BRIGHT STAR
Friday, February 28th, 2020
Glendale Centre Theatre treats audiences to Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star, not only a heady mix of love, betrayal, hope, and redemption but a masterful example of how to convert a great big Broadway show from its multimillion-dollar proscenium roots to a mini-budgeted in-the-round retooling with zero loss of emotional impact.
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MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Sunday, February 23rd, 2020
A powerful government official offers to suspend a sex offender’s death sentence in exchange for a night of love-making with the convicted man’s virginal sister.
William Shakespeare foreshadows the #MeToo movement by about four hundred years in Measure For Measure, a four-century-old play given stunning contemporary relevance by directors Armin Shimerman and Elizabeth Swain at Antaeus Theatre Company.
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IT SHOULDA BEEN YOU
Monday, February 17th, 2020
Judging from yesterday’s standing ovation, audiences in attendance at Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only concert staged reading of It Shoulda Been You most likely came to the identical conclusion as this reviewer. The 2015 Broadway musical romcom shoulda been a hit.
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CHARLEY’S AUNT
Saturday, January 4th, 2020
Effervescent performances by a pitch-perfect cast, inspired direction by a Broadway National Tour vet only just out of his teens, and a script so fresh and funny, you’d hardly guess it was written over a hundred-twenty-five years ago combine to make Glendale Centre Theatre’s in-the-round staging of Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt the year’s first bona fide comedy hit.
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EIGHT NIGHTS
Saturday, November 9th, 2019
A Holocaust survivor newly arrived in 1940s New York. An African-American couple who’ve journeyed north in the tumultuous ’60s in hopes of escaping racism down south. The Japanese-American grandson of WWII internment camp detainees circa 1988. A Syrian refugee in Trump-era America. Playwright Jennifer Maisel weaves together these characters and their interconnected stories in her decades-spanning World Premiere drama Eight Nights, an Antaeus Theatre Company triumph.
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ELIJAH
Monday, November 4th, 2019
Strangers find themselves stuck inside a rural TGI Friday’s as a hurricane rages not far from where a serial killer is about to be put to death in Judith Leora’s Elijah, 72 minutes of drama, comedy, mystery, suspense, and hot-button issues that kept me on the edge of my Victory Theatre seat from start to finish.
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THE ABUELAS
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019Departing from its tradition of reviving theatrical classics, Antaeus Theatre Company opens its 2019/2020 season with the West Coast Premiere of The Abuelas, Stephanie Alison Walker’s mostly disappointing follow-up to The Madres.
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BARNUM
Tuesday, September 24th, 2019Seven stellar triple-threat featured performers and some particularly ingenious directorial touches made Musical Theatre Guild’s one-night-only concert staged reading of the 1980 Broadway hit Barnum worth seeing despite a title performance not up to MTG standards.
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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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