SAVAGE IN LIMBO
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
No one writes about New Yorkers, particularly those who reside in the Bronx, quite like John Patrick Shanley … and nowhere is this more true than in his “Concert Play” Savage In Limbo. Fortunately for Shanley fans, the actors who make up the 68 Cent Crew have just the right look, attitude, and voice to bring the Oscar-Pulitzer-Tony-winning playwright’s quirky, entirely original characters to life. It’s hard to imagine an L.A. troupe more suited to stage Shanley’s 1986 tale of a quintet of 32-year-old bar denizens in search of love.
(read more)
HERE LIES JEREMY TROY
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
About 25 years ago, a young thespian named Tim Dietlein read a 1965 comedy called Here Lies Jeremy Troy and said to himself, “That’s a show I’d like to do someday.” Now, in 2009, Dietlein’s dream has come true in a laugh-out-loud hilarious production of playwright Jack Sharkey’s “forgotten gem.”
(read more)
LAND OF THE TIGERS
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Land Of The Tigers is a realm where tigers walk on two legs, wear wigs (some of them powdered), hats (some of them three-cornered) and assorted 18th Century garb—and speak English. It is a land where the only enemy is the dreaded swan, and because “the ‘Swan Alert’ remains as high as ever,” guards are thankfully keeping watch day and night. In Land Of The Tigers, reproduction is strictly controlled, and mating rituals keep bloodlines strong. Thus, when one of the elite, Fang Stalkington, complains to the Tigressional Congress that his sister Sheba is not doing her duty by mating with him, it is serious business indeed. Though Fang has peed on Sheba to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that she belongs to him and him alone, the beauteous Sheba is having none of this. ‘You cannot spray our troubles away,” she growls at him.
(read more)
WOMEN OF MANHATTAN
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
30ish best friends Billie, Rhonda Louise, and Judy have gotten together at Rhonda Louise’s beautiful Manhattan apartment for girls’ night. When Billie wonders out loud where the men are, Rhonda reminds her that Billie had said precisely not to invite any men, the whole point of the evening being that “the three of us would just deck out and look great for each other and fuck the men.” “But don’t you feel we’re wasting our gorgeousness on each other?” asks Billie.
(read more)
ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
68 Cent Crew Theatre Company continues its epic 13 By Shanley festival with probably the most out-and-out romantic double bill of the fest, John Patrick Shanley’s brief but unforgettable teens-in-love romantic comedy The Red Coat, followed by the two-act romcom Italian American Reconciliation. The 1989 two-acter could just as easily have been titled the less cumbersome Moonstruck, but Shanley had already used that title two years before in the Oscar-winning Cher-Nicolas Cage film which it resembles. Together, the playlet and the play, both of them directed with grace and panache by Ronnie Marmo and assistant director Katy Jacoby, make for the most quirkily romantic (or romantically quirky) evening of theater around.
(read more)
MISALLIANCE
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance comes sparklingly alive in Rosalind Productions’ smashing revival of his 1910 comedy.
Unlike the recently reviewed “all-talk, no-action” Candida, Misalliance has enough unexpected plot twists to perk up even the most easily bored theatergoer and enough couplings and un-couplings to make this a precursor of the contemporary “romantic comedy.” It’s not every Shaw play that has eight wedding proposals, a handsome young gun-toting anarchist hiding in a portable Turkish bath, and an airplane crash-landing into the garden of an English country mansion.
(read more)
EVERYBODY SAY “CHEESE!”
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
In his funny and touching World Premiere comedy Everybody Say “Cheese!”, Garry Marshall takes an affectionate look back at the mid-1960s, a time of discovery for women and confusion for men, a time when the “fairer sex” discovered as if overnight that no, a woman’s place wasn’t always in the home. Feminists like Betty Friedan were spreading the message that women could be anything they wanted to be, and housewives like Harriet Keenan were listening.
(read more)
GOLDFISH
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
John Kolvenbach’s unabashedly romantic take on life is front and center once again in his latest play, Goldfish, now getting a superb World Premiere production at South Coast Repertory.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2026 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY