SWEAT
Friday, September 7th, 2018
Playwright Lynn Nottage gives voice to blue-collar America in her Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, now making a gut-punching Los Angeles debut at the Mark Taper Forum, a suspenseful, insightful look at an electorate so disillusioned by their failed American Dreams that they ended up doing the unthinkable.
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I GO SOMEWHERE ELSE
Monday, August 27th, 2018An emotionally abusive childhood provides the backstory to the celebration of survival that is Inda Craig-Galván’s memory play I Go Somewhere Else, a playwrights’ Arena World Premiere as superbly acted as it is strikingly designed. If only it were easier to figure out who’s who and what’s what.
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THE CRUCIBLE
Monday, August 13th, 2018
The Topanga hills prove the ideal setting for Theatricum Botanicum’s gut-punchingly powerful revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the first of the six Crucibles I’ve seen to get everything right.
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WHAT HAPPENED WHEN
Wednesday, August 1st, 2018
Pitch-perfect casting makes a world of difference in the return engagement of Daniel Talbott’s haunting memory play What Happened When, an Echo Theater Company midweek gem.
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HAITI
Monday, July 30th, 2018
Theatricum Botanicum breathes new life into William DuBois’ swashbuckling historical soap opera Haiti, giving the long-forgotten look back at the Haitian Revolution its very first production—and a rip-roaring one at that—since the New Deal-funded melodrama made theatrical history in 1938 by featuring a black-and-white cast performing side by side on a Harlem stage.
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FAMOUS
Sunday, July 29th, 2018
Fame wields a double-edged sword for those who come to Hollywood in search of it in Michael Leoni’s Famous, and if the latest from the writer-director of the smash hit Elevator is often flashier than it is profound, it is also without question one of the year’s electrifyingly staged productions, and thanks to the #metoo movement, just about as timely as a World Premiere play can get.
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MAYAKOVSKY AND STALIN
Sunday, July 22nd, 2018Some good actors attempt to breathe life into writer-director Murray Mednick’s talky, tedious Mayakovsky And Stalin, the longest two-and-a-half hours I’ve spent in a theater in years.
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LYSISTRATA UNBOUND
Thursday, July 12th, 2018
Drama, dance, and Greek-style tragedy merge in Lysistrata Unbound, playwright Eduardo Machado and director-choreographer John Farmanesh-Bocca’s stunning reenvisioning of Aristophanes’ 2400-year-old tale of a woman who takes antiwar protests to a decidedly personal level.
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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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