MRS. CHRISTMAS
Monday, December 8th, 2025
San Diego theater treasure Linda Libby stands in for prolific playwright Tom Jacobson in Jacobson’s funny and loving musical tribute to his truly one-of-a-kind mother in Mrs. Christmas, now spreading holiday cheer at Long Beach’s Aurora Theatre.
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MS. HOLMES & MS. WATSON–APT. 2B
Monday, October 27th, 2025Even the finest theaters can be permitted a major misfire from time to time, and such is the case with International Theatre Company’s 2025 season closer, Kate Hammill’s Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson–Apt. 2B.
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HELLO, DOLLY!
Sunday, October 19th, 2025
Tami Tappan Damiano lights up the Musical Theatre West stage like nobody’s business as the one-and-only Dolly Levi in the record-breaking 10-Tony-Award-winning Best Musical of 1964, Hello, Dolly!, not only one of Broadway’s Golden Era’s greatest but one of MTW’s most spectacular productions in years.
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MASALA DABBA
Monday, September 15th, 2025
An Indian widow pays an unexpected visit to the adult daughter she hasn’t communicated with in over fifteen years, her daughter’s African-American husband, and the teenage granddaughter she has never met in Wendy Graf’s cross-cultural family drama Marsela Dabba, an impressive International City Theatre World Premiere.
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BUDDY – THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY
Sunday, July 13th, 2025
Buddy Holly may have left this earth some six-and-a-half decades ago on “the day the music died”, but the 1950s rock and roll legend lives on in Long Beach in the person of dazzling quadruple-threat phenom Will Riddle in Musical Theatre West’s rousing revival of musical/tribute concert hybrid that is Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story.
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THE ANGEL NEXT DOOR
Saturday, June 14th, 2025
The stakes are sky-high when an about-to-be-published young novelist discovers that the inspiration for his debut opus may not be The Angel Next Door he’s imagined her to be in the Los Angeles Premiere of Paul Slade Smith’s latest comedic bonbon, a surefire late-spring hit for International City Theatre.
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THE VIOLIN MAKER
Tuesday, April 29th, 2025Its heart is definitely in the right place, and I can’t fault the performances elicited by director caryn desai, but I found Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum and Ronda Spinak’s downer of a Holocaust memorial play The Violin Maker too narration-and-flashbacks-heavy to fully command my attention throughout most of its two-hour running time.
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INTO THE WOODS
Monday, March 31st, 2025
Over a dozen star turns make Musical Theatre West’s staging of a Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine classic that rarity among Into The Woods revivals, a big-stage, big-talent triumph that captures the magic of the 1987 Broadway original while treating audiences to inspired new interpretations of the fairytale musical’s now iconic roles.
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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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