THE LIGHTS ARE OFF
Thursday, June 14th, 2012RECOMMENDED
A pair of college roommates attempt to navigate their way through the college years in Matt Soson’s The Lights Are Off, a dark, edgy screwball comedy with a starkly dramatic twist.
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THE LONG WEEKEND
Monday, June 11th, 2012
The Long Weekend is one heck of a dull title for a play as hilarious and cleverly written as the one now getting its West Coast Premiere at Theatre 40. Then again, if you’re Canada’s most produced playwright whose 38 scripts receive an average of 150 productions a year, it probably doesn’t matter Up North what you call each new one, your fellow Canadians will turn out in droves for it. Still, for us Americans who may not know the difference between Norm Foster, Jodie Foster, Cheers’ Norm Peterson, or Foster Farms, the title The Long Weekend suggests a dreary dramatic piece, when in fact Foster’s 1994 two-acter is a tantalizing comedic gem of a play, terrifically performed at Theatre 40 by its cast of four and directed with verve by the prolific Bruce Gray.
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THE SLEEPER
Friday, June 8th, 2012
Among the many changes the events of 9/11 have brought about in American life is the new crop of words we’ve seen added to our daily lexicon, not the least of which is the term 9/11. Foreign words have become part of our vocabulary. Old words have been combined to create new phrases. Network news broadcasts have given us one media slogan after another. Who knew what a jihad was before the “axis of evil” launched its “Attack On America”? Even everyday words have acquired new meanings. Take the colors “blue,” “yellow,” “orange,” and “red,” no longer harmless hues but each one more frightening than the previous when modifying the word “alert.” Take too the word “sleeper,” once merely “a person or animal who is asleep” or perhaps a railroad sleeping car, now considerably more sinister in this post-9/11 world.
It’s this newer, scarier “sleeper” that playwright Catherine Butterfield has in mind in her 2004 comedy The Sleeper, now getting a sensational Los Angeles premiere by North Hollywood’s Theatre Tribe.
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NO WAY AROUND BUT THROUGH
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
Actor, writer, director, photographer, musician Scott Caan, star of TV’s Hawaii 5-0, spotlights the first two of these talents in his entertaining new comedy No Way Around But Through, now getting its World Premiere at Burbank’s Falcon Theater, an engagement made even more noteworthy by the presence of Oscar-nominated film star Melanie Griffith among its talented cast of five.
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THE LEARNED LADIES
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
Actor’s Co-op stages Moliere’s The Learned Ladies (Les Femmes Savantes) with such panache, you’d think they’d been doing the French master on at least a yearly basis rather than a mere twice in seventeen years.
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DOG SEES GOD
Sunday, May 20th, 2012
Santa Ana’s Theatre Out continues its 2012 season with one of the Orange County LGBT theater’s finest “straight play” productions to date, Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. Directed by Scenie winner Tito Oritz at his inspired best and featuring a remarkably talented young cast, Dog Sees God is not only must-see theater for avid OC and L.A. playgoers, it ought to be required viewing for students from middle school up. Briefly put, Dog Sees God makes for a hilarious, thought-provoking, and ultimately transformative evening of theater.
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SUKIE AND SUE: THEIR STORY
Saturday, May 5th, 2012RECOMMENDED
A demonic Raggedy Ann doll wreaks havoc on a pair of nurses in Sukie And Sue: Their Story, Michael John LaChiusa’s offbeat trifle of a horror movie spoof now playing at The Blank Theatre.
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TICKLED PINK
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Taking her comic novel Tickled Pink as inspiration, Las Vegas headliner Rita Rudner and husband Martin Bergman have penned a two-act comedy not coincidentally titled Tickled Pink—and the results now onstage at the Laguna Playhouse are likely to tickle the fancy of anyone in the mood for a couple hours of laughs … along with a well-earned tear or two thrown in for good measure.
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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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