DRY LAND
Friday, November 22nd, 2024
Dry Land, Ruby Rae Spiegel’s darkly comic, graphically disturbing off-off-Broadway play about a high school swimmer desperate to terminate her unwanted pregnancy by whatever means possible, returns to Los Angeles in an impressive limited-run guest production at the Atwater Village Theatre.
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ANTÍKONI
Monday, November 11th, 2024If Greek tragedy and/or Native American folklore are your thing, Native Voices’ World Premiere production of Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni may be right up your alley. I, unfortunately, found my interest flagging and my mind drifting almost from the get-go.
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THE CIVIL TWILIGHT
Monday, November 4th, 2024
Two strangers seeking refuge in a dingy motel room reveal their deepest, darkest secrets to riveting effect in The Civil Twilight, Shem Bitterman’s lollapalooza of a two-hander now getting a brilliantly acted World Premiere at the Broadwater Studio Theatre.
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THE WISDOM OF EVE
Sunday, November 3rd, 2024The results are uneven, and at nearly three hours in length the play outstays its welcome, but at the very least Mary Orr’s The Wisdom Of Eve gives Whitefire Theatre audiences the chance to see how All About Eve might have turned out had it been adapted by its original author and not by the brilliant Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who received sole writing credit (and two Oscars) for the film. (The answer is not nearly as good.)
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ROBBIN, FROM THE HOOD
Sunday, October 27th, 2024
Robbin, from the Hood, goes head-to-head with a multibillion-dollar conglomerate in Marlow Wyatt’s invigorating follow-up to 2023’s Best-of-the-Year Scenie-winning SHE.
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AUGUST WILSON’S THE PIANO LESSON
Monday, October 21st, 2024
To sell or not to sell. That is the question at the heart of the Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, an October gift from A Noise Within to the playwright’s many fans, and even for those like this reviewer who’d prefer it if Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle decalogy didn’t run a hefty three hours each, this is easily one of his most entertaining and powerful works.
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I, DANIEL BLAKE
Wednesday, October 16th, 2024Brilliant performances and dazzling production design aside, Dave Johns’ unrelentingly bleak stage adaptation of I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s Kafkaesque 2016 film about a good man living a British bureaucratic nightmare is the most depressing 90 minutes I’ve spent in a theater in a very long time.
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BROOKLYN’S WAY
Sunday, September 22nd, 2024An on-fire Amye Partain is a definite find, but an off-putting male protagonist, an overly tangled time frame, and an approach that takes meta to the extreme do neither the play’s leading lady nor the audience any favors in Sam Henry Kass’s Brooklyn’s Way, a Theatre 68 World Premiere.
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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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