FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS
Friday, September 10th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
Five Women Wearing The Same dress spend a couple of hours doing what women often do; they talk—about men, about life, about love, about relationships, about sex, in Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing The Same Dress, now playing in Hollywood’s Theater Row at the Ruby. Not much happens during the course of the play’s two acts. Marriages and relationships don’t come apart, though one of the latter does start to blossom. No great new friendships are forged, nor do any fall to pieces. Sort of like real life, when you come to think of it.
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EAT THE RUNT
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
A candidate for a high-level fund-raising position in a major big city art museum is interviewed by various museum higher-ups in Avery Crozier’s Eat The Runt, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere at Theatre Of NOTE.
If the above mini-synopsis seems hardly the stuff of great drama, let alone the laugh-out-loud comedy that Eat The Runt is, then wait till you hear the gimmick that makes it a truly unparalleled theatrical experience.
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CHESS IN CONCERT
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
While watching a recording of the 2008 London production of Chess In Concert at Royal Albert Hall, Musical Theatre Of Los Angeles’s Eduardo Enrikez and Bonnie McMahon were struck with a flash of divine inspiration (or out-and-out insanity)—to stage their own Chess In Concert with a 10-piece orchestra and 20-member cast in a 99-seat theater. A daunting task to say the very least, but then again so were MTLA’s revivals of Ragtime and West Side Story, just two of the Broadway mega-musicals which the creative duo had scaled down to 99-seat dimensions to critical acclaim and audience cheers.
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PARASITE DRAG
Friday, August 13th, 2010
The storm clouds on the Central Illinois horizon pale beside the shadows of abuse, adultery, addiction, illness, incest, and suicide in Parasite Drag, Mark Roberts’ slice of Midwest life now getting its Southern California Premiere at the Elephant Theatre Company. Electrically directed by David Fofi in association with Don Foster and powerfully performed by a quartet of topnotch actors, Parasite Drag mixes dramatic confrontations with biting dollops of humor to gripping effect.
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SHAKE
Saturday, August 7th, 2010
There’s something about Reverse Chronology that can work magic with a tale of innocence lost. Take for example Harold Pinter’s Betrayal or Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, the former beginning with the end of a marriage and ending with the characters’ first meeting, the latter starting off with three irreparably estranged friends and climaxing with the threesome as starry-eyed best-friends-forever. There’s something particularly poignant about a happy ending when you already know the disillusionment yet to come.
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TOPDOG/UNDERDOG
Friday, August 6th, 2010NOT RECOMMENDED
Ben Brantley, the chief drama critic of the New York Times (i.e. the most important theater reviewer in the United States) called Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog “as exciting as any new play from a young American since Tony Kushner’s Angels In America.” It was nominated for a Best Play Tony Award and won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. I found it one of the two longest evenings I’ve spent in a theater in the past year.
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THE EXISTENTS
Friday, July 30th, 2010
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to witness the coming together—and ultimate breakup—of a superstar rock band like, say, Fleetwood Mac, you won’t want to miss The Existents, the new rock musical by Ty Taylor, Douglas Crawford, and Jason Wooten.
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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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