THE WOODSMAN
Friday, May 22nd, 2015
Playwright Steven Fechter puts a human face on that most reviled of sex offenders, the convicted child molester, in The Woodsman, the powerful latest from Coeurage Theatre Company and a production sure to generate both thought and discussion long after curtain-call applause has died.
(read more)
MACBETH
Monday, May 11th, 2015
Macbeth in sixty minutes. What sweeter words are there to those for whom Shakespeare is a taste not quite acquired (or those with only an hour to spare), especially when it’s Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group’s Macbeth, adapted and directed by Denise Devin. Now, that’s my way to see The Scottish Play (or Playlet as the case may be).
(read more)
GUS’S FASHIONS & SHOES
Friday, May 8th, 2015
Plays don’t get much more testosterone-fueled than Gus’s Fashions & Shoes, the grittily dramatic, darkly comedic latest from writer-director Ron Klier, whose Cops And Friends Of Cops kept Vs. Theatre audiences glued to the edge of their seats two years back.
(read more)
CIRCUS UGLY
Tuesday, May 5th, 2015NOT RECOMMENDED
Some plays are so unexpectedly marvelous and/or so deeply thought-provoking that you can’t stop talking about them long after the house lights have gone back up. Gabriel Rivas Gomez’s Circus Ugly, the latest from Playwrights’ Arena, is likely to inspire almost as much post-performance conversation as those, but for a different reason. Yes, several of its performers manage to impress and so does a topnotch production design, but not even a lukewarm recommendation is possible for a play that still has me scratching my head and wondering, “WTF was that?!”
(read more)
ABIGAIL/1702
Saturday, May 2nd, 2015
When last we saw her in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, teen temptress Abigail Williams was about to flee Salem, Massachusetts and its infamous witch trials, leaving in her wake twenty hanged (or otherwise executed) victims of her venomous, vile, trumped-up accusations.
Playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa now imagines Abby’s life ten years later, and fascinatingly so, in Abigail/1702, a play and production no Crucible lover will want to miss, and the latest from Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
(read more)
BOY GETS GIRL
Tuesday, April 28th, 2015NOT RECOMMENDED
Terrific performances by a thoroughly engaging Ivy Khan and a riveting if miscast Jim Martyka highlight Theatre Unleashed’s ill-advised fifteenth-anniversary revival of Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl, one which leaves this reviewer wondering how Gilman’s pseudo-thriller ended up named Time Magazine’s #1 Play Of The Year.
(read more)
MY BARKING DOG
Sunday, April 26th, 2015RECOMMENDED
Performances are outstanding and the production design sensational, the director is Michael Michetti (need I say more?), and the ideas put forth are provocative, but an overreliance on monologs proves off-putting in the West Coast Premiere of Eric Cable’s two-hander My Barking Dog, the latest from The Theatre @ Boston Court.
(read more)
THE ANARCHIST
Saturday, April 25th, 2015
Felicity Huffman and Rebecca Pidgeon square off in the cat-and-mouse game that is David Mamet’s provocative yet abstruse The Anarchist, the duo’s superb performances and bona fide star power, the intimacy of Theatre Row’s Theatre Asylum, and ticket prices about a quarter of what they were when Mamet’s latest premiered on Broadway combining to make this 99-seat-plan production a likely candidate for hottest ticket in town.
(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