MEMORY LANE IS A DESERT ROAD
Sunday, April 6th, 2025
A daughter sifts through her war correspondent father’s photos to better understand his life and her own in Nabra Nelson and Michael B. Nelson’s autobiographical gem Memory Lane Is A Desert Road, a World Premiere drama strikingly staged and terrifically performed by the young artists of Eight Ball Theatre.
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1984
Sunday, April 6th, 2025Leif Gantvoort’s powerful lead performance and Danny Cistone’s ingenious production design are the chief selling points of Robo & Bash’s production of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984. Its tonally off first act and less accomplished supporting cast not so much.
ONE JEWISH BOY
Saturday, March 29th, 2025
Is love enough to keep a couple together when one of them has been the victim of hate crime he simply can’t get past? This is the question posed by English playwright Stephen Laughton in his gut-punchingly powerful One Jewish Boy, now getting a compelling West Coast premiere at Echo Theater Company.
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LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION!
Wednesday, March 19th, 2025There’s some very good work being done on the Westchester Playhouse stage in Kentwood Players frontal-nudity-free staging of Love! Valour! Compassion!, Terrence McNally’s three-and-a-half-hour-long celebration of gay love and friendship in the time of AIDS.
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THESE SHINING LIVES
Tuesday, March 11th, 2025
Decades before Erin Brockovich played David to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Goliath, a young woman fought a similarly consequential battle in Ottawa, Illinois, events that playwright Melanie Marnich recounts in These Shining Lives, the stunning latest from Hollywood’s Actors Co-op.
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SUCH SMALL HANDS
Sunday, March 9th, 2025
Adam Szymkowicz writes writes about Alzheimer’s from a spouse/caretaker’s point of view and does so with humor, compassion, and perception in Such Small Hands, a powerful Chance Theater World Premiere.
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BACON
Tuesday, February 25th, 2025
Wesley Guimarães and Jack Lancaster deliver a pair of searing star turns as 19-year-old Londoners with an explosive shared past history in Sophie Swithinbank’s Bacon, brilliantly reconceived by director Michael Matthews for its West Coast Premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre.
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FOUR WOMEN IN RED
Sunday, February 23rd, 2025The missing and murdered Indigenous women Laura Shamas writes about in Four Women In Red deserve a better play and production than the latest Victory Theatre 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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