BRIGHT IDEAS
Friday, August 28th, 2009
Remember Beverly Sutphin, the sociopathic serial killer heroine of John Waters’ movie Serial Mom? Well, dear old Bev may just have met her match in Genevra Bradley, a mother who will do anything—and I do mean anything—to get her 3-year-old son into Bright Ideas, the most prestigious preschool in town.
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ADELINE’S PLAY
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
In the final five days of the homestretch of StageSceneLA’s 2nd calendar year, just when I think that there can’t possibly be another truly great new play (and production) to add to my upcoming Best Of 2008-9 lists, along comes Kit Steinkellner’s Adeline’s Play, the best World Premiere I’ve seen this year in a production which could not be better. Blessed with six performance gems and directed with love and finesse by Amanda Glaze, Adeline’s Play is the kind of play you find yourself enjoying so much that you simply can’t bear to see it end.
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SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009RECOMMENDED
A quintet of 20something USC grads recall their journeys from childhood to adulthood in School For Suckers, an enjoyable program of five self-penned solo performances now playing mid-week at the Lillian.
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THE RECEPTIONIST
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
A middle-aged man in a business suit sits alone on the edge of a blackened stage, illuminated by a sole spot, and quietly describes the humane way to kill a fish which has been wounded by the fisherman’s hook in such a way that it cannot be thrown back into the water to carry on its submarine life. He then comments somewhat ambiguously, albeit ominously, about “people who don’t like what we do to people over there.”
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ANITA BRYANT DIED FOR YOUR SINS
Friday, August 21st, 2009
If every man’s life is a story, then the time has come to write mine,” types fifteen-year-old Horace Poore from his tree house at the start of Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins, Brian Christopher Williams’ terrific memory play. Under West Coast Ensemble Co-Artistic Director Richard Israel’s inspired direction, and with a star-making turn by the brilliant young Wyatt Fenner, Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins shapes up to be this summer’s most talked-about and praised new play.
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WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
Here’s a question for theater aficionados? Can you think of a play which deals with, features, or mentions all of the following: depravity, disguises, gender identity, the government, hanky-panky, hermaphroditism, homosexuality, incest, insanity, marriage, mistaken identities, nymphomania, pederasty, psychiatry, rape, religion, reunited orphan siblings, slapstick, and transvestitism? Who could possibly have found a way to put all of the above into one play—and make it one of the most laugh-out-loud hilarious screwball farces ever?
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THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP
Monday, August 10th, 2009
A young woman arrives at a grand and stately manor, the second wife of its handsome owner, only to be surrounded by memories of wife number one, particularly those brought up by the mansion’s sinister housekeeper. (That’s Alfred Hitchcock-Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca, right?) Among the household staff is a hunchback swineherd who turns into a werewolf whenever the moon is full. (What? You don’t remember that from Rebecca?) Another household worker is rumored to be one of those “beings who never die,” aka a Vampire. (Now that sounds like Dracula!) Our widowed, remarried hero journeys to Cairo where his presence brings a long-dead Egyptian mummy back to life. (What kind of movie mishmash is this? Have we died and gone to horror movie heaven, or hell?)
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SAY GOODBYE, TOTO
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, the Munchkins, and the Wizard himself are back—in Amy Heidish’s charming, delightful, and surprisingly original Say Goodbye, Toto, a Wizard Of Oz not just for the kiddies.
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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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