ASKANCE
Saturday, December 24th, 2011RECOMMENDED
The sins of the past play havoc with the lives of a trio of seniors about to be booted from their retirement home in Kerr Seth Lordygan’s World Premiere drama Askance. Though still a work in progress, Askance is capably directed for the Eclectic Company Theatre by Sabrina Lloyd, features several particularly strong performances, and concludes with some satisfying Act Two surprise twists and revelations.
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DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
A beautiful young woman marries an elderly widower only to find herself irresistibly attracted to his twenty-five-year-old son, with whom she begins a torrid affair behind her septuagenarian hubby’s back. Wishing to insure that the old man’s property remains tied to wife rather than son, the ingenious beauty connives to conceive a child with her lover and pass it off as her aged spouse’s. Murder ensues.
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DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
Several years before Cher responded to Nicolas Cage’s declaration of love with a “Snap out of it!” and a pair of slaps in the now classic romcom Moonstruck, its Oscar-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley gained theatrical fame with Danny And The Deep Blue Sea, a two-character one-act “Apache Dance” performed by a pair of protagonists who make Moonstruck’s Ronny and Loretta seem positively angelic by comparison. These two characters, Roberta and Danny, are now brought to vivid, gutsy, mesmerizing life by Juliet Landau and Matthew J. Williamson in Crown City Theatre Company’s stunning revival of the early ‘80s Shanley gem.
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ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES
Monday, November 28th, 2011
If ever there’s been a reason for Los Angeles playgoers to plan a road trip to San Diego, it’s ion theatre company’s current revival of Tony Kushner’s rarely produced Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, presented in two parts, making for a total of over six hours of thrilling, event-status theater.
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CRUMBLE (LAY ME DOWN JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE)
Sunday, November 27th, 2011RECOMMENDED
The walls have eyes…and ears and a mouth and arms and legs in Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake), Sheila Callaghan’s surreal family drama, now playing at Sacred Fools Theatre.
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AS IS
Saturday, November 19th, 2011
The year was 1985 and New York City’s gay male population was gripped by a fear akin to that which the citizens of London must have felt in 1665 at the outbreak of the Great Plague. Only four years had passed since a New York Native news article headlined “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded” had reassured its readers not to worry about grapevine tales of a so-called “gay cancer.” By 1985, that disease, or more accurately put, that syndrome had its very own acronym, though it was not until that very year that President Ronald Reagan finally said the word AIDS in public. There were 5636 known AIDS-related deaths in the United States in 1985.
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JERKER
Monday, November 14th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Robert Chesley’s 1986 two-character drama Jerker has been called “one of the most important pieces of gay theater ever created,” though you’d be hard-pressed to determine why this is so based only on the 25th Anniversary production now on stage at Space 916 in West Hollywood.
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BABY DOLL
Sunday, November 13th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Joel Daavid’s production of Tennessee Williams’ Baby Doll starts off strikingly as elderly Aunt Rose Comfort enters her nephew’s ramshackle Mississippi cotton gin and frees the play’s ensemble/Greek chorus one by one from the clothesline where they have been hanging for the last twenty minutes as the audience has been entering the Lillian Theatre and taking their seats.
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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