EQUIVOCATION
Saturday, September 13th, 2014
Imagine that you, as the foremost writer of your time, have been ordered by your country’s leader upon pain of imprisonment, torture, and death to come up with a play that would dramatize a supposed plot against your government, solidify its legitimacy, and demonize many of your fellow citizens simply because of your words. What would you do?
This is the conundrum faced by Shag (aka William Shakespeare) in Bill Cain’s extraordinary Equivocation, back in L.A. for the first time since its 2009 pre-off-Broadway engagement at the Geffen in an absolutely superb production at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, one that tops its predecessor if only for the clarity that director Mike Peebler (doing outstanding work) and his all-around sensational cast bring to Cain’s labyrinthine tale.
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THE TEMPEST
Wednesday, September 10th, 2014
Illusions so mystifying that you’ll give up even trying to figure out “how they did that.” Original songs by a Rock-&-Roll Hall of Famer performed by a live R&B/Alternative Pop band. Direction that makes adjectives like “imaginative” or “ingenious” or “inspired” seem tame. Performances and production design to match. All of these combine to make Aaron Posner and Teller’s touring adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest a must-see even for those might never wish to sit through another The Tempest again.
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BEIRUT
Monday, September 8th, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
If a two-character opposite-sex love story with no specific gay content seems a curious choice for an LGBT theater, then Theatre Out’s revival of Alan Bowne’s Beirut proves even more problematic for its dull, dated look at the AIDS crisis as seen through a heterosexual lens.
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CONVICTION
Sunday, September 7th, 2014
A long-married suburban couple and their seventeen-year-old son attempt to survive the aftermath of a terrible, life-destroying accusation in Carey Crim’s powerful, provocative new play Conviction, which though still in need of work, receives an outstanding World Premiere co-production at Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre.
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BULRUSHER
Monday, September 1st, 2014
The power of live theater to transport an audience to another time, another place, while exploring and revealing the mysteries of the human heart, is made gorgeously, magically clear in Skylight Theatre Company and Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s co-production of the Los Angeles premiere of Eisa Davis’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Bulrusher.
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I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND
Friday, August 22nd, 2014
Seven years ago, Erik Patterson’s best friend’s head “exploded,” or at least that’s how the playwright describes the brain aneurysm that sent him rushing to the Manhattan ICU where best friend Uma and her fellow aneurysm victims waged their life-and-death struggle while loved ones watched and waited, hoped and prayed, and bonded with similarly concerned strangers in the hospital waiting room.
Cut to 2014, and the author of the multiple Scenie-winning He Asked For It has taken these real-life events as the point of departure for his latest, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, now getting its World Premiere at Hollywood’s Theatre Of NOTE, and in words I used to describe its predecessor, Patterson’s newest play is “fresh, entertaining, gripping and entirely unpredictable” … and beautifully acted to boot.
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OSWALD, THE ACTUAL INTERROGATION
Friday, August 15th, 2014
Playwright Dennis Richard turns audience members into flies on the walls of the Dallas Police Station interrogation room where Lee Harvey Oswald parried question after question with the aplomb of a professional liar in the two days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Richard’s fascinating docudrama Oswald, The Actual Interrogation, now playing at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre.
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LEAR
Sunday, August 10th, 2014
A Queen with three sons, two of them ungrateful jerks wed to a pair of domineering Duchesses. An Earl with two daughters, one of them illegitimate and a conniver to boot. Meet Shakespeare Through The Looking Glass as Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum debuts its uniquely intriguing, exquisitely acted, gender-bending take on Shakespeare’s King Lear, retitled simply Lear, directed by and starring Ellen Geer as Queen Lear and Melora Marshall as her Fool.
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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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