THE TALE OF THE ALLERGIST’S WIFE
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010RECOMMENDED
Things haven’t been going all that well recently for New York matron Marjorie Taub. The death of her beloved therapist has left her with a feeling she describes as “Perdu. Utter damnation. The loss of my soul.” Though the Disney Store has fortunately decided not to press charges for the six porcelain figures she just happened to drop following her shrink’s memorial service, Marjorie can’t seem to get off the living room sofa and attend her usual mix of lectures, gallery exhibits, and opera symposiums. “I’m a fraud,” she moans to her allergist husband Ira. “A cultural poseur. To quote Kaafka, ‘I am a cage in search of a bird’”
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IN THE NEXT ROOM (or the vibrator play)
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010
It’s the late 1800s and Sabrina Daldry is exhibiting symptoms that concern her considerably older husband. Light has been bothering Sabrina lately, and she cries at the drop of her heavily veiled hat. A consultation with a certain Dr. Givings reveals the cause of her ailments: hysteria. (A contemporary doctor would probably diagnose her condition as depression resulting from sexual frustration.) Fortunately, Dr. Givings has just the treatment to cure Sabrina of her ills, a device made possible by the recent arrival of electric current into New York’s wealthier homes. A two or three-minute application of this vibrating apparatus to Sabrina’s private parts, plus a bit of digital stimulation administered by the doctor’s faithful nurse Annie, provides an almost instantaneous improvement in Sabrina’s mental state (along with a number of moans and gasps of pleasure), and she eagerly agrees to return for daily treatments.
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THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HEDDA GABLER
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
A crackerjack theatrical design can make the difference between a very good production and a great one, and can sometimes even make a so-so script seem better than it actually is. I loved Jeff Whitty’s surrealistic comedy The Further Adventures Of Hedda Gabler when I caught its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in January of 2006. Having now seen it for the second time at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre, I begin to wonder how much of my enjoyment of Hedda’s adventures in the afterlife came as a result of SCR’s superb set, lighting, and sound design. Take these away from the play, and what ends up on stage is something considerably less successful, despite a committed director and cast.
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MISALLIANCE
Sunday, September 19th, 2010
South Coast Repertory opens its 2010-2011 season with a deliciously staged and performed revival of George Bernard Shaw’s 100-year-old comedy Misalliance, a production so all-around splendid that it makes one of Shaw’s earliest plays seem half its age—or even younger.
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LIVE NUDE GIRL
Monday, September 13th, 2010RECOMMENDED
Monica Himmel is Deanna, an actress in search of professional and personal fulfillment in Monica Himmelheber’s Live Nude Girl, now playing Mondays at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre.
If Live Nude Girl has an autobiographical ring to it, it’s probably because Himmelheber is a writer in search of professional and personal fulfillment, and Himmel … Well, if you haven’t yet guessed, Himmelheber and Himmel are one and the same.
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FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS
Friday, September 10th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
Five Women Wearing The Same dress spend a couple of hours doing what women often do; they talk—about men, about life, about love, about relationships, about sex, in Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing The Same Dress, now playing in Hollywood’s Theater Row at the Ruby. Not much happens during the course of the play’s two acts. Marriages and relationships don’t come apart, though one of the latter does start to blossom. No great new friendships are forged, nor do any fall to pieces. Sort of like real life, when you come to think of it.
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THE CLEAN HOUSE
Friday, August 27th, 2010
How’s this for a cast of characters? Lane, a doctor (and doctor’s wife) who wants nothing more than to live in a clean house. Matilde, Lane’s Brazilian cleaning lady, who loves jokes almost as much as life itself but doesn’t like cleaning house—not one bit. Lane’s sister Virginia, who loves to clean house so much that simply cleaning her own is not enough for her. Lane’s surgeon husband Charles, who wants to leave Lane for Ana. Ana, Charles’ Argentinean patient and paramour, who has breast cancer. Characters who meet and interact in what playwright Sarah Ruhl describes as “a metaphysical Connecticut,” in “a house that is not far from the city and not far from the sea.”
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EAT THE RUNT
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
A candidate for a high-level fund-raising position in a major big city art museum is interviewed by various museum higher-ups in Avery Crozier’s Eat The Runt, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere at Theatre Of NOTE.
If the above mini-synopsis seems hardly the stuff of great drama, let alone the laugh-out-loud comedy that Eat The Runt is, then wait till you hear the gimmick that makes it a truly unparalleled theatrical experience.
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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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