ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011RECOMMENDED
All This, And Heaven Too is an entertaining look at gay life over 40 viewed through
a musical comedy lens. As the production’s soft shoe opener “Trolls” (the show’s
original off-Broadway title) proclaims, gay men past a certain age are considered
“mean and crabby, soft and flabby.” As All This, And Heaven Too reveals, they
also have a zest for life, and more of an appreciation for the freedoms and the
greater acceptance society has granted them post-Stonewall than “those little
twits who don’t even know who Ethel Merman was.”
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THE PLAYGROUND
Monday, November 21st, 2011RECOMMENDED
Homeless youth are given a voice—a singing voice—in Michael Leoni’s ambitious, sprawling “street rock musical” The Playground, now playing at Hollywood’s Met Theatre under the playwright’s direction.
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AS IS
Saturday, November 19th, 2011
The year was 1985 and New York City’s gay male population was gripped by a fear akin to that which the citizens of London must have felt in 1665 at the outbreak of the Great Plague. Only four years had passed since a New York Native news article headlined “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded” had reassured its readers not to worry about grapevine tales of a so-called “gay cancer.” By 1985, that disease, or more accurately put, that syndrome had its very own acronym, though it was not until that very year that President Ronald Reagan finally said the word AIDS in public. There were 5636 known AIDS-related deaths in the United States in 1985.
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JERKER
Monday, November 14th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Robert Chesley’s 1986 two-character drama Jerker has been called “one of the most important pieces of gay theater ever created,” though you’d be hard-pressed to determine why this is so based only on the 25th Anniversary production now on stage at Space 916 in West Hollywood.
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BABY DOLL
Sunday, November 13th, 2011NOT RECOMMENDED
Joel Daavid’s production of Tennessee Williams’ Baby Doll starts off strikingly as elderly Aunt Rose Comfort enters her nephew’s ramshackle Mississippi cotton gin and frees the play’s ensemble/Greek chorus one by one from the clothesline where they have been hanging for the last twenty minutes as the audience has been entering the Lillian Theatre and taking their seats.
DUSK RINGS A BELL
Friday, October 14th, 2011
Playwright Stephen Belber starts off his latest with a classic romantic setup—then throws the audience an unexpectedly serious curve—in Dusk Rings A Bell, his not quite perfect but nonetheless highly affecting two-hander, now playing at Hollywood’s Blank Theatre in an exquisitely acted and directed West Coast Premiere.
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LOVE SICK
Friday, October 7th, 2011
A loaded gun proves the best medicine for lovesick Emily in Kristina Poe’s deliciously dark comedy Love Sick, now getting its World Premiere production at the always edgy Elephant Theatre.
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FALSETTOS
Monday, September 12th, 2011
William Finn’s Falsettos has made a rare return visit to Los Angeles in an absolutely splendid production at the brand new Third Street Theatre. To paraphrase one of its songs, “What More Need I Say?”
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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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