CREATION
Monday, October 15th, 2012
Ian and Sarah have had what would seem to be the perfect marriage, not only of hearts but of minds, his work as an evolutionary biologist complimenting hers as a pathologist with none of that religious mumbo-jumbo attached. Then one night Ian gets struck by lightning and all that changes in an instant.
Thus begins Kathryn Walat’s intriguing, thought-provoking new drama Creation, now getting its World Premiere in a production that makes it abundantly clear why The Theatre @ Boston Court is as top-tier as 99-Seat-Plan theater gets.
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DANGEROUS CORNER
Monday, October 8th, 2012RECOMMENDED
“Director’s concept” is a tricky business. When inspired, it can enhance a writer’s intentions and allow audiences to see a play or musical in new, exciting ways. When misguided, it can detract from a production’s effectiveness and distract an audience from a clear perception of what the playwright is trying to say. The latter proves to be the case in Crown City Theatre Company’s revival of J.B. Priestley’s 1932 drama Dangerous Corner, though fortunately not fatally so.
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THE RED ROOM
Monday, October 1st, 2012NOT RECOMMENDED
Memories of the past haunt the present of a once successful Hollywood mogul, his tormented wife, and their three adult sons in Christopher Knopf’s frustratingly abstruse The Red Room, now getting its World Premiere at North Hollywood’s NoHo Arts Center.
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EURIPIDES’ HELEN
Friday, September 14th, 2012
Take the greatest legendary beauty of the Ancient World, three of Hollywood’s most glamorous screen legends, the splendor of the Getty Villa’s Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater, the prodigious originality of playwright Nick Salamone, the spellbinding music of David O, and the directorial mastery of Jon Lawrence Rivera, mix all of this together, and the result is Euripides’ Helen, Salamone’s clever, mesmerizing, and oh so entertaining adaptation of the 412 BC play of the same name.
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WAR BRIDE
Monday, August 20th, 2012
When returning WWII G.I. Alvin Rhodes told his mother Catherine he’d be bringing a surprise back to Merced with him, she thought he meant a lovely tea set. About the last thing she was expecting was a Japanese bride. After all, it was only the month before that the “Japs” had surrendered, and as far as Catherine was concerned, they were still our enemy. How dare Alvin play this sick joke on her? How dare he commit treason in this way!
Thus begins Samantha Macher’s highly original and often quite gripping War Bride, now getting its World Premiere production by SkyPilot Theatre, astutely directed and imaginatively choreographed by Nancy Dobbs Owen.
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THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
The facts are cut and dry. On December 21, 1988, PanAm Flight 103 from London to JFK exploded above the village of Lockerbie, Scotland, scattering bodies and debris over 845 square miles, a terrorist bomb hidden inside its front cargo space not only killing all 259 on board but ending the lives of 11 Scots going about about their daily lives in Lockerbie, never suspecting that the sky would soon be quite literally falling upon them. A number of years later, the women of Lockerbie set up a laundry project to wash the 11,000 articles of clothing found amongst the plane’s wreckage, after which the women packed and shipped them to the victims’ families around the world.
Playwright Deborah Brevoort takes these facts and puts a human face on them—to unforgettable effect—in her 2001 drama The Women Of Lockerbie, particularly powerful this summer of 2012 as staged outdoors in the rustic Topanga hills of Theatricum Botanicum—about the closest approximation of the hills of Lockerbie that any American audience is ever likely to get.
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THE PARIS LETTER
Monday, July 30th, 2012
Back in the pre-Stonewall decade when Anton Kilgallen and Sandy Sonnenberg were in their twenties, there were basically two choices for big city gay men. Anton opted for the first, living as “openly” as was possible in the underground world of illegal gay bars and private parties. Sandy chose the second, attempting a pseudo-straight lifestyle by marrying someone of the opposite sex and doing his best to repress whatever same-sex urges might threaten to erupt.
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INCIDENT AT VICHY
Saturday, July 28th, 2012
The mind still boggles and the heart still recoils at the statistics. Nearly 6,000,000 Jews killed, including 90% of the Polish Jewish population, 90% of German and Austrian Jews, and similarly high percentages in the Baltics and Czechoslovakia. If Jews in France fared “better,” with 74% their 350,000 surviving the Holocaust, these figures provided cold comfort to the 90,000 exterminated by the Nazis.
Arthur Miller puts a personal face on a dozen or so of these French victims of Nazi terrorism in his powerful Incident At Vichy, now being revived at the Sierra Madre Playhouse in a proscenium-staged production that comes close to matching what you’d see at the Pasadena Playhouse or any major regional theater, albeit on a smaller scale.
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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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