A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
Thursday, September 15th, 2016Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, this year’s Best Revival Tony winner, has arrived at the Ahmanson in a production likely to leave audience opinion split between “brilliantly innovative” and “pretentiously boring.” Though it took me a while to get there, I ended up veering towards the former point of view. Still, unless you’re lucky enough to be sitting either onstage (an option here) or up close (if you’ve got the bucks), the Ahmanson proves far too large a venue for a production as intimate as this one.
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ALL THE WAY
Wednesday, September 14th, 2016
Robert Schenkkan’s Best Play Tony-winner All The Way arrives at South Coast Repertory in what is sure to be one of the coming year’s finest productions, a locally-cast, locally-directed, locally-designed gem that sets the record straight on LBJ, our nation’s 36th President, brought to explosive, warts-and-all life by Hugo Armstrong in one of the year’s great star turns.
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WTC VIEW
Saturday, September 3rd, 2016
Late September 2001. Downtown NYC. Life goes on, but not like before, never like before, in Brian Sloan’s riveting WTC View, now getting a long-awaited West Coast Premiere at Santa Ana’s Theatre Out, and a particularly fine one at that.
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PLEASE DON’T ASK ABOUT BECKET
Tuesday, August 30th, 2016
Wendy Graf puts a personal face on the question of nature vs. nurture in Please Don’t Ask About Becket, the playwright’s latest family drama now getting an often compelling World Premiere guest production at The Sacred Fools Theatre Black Box.
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BLUEPRINT FOR PARADISE
Saturday, August 13th, 2016
The weeks leading up to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor provide the historical backdrop for Blueprint For Paradise, Laurel M. Wetzork’s fascinating, fact-inspired look at the unlikely friendship between the heiress wife of an American Nazi sympathizer and the African-American architect hired to design a “refugee compound” on fifty-acres of the couple’s Pacific Palisades estate.
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A RAISIN IN THE SUN
Sunday, July 31st, 2016
Star turns you’d expect to see at the Pasadena Playhouse or the Geffen distinguish Ruskin Group Theatre’s 57th-anniversary revival of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award-winning A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s piercing look at racial discrimination, gender roles, family values, and burgeoning African-American identity—a modern American classic that remains as relevant today as it was in the pre-Civil Rights Era 1950s.
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FOOL FOR LOVE
Friday, July 8th, 2016
I may never go gaga for Fool For Love, but if ever a production could make me a believer in Sam Shepard’s overheated take on Greek tragedy in today’s Wild Wild West, it’s the one now playing at the Davidson/Valentini Theatre thanks to some refreshingly subtle directorial touches and a quartet of superb performances, chief among them star turns by Burt Grinstead and Charlotte Gulezian.
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SMOKE
Monday, July 4th, 2016
Fearless only begins to describe Patrick Stafford and Emily James’ stunning performances in Kim Davies’ walk-on-the-wild-side two-hander Smoke, now running in raw, risk-taking Rogue Machine rep with the similarly single-word-titled Honky and Bull.
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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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