romp ever.
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DON’T DRESS FOR DINNER
Saturday, October 12th, 2013
Let’s say you’re a married man. Let’s say you’re a married man with a mistress. Let’s say you’d like nothing more than to spend a romantic weekend with said mistress in the renovated farmhouse you call home. You’d send the wife off for a visit with Mommy and invite your best friend over to throw the missus off the scent, right?
Right … but what if your wife and that best of friends happened to be secret lovers and she thought your chum’s weekend visit would be the perfect opportunity for the two of them to engage in a bit of extramarital hanky-panky? She’d make a quick phone call to cancel plans with mother, and before you knew it, there’d be two sets of adulterous lovers under the same roof with the Cordon Bleu cook you’d hired to cater the weekend making it Five’s A Crowd.
If you think this sounds like the perfect set-up for a door-slamming, mistaken identity-filled French farce, you’d be absolutely right, since this is precisely how Marc “Boeing-Boeing” Camoletti sets up Don’t Dress For Dinner, the hilarious (and pitch-perfect) latest from Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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AH, WILDERNESS!
Sunday, September 15th, 2013
A quarter century before Eugene O’Neill’s deep dark look at a fictionalized version of his drug-and-alcohol-addicted family, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, first opened on Broadway, the soon-to-be Nobel laureate treated 1933 New York theatergoers to an idealized vision of that same family in his one-and-only comedy Ah, Wilderness!
Now, a year after its multiple-Scenie-winning revival of Long Day’s Journey, Actors Co-op introduces its audiences to the Millers (a lighter, brighter version of the O’Neills/Jeromes), and what a delightful, beautifully staged and acted production the Co-op has come up with.
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STEEL MAGNOLIAS
Thursday, September 12th, 2013
You may have seen Steel Magnolias before, either on stage or on film, but you’ve never seen magnolias of steel quite like the six women now lighting up the stage at East West Players’ David Henry Hwang Theater. Robert Harling’s now iconic Southern belles are Asian-American this time round, their ethnicity adding new shadings to this sextet of women whose delicate exteriors mask tough-as-nails cores.
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THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (and a recipe for Swedish pancakes)/THE MATADOR
Sunday, September 1st, 2013
Whimsy and more than a touch of the surreal link an entertaining pair of one-acts now getting their West Coast Premieres at Studio/Stage, both of them penned by members of The Playwright’s Lab @ Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.
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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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