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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WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANGRY?
Saturday, September 10th, 2011
Celebration Theatre opens its 29th season, and its first with John Michael Beck as its Artistic Director, with an all-around sensational revival of Patrick Wilde’s What’s Wrong With Angry?, brilliantly directed by Michael Matthews, impeccably performed by a cast of ten, and stunningly designed by some of L.A.’s finest creative talents. Need I say more?
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THE DEVIL AND DAISY JANE
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
When Andy Warhol spoke about a future in which everyone would get his or her very own Fifteen Minutes Of Fame, he might well have been talking about today’s World Of Reality TV—a universe in which no-talents like the Kardashians, the Hiltons, and John & Kate can become overnight sensations just by being themselves.
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ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE
Friday, July 8th, 2011
When Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane opened on London’s West End back in 1964, a certain Mrs. Edna Welthorpe was inspired to write the Editor of Plays And Players as follows:
“I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion. And to be told that such a disgusting piece of filth now passes for humour. Today’s young playwrights take it upon themselves to flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people. I hope that ordinary people will shortly strike back.”
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DONNA/MADONNA
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1980s, John Paul Karliak always knew he was adopted. What he didn’t figure out until a good deal later was that there wouldn’t be a Mrs. Karliak in his future, if you get my drift. Still, despite young J.P.’s cluelessness to his budding sexual orientation, it must have been hard for his family to mistake the signs: An occasional dress. A running gait like Tinkerbell’s. The ability to quote Auntie Mame as if it were the Bible.
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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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