ELEVATOR
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Take a bunch of strangers and trap them in an enclosed space for a significant enough length of time and it’s a sure bet they’ll come out changed by the experience—if plays and movies are to be believed. Take the jurors in Twelve Angry Men, Tom Hanks and assorted others in You’ve Got Mail, or the high school kids in The Breakfast Club. Eleven jurors changed their verdict, Tom decided to leave Parker Posey for Meg Ryan, and the Princess, Jock, Brain, Criminal, and Basket Case all revealed themselves to be night-and-day different from our first impression of them and bonded in the process. Such is the stuff of stage and screen fiction.
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AIN’T WE GOT FUN
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Ain’t We Got Fun, Ben Hensley and Michael Montiel’s nostalgic look back at early 20th Century vaudeville, makes for forty-five of the brightest minutes you’re likely to enjoy this year.
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YELLOW
Friday, June 11th, 2010
It’s been four years since Del Shores’ Greatest Hits (Sordid Lives, Southern Baptist Sissies, and Trials And Tribulations Of A Trailer Trash Housewife) packed audiences into the Zephyr Theatre for eight memorable months, and over seven years since Shores’ last new play debuted. Since then, Shores and company have gone on to tour the country with the writer’s particular brand of Southern-fried charm and humor, and to produce Sordid Lives: The Series to considerable acclaim. Still, it’s been far too long since Angelinos have had the chance to experience the Shores magic live on stage.
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ANNE FRASER THOMAS
Monday, June 7th, 2010
Tall, dark-haired, and gorgeous, Anne Fraser Thomas is one of our finest, and most unique, musical theater talents—as Monday’s standing room only crowd at Hollywood’s Magic Castle can certainly attest to. Over the course of an eclectic hour of song and magic (of the musical sort), Anne took her devoted family, friends, and fans on a musical journey through her life from her early years as a multi-ethnic wunderkind (there wasn’t a lesson or class young Anne wasn’t taking) up through her present day bicoastal life.
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LENNY BRUCE IS BACK (AND BOY IS HE PISSED)
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Ask most people about Lenny Bruce and the first words that pop into their heads might be “comedian,” “arrested,” and “obscenity.” That and maybe “died young” and “drug overdose.”
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BEHIND THE GATES
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010RECOMMENDED
Bethany Lieberman’s adoptive parents are at their wits’ end. The privileged seventeen-year-old has turned to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll to the point that she now sees Mom and Dad as the devil incarnate. Fearing that their child, born to a crack-addicted mother, may possibly be beyond saving, Susan and Jerry Lieberman ship Bethany off to Israel, kicking and screaming.
What the Liebermans are hoping for is a miracle. What they get is the same kind of nightmare Sally Field faced in Not Without My Daughter.
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BECOMING BUTCH
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Some people dream of becoming rich, others of becoming famous, but as a child growing up in Queens, New York, young Vincent James Arcuri dreamed of becoming butch, or so we learn in Becoming Butch, Arcuri’s delightful, captivating, and ultimately inspiring one-man performance, continuing its midweek run at the Celebration Theatre over the next two Tuesdays.
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THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
The projects are alive with the sound of music in Tim Acito’s adaptation of Gloria Naylor’s The Women Of Brewster Place, but don’t expect any “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” or “cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels” anywhere in the vicinity of the walled-in housing development where these women lead their dreary, heartbreaking, and heartache-plagued lives. Times are indeed tough for Mattie, Etta Mae, Kiswana, Lorraine, Tee, Cora Lee, Mavis, and Sophie, but they’ve got their music—and each other—to pull themselves through.
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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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