COLLECTED STORIES
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
The mentor-pupil relationship of an acclaimed author of short stories and her most promising student is charted over a period of six years in Donald Margulies’ compelling drama Collected Stories. Now returning with its original star to South Coast Repertory (where it had its world premiere in 1996), this much awaited revival proves a sterling example of big-stage professional theater at its best.
(read more)
THE MIRACLE WORKER
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Helen Keller. Annie Sullivan.
Few Americans can hear these names without recalling William Gibson’s Tony-winning The Miracle Worker. It’s been fifty years since the now classic biodrama debuted on Broadway, so long ago that to today’s theatergoers, it seems scarcely possible that there was a time before this extraordinary true story became part of our consciousness. Few are those who have not seen either the Oscar-winning 1962 film or its two TV remakes (Patty Duke won the Oscar (and Tony) for playing Helen and the Emmy for playing Annie) or one of its countless school or community theater productions. Major professional revivals are less common, though, all the more reason to greet Joel Daavid’s powerful new production with excitement.
(read more)
TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Papo is a Puerto Rican hustler who’s been selling his body on the mean streets of early 1990s New York City since the age of fifteen. Brian is a 26-year-old gay virgin who frequents phone sex lines and adult bookstores, alternately craving and fearing his first sexual experience. Bobby is a 16-year-old runaway whose older brothers have been raping him daily since he was twelve.
(read more)
BREAKING THE CODE
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Superbly directed by Robert Mammana and featuring a tour de force lead performance by M Butterfly’s Sam R. Ross, Breaking The Code is, simply put, must-see theater. Despite its 1930s to 1950s English setting, Hugh Whitemore’s biodrama remains vital and relevant to 21st Century America, both as a reminder of a time not so long ago when a confession of homosexual acts could send a man to prison, and as proof that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
(read more)
THE REHEARSAL
Sunday, May 10th, 2009RECOMMENDED
The French, They Are A Funny Race, or so goes the title of a 1955 Preston Sturges comedy. Not having seen that film, I’m not quite sure which “funny” its title refers to—“funny-amusing” or “funny-peculiar.” In Jean Anouilh’s The Rehearsal, it’s quite clearly a good deal of both.
(read more)
THE CRUCIBLE
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009NOT RECOMMENDED
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible holds a special place in my heart. It gave me my very first experience as a stage actor at the age of 16, and though I later watched the 1996 film on video, it wasn’t until December 2007 that I saw The Crucible staged for the very first time, decades after high school, in a production that left me devastated, as the playwright certainly intended.
(read more)
WAIT UNTIL DARK
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
The dark is a scary place to be. Just think back on all the movie and TV thrillers with the word “dark” in their title: Dark Shadows, The Dark House, Whispers In The Dark, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, Dark Water, and of course Elvira Mistress Of The Dark—to name just a few.
(read more)
PHOTOGRAPH 51
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
In an ironic twist of fate, Dr. Rosalind Franklin, the woman who should have shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure received no recognition whatsoever from the Nobel Foundation. True, the Foundation does not award the prize posthumously, and Dr. Franklin had died four years earlier. No, the real irony is that Rosalind Franklin died without even knowing her part in this world-changing discovery.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2026 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY