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.
BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
That thrilling period in African American history known as the Harlem Renaissance has only recently been cut short by the onset of the Great Depression when first we meet the fascinating characters created by Pearl Cleage in Blues For An Alabama Sky, the Atlanta-based playwright’s meaty period drama which Sheldon Epps has brought to the Pasadena Playhouse in a richly exciting production under his own inspired direction.
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NEXT FALL
Saturday, November 5th, 2011
Rarely has the romantic axiom that “Opposites attract” proven more true than for the couple at the heart of Geoffrey Nauffts’ Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award-nominated Next Fall, now getting a powerful, beautifully acted West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse.
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THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL
Friday, November 4th, 2011
The lives of ordinary people make for extraordinary theater in Horton Foote’s 1953 drama The Trip To Bountiful, revived to perfection at South Coast Repertory under the delicately shaded direction of Martin Benson.
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BHUTAN
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
Something went dreadfully wrong in the life of New Hampshire high school senior Warren Conroy a year ago, or so we surmise from our first glimpse of him, behind bars, in Daisy Foote’s riveting family drama Bhutan, now getting a superb West Coast Premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre under the inspired direction of Elina de Santos.
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HERMETICALLY SEALED
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Hermitically Sealed is both the title of Kathryn Graf’s compelling new family drama and an apt description of the way 40something caterer Tessie May has chosen to live the life she shares with her teenage male offspring—like an egg, “safe and sound in its own little world.”
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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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