POCATELLO
Sunday, February 28th, 2016
Small lives matter in Pocatello, just as they do in all of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Idaho plays,” the latest of which now gets an impressive West Coast Premiere by the theater company that gave L.A. audiences Hunter’s equally memorable A Bright New Boise and A Permanent Image.
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PAST TIME
Saturday, February 20th, 2016
Stepping inside someone else’s skin may be just what Grandpa James and Grandson Chris need to make their respective romantic lives click in Padraic Duffy’s deliciously quirky, often side-splittingly funny, ultimately heartwarming (albeit somewhat over-padded) World Premiere comedy Past Time, now playing at Sacred Fools’ excitingly refurbished digs on Hollywood’s Theatre Row.
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THE DODGERS
Monday, February 1st, 2016
What if all it took to determine whether you lived or died was your date of birth? This was the worst nightmare come true of over 850,000 18-26-year-old American males back on December 1, 1969, when the United States government held its first “Draft Lottery,” the losers of which were virtually assured a one-way ticket to Vietnam.
Playwright Diana Amsterdam takes us back to this not-so-long-ago reality in her gripping new play The Dodgers, now getting an exciting World Premiere at the Hudson Mainstage with as star-studded a 20something cast as you’re likely to see all year in a 99-seat production.
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DREAM BOY
Sunday, January 31st, 2016
Nine years after a pair of gay teen boys fell unforgettably into first love in Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing, Celebration Theatre and director Michael Matthews reunite for the similarly themed (albeit considerably darker) Dream Boy, Eric Rosen’s meticulously faithful adaptation of Jim Grimsley’s haunting Southern Gothic novel, an imaginatively directed, superbly performed, gorgeously designed Los Angeles Premiere marred only by poor sightlines that will often have you craning to see the action.
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DEN OF THIEVES
Saturday, January 16th, 2016
Organized crime meets a quartet of disorganized would-be criminals to wild and wacky effect in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Den Of Thieves, now getting a hilarious 20th-anniversary revival by 2Cents Theatre Group.
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THE KILL-OR-DIES
Sunday, January 3rd, 2016
Ovation Award-winning playwright Meghan Brown is back with the intriguingly titled The Kill-Or-Dies, a darkly comedic edge-of-your-seat thriller that will keep you guessing from its first surprise twist all the way up to its gratifyingly unpredictable finish.
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RIO HONDO
Saturday, December 5th, 2015
Earlier this year in their brilliantly spoofy Entropy, playwright Bill Robens and Theatre Of NOTE managed somehow to stage a gazillion-dollar Hollywood space-travel epic inside a 40something-seat theater. Robens and NOTE now work the same magic on that most American of movie genres—the Western—in their World Premiere comedy Rio Hondo, to my knowledge the very first L.A. theater production presented “in CinemaStage” and one that no horse opera lover will want to miss.
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A GOOD FAMILY
Sunday, November 29th, 2015RECOMMENDED
A charge of rape lodged against their college student son casts a pall over a Midwestern American couple’s Christmas Eve celebration in A Good Family, Marja-Lewis Ryan’s World Premiere drama that combines several of the elements that made her award-winning One In The Chamber a critical/popular hit last year—crisp writing, outstanding acting, edge-of-your-seat suspense—yet feels incomplete, and not simply for its hour-and-change running time.
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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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