THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
Most Palisades High School theater students would probably never dream of making a career out of producing and starring in William Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits, yet that is precisely the dream that Charles Pasternak and his fellow Pali-Highers Edward Castuera and Jack Leahy shared a decade or so ago, a dream which led to the 2006 founding of an exciting young theater company bent on staging every single play in the Shakespearean oeuvre. When I reviewed my very first The Porters Of Hellgate production, Love’s Labor’s Lost, back in 2008, they were already at number eight in only their second season. The Merry Wives Of Windsor makes it fourteen* and counting, and as in productions past, The Porters have once again come up with an original take on a Shakespeare standard and done so with considerable skill and panache.
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THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
Monday, June 18th, 2012
The Little Dog Laughed, Douglas Carter Beane’s hilarious, edgy Hollywood-New York showbiz satire, has arrived in North Hollywood with its cutting-edge love story between a gay movie star and a bisexual hustler and its much touted (albeit brief) display of full-frontal male nudity. Though one of its four performances still needs considerably sharpening, director Jon Cortez and cast are largely successful in entertaining, titillating, and maybe even coaxing a tear or two from audiences in search of comedy with a bite.
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THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION
Sunday, June 17th, 2012
For socially liberal Christians, secular humanists, agnostics, and/or atheists, there may seem to be little difference these days between Catholics and Evangelicals. Both would appear to be anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-anything that contradicts the strict tenets of their faiths.
Pit a die-hard Pentecostal against a die-hard Papist, however, and you will stand corrected once each side begins attempting to prove the other wrong.
This is precisely what playwright Evan Smith does to hilarious and thought-provoking effect in The Savannah Disputation, his highly intelligent comedy now getting its Los Angeles Premiere after a New York debut and a slew of well-received regional productions.
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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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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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