A STEADY RAIN
Friday, March 28th, 2014
Two superb actors stand in for the proverbial “cast of thousands” to make for as thrillingly visual a ninety minutes of edge-of-your-seat theater as you’d get in any big-screen blockbuster, as the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the Los Angeles Premiere of Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain under Jeff Perry’s electric direction.
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THE WHIPPING MAN
Saturday, March 22nd, 2014
On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, at long last ending what is still the deadliest war in United States history. Five days later, President Abraham Lincoln was dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet. And during this fateful week in our country’s history, Jews in both North and South observed Pesach, the festival of Passover, celebrating the freeing of the Israelites from centuries of slavery in Egypt.
Inspired by this bit of historical coincidence, and armed with the knowledge that there were indeed Jewish slaveholders (and Jewish slaves) in the pre-Civil War Deep South, playwright Matthew Lopez sat down to write The Whipping Man, a gripping, eye-opening look at three Jews—two black, one white—in the days just following Appomattox, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere at the Pico Playhouse.
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FLYIN’ WEST
Sunday, March 16th, 2014
12 Years A Slave’s recent Oscar wins make Flyin’ West, Pearl Cleage’s post-Civil-War slice-of-African-American-life-on-the-Kansas-plains, a particularly serendipitous choice as International City Theatre’s latest crowd-pleaser. That director Saundra McClain and her cast of six have come up with a particularly fine production of Cleage’s 1992 hit is icing on the cake, or in the case of Flyin’ West, ice cream on the apple pie.
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THE DYING GAUL
Saturday, March 8th, 2014
How far will an aspiring writer go to see his screenplay turned into a celluloid blockbuster? How far will a film producer go in seeking same-sex pleasures behind his “understanding” wife’s back? How far will a Hollywood Wife go after finding out steamy details of her husband’s infidelity with another man? Playwright Craig Lucas answers these questions … and quite a few more … in his provocative psychological thriller The Dying Gaul, now getting an almost perfect revival at Santa Ana’s Theatre Out.
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CLOSELY RELATED KEYS
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
A hotshot young corporate lawyer discovers she has an Iraqi half-sister from her father’s long ago extramarital relationship in Wendy Graf’s riveting Closely Related Keys, a World Premiere drama as topical as today’s headlines.
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GOING TO ST. IVES
Saturday, March 1st, 2014
A woman wracked with guilt over the unintentional role she has played in her son’s accidental death. A woman tormented by having given birth to a murderous son. These two mothers meet, with life-changing consequences, in Lee Blessing’s powerful two-hander Going To St. Ives, the latest from Hollywood’s illustrious Actors Co-op.
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MY NAME IS ASHER LEV
Saturday, March 1st, 2014
“Be a great painter, Asher Lev. It is the only justification for all the pain you are about to cause.”
Chaim Potok’s acclaimed 1972 novel My Name Is Asher Lev has now been transformed into a powerfully performed, deeply moving showcase for three of L.A.’s finest acting talents and one of our best directors at the award-winning Fountain Theater.
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THE RECOMMENDATION
Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
What starts out as an Odd Couple comedy about a pair of mismatched Brown University roommates develops into something considerably more edgy (and edge-of-your-seat) once a third character enters the mix in Jonathan Caren’s The Recommendation, now getting its first Los Angeles production—and its first with a SoCal-based cast—as IAMA Theatre Company introduces L.A. audiences to Caren’s multiple Scenie-winning hit, one guaranteed to keep you guessing from its exhilarating start to its suspenseful finish.
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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