BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
Though he never appears on stage during the play’s 90-minute running time, the real star of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, currently wowing North Hollywood audiences, is the man who conceived and directed the supernaturally screamalicious production—Ken Sawyer. In lesser hands, and without the state-of-the-art sound and lighting equipment at the NoHo Arts Center, Hamilton Dean and John L. Balderston’s stage play might be a campy, creaky mess. Instead, it is an entirely thrilling evening of theater which provides the pleasures of the greatest horror films—shocks and screams galore—in three dimensions and surround sound.
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VIOLET SHARP
Monday, February 16th, 2009RECOMMENDED
On the evening of March 1, 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the Lindberghs’ New Jersey home. Lindbergh, Sr., who had achieved international fame as the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, herself an accomplished aviatrix, ended up paying the $50,000 ransom demanded by the unknown kidnapper(s) only to have their son’s decomposed body discovered just miles from their home on May 12. A little over four years after the kidnapping, a German named Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the crime, protesting his innocence till the end.
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THE JAZZ AGE
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
Anyone needing ammunition against those who claim that there is no theater (i.e. great theater) in Los Angeles have only to invite the naysayers to The Blank’s production of The Jazz Age and lo and behold—crow will be eaten. Everything about this West Coast premiere of Allan Knee’s biodrama is first-class grade-A brilliant, from its direction (by Michael Matthews) to its superb trio of actors (Jeremy Gabriel, Luke Macfarlane, and Heather Prete) to its exquisite design to the above-stage band led by Ian Whitcomb.
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TIME STANDS STILL
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends held a microscope up to the lives of two married couples, a foursome of best friends for a decade. Throughout the course of the play’s two acts, the audience sees the two couples as they see one another … and as they see themselves in the privacy of their own homes.
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THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOLDS
Friday, February 6th, 2009
What would you do if a simple test early in pregnancy could determine whether or not your child would be born with a physical defect or a propensity towards a debilitating illness? What if such a test could even tell you what your unborn child’s sexual orientation might be?
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WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
The Rubicon Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf is one that I have been eagerly awaiting since it was first announced as part of the Rubicon’s 2008-9 season, and to end any suspense, let me say right away that this Virginia Woolf does not disappoint. It is a flawless production of one of the most famed and discussed plays of the second half of the 20th Century, the tale of one drunken evening at the home of college Assistant Professor George and his wife Martha, and their two young late night guests.
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REVERB
Sunday, January 25th, 2009RECOMMENDED
A 20something couple express their love by beating each other black and blue in Reverb, the latest—and darkest—of Leslye Headland’s Seven Deadly Plays, or at least of the three reviewed here.
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THE SERMONS OF JOHN BRADLEY
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
The story of a young gay man’s journey to self-acceptance has been told countless times before in plays, films, and novels. What makes The Sermons Of John Bradley unique (and particularly powerful) is the manner in which playwright/actor Hunter Lee Hughes tells his story, as a series of “sermons” given by the son of a disgraced Southern Baptist preacher. Neither solo performance nor performance art (though it has aspects of both), The Sermons Of John Bradley is ultimately just very fine theater, and a memorable showcase for the talents of a gifted young writer-actor.
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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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