GOING TO ST. IVES
Saturday, March 1st, 2014
A woman wracked with guilt over the unintentional role she has played in her son’s accidental death. A woman tormented by having given birth to a murderous son. These two mothers meet, with life-changing consequences, in Lee Blessing’s powerful two-hander Going To St. Ives, the latest from Hollywood’s illustrious Actors Co-op.
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THE MYSTERY PLAYS
Monday, December 23rd, 2013
Imaginative direction, terrific performances, and an ingenious production design add up to engrossing theater as The Visceral Company presents the pair of one-acts that playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has somewhat awkwardly fused together as The Mystery Plays.
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THE INVISIBLE PLAY
Friday, December 13th, 2013
Have you ever felt so unnoticed by those around you that you said to yourself, “I might as well be invisible.” Well, that’s exactly how office worker Colin feels in Alex Dremann’s existential romantic comedy The Invisible Play (aka THE :NV:S:BLE PLAY), and though T:P could have benefited from some tightening and sharpening before making its West Coast Premiere, it proves a terrific acting showcase for Criminal Minds’ Kirsten Vangsness and her fellow company members at Hollywood’s Theatre of NOTE.
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SAVE ME
Sunday, November 10th, 2013
Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington, All About Eve’s Eve Harrington, Mean Girls’ Regina George, Melrose Place’s Amanda Woodward, Days Of Our Lives’ Sami Brady … All these movie and TV bad girls owe a debt of gratitude to the brazen hussy that started it all way back in 1890, the one-and-only Hedda Gabler, brought up to 21st Century life in Save Me, Valerie Rachelle’s modern interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s late 19th-Century classic, directed with style and flair by Rachelle and featuring a sensational Shannon Nelson as Her Majesty, Queen Bitch Hedda.
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THE POKÉMUSICAL
Thursday, November 7th, 2013RECOMMENDED
A second extension of the Hollywood Fringe Festival hit The Pokémusical made it possible for this reviewer to catch the much talked-about musical spoof of the animated Pokénon TV series and films, one which features quite a few laughs and some terrific performances. Despite those pluses, however, I must confess to having ended up a good deal less a fan of The Pokémusical than its rave reviews had led me to expect. (read more)
DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE
Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
What a difference a director can make, and by director I mean MaryJo DuPrey, whose vision for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde at Actors Co-op has inspired an outstanding cast and brilliant team of designers to take a play about which I had previously expressed decidedly mixed feelings and turned it into a psychological thriller par excellence.
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SUNNY AFTERNOON
Sunday, October 20th, 2013
On November 22, 1963, at about half-past-noon Dallas time, President John F. Kennedy was shot as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository … and thirty minutes later was pronounced dead. On November 24, the President’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself fatally shot by local nightclub operator Jack Ruby as a nation sitting glued to their TV screens looked on in horror.
But what about the forty-eight hours separating these two America-shattering events?
Playwright-director Christian Levatino and his gangbusters theatre company* let us be flies on the walls of the Dallas Police Headquarters where Oswald spent his last two days under police interrogation in Levatino’s gripping new play Sunny Afternoon, now getting its official World Premiere following its Best-Of-Fringe-winning workshop at last June’s Hollywood Fringe Festival.
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THE BURNT PART BOYS
Monday, September 16th, 2013
An Appalachian teen sets off on a mission that will change his life and the lives of those he loves in Mariana Elder, Chris Miller, and Nathan Tysen’s exquisite new musical, The Burnt-Part Boys, now getting a polished gem of a West Coast Premiere under the inspired direction of Richard Israel.
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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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