PROOF
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
In the decade since David Auburn’s Proof premiered on Broadway, the four-character drama has become one of the most produced plays in the United States. For a time there, it seemed that just about every regional, intimate, or community theater in Los Angeles was doing, had done, or was going to do their own version of the Broadway hit—and no wonder. How many plays can you name that have won the Drama Desk Award for Best New Play, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle and Tony Awards for Best Play, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama? Add to that the fact that it’s a one-set play which offers several of the best acting roles of this or any decade, and you’ve got a play that any theater in its right mind would want to have as part of its season.
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THE MERCY SEAT
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
What if a national tragedy offered you the chance to start a new life, in a new city, without the complications of a marriage you no longer wanted to be part of and children you didn’t want to put through the hell of a divorce? What if there was someone else in your life, someone you’d been seeing secretly for several years, someone who could start that new life with you somewhere far, far away if you simply pretended to be one of the missing-presumed-dead? Would you make the break for freedom? Would she be willing to join you?
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JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
When Abby Mann wrote Judgment At Nuremberg for its 1959 telecast on Playhouse 90, the Eisenhower administration set about to insure that the production would never see the airwaves. A teleplay about Nazi war criminals on trial for their part in the Holocaust could impede efforts to make Germany an ally in the then-raging Cold War, officials maintained. Ultimately, though, the show did go on, but not without one of the program’s sponsors, American Gas, Inc., insisting on muting the words “gas ovens.”
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AfterMath
Sunday, February 27th, 2011
When mathematician Bob Goldstein committed suicide by jumping into the Hudson River, he left behind the following short note: “I can’t take it anymore. Take care of the kids. Sell the car.” And that was all he wrote.
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CAMINO REAL
Thursday, February 24th, 2011RECOMMENDED
Imagine you could get inside Tennessee Williams’ head. More specifically, imagine you could witness one of his nightmares—a nearly three-hour-long one after an ingestion of LSD. What you’d see would likely resemble the playwright’s Camino Real, or at least Camino Real as envisioned by director extraordinaire Jessica Kubzansky at Pasadena’s Theatre @ Boston Court.
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“MASTER HAROLD” … AND THE BOYS
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Sometimes the event of a single day, of a single conversation even, can change a person’s life forever. This is certainly the case for seventeen-year-old Hally in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the boys, now playing at Ventura’s esteemed Rubicon Theatre in a couldn’t-be-better production.
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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
As I sat last night watching the lives of Atticus, Scout, Jem, and the rest of the characters created by Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird, I couldn’t help looking at the audience around me, mostly seniors, their ages hovering around 76, give or take a few years, and think of the changes that have taken place in our society since 1935, the year Lee’s novel-turned-play takes place, the year in which many of those audience members first saw the light of day.
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THE BREAK OF NOON
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
An embittered pink-slipped employee enters his former workplace and, automatic weapon in hand, murders thirty-seven of his ex-coworkers yet spares number thirty-eight, leaving the massacre’s sole survivor to wonder why. Why was he alone shown mercy? To whom does he owe this inexplicable stroke of salvation?
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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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