WIVES
Tuesday, October 13th, 2026
I wish I could say I enjoyed Jaclyn Backhaus’s time-hopping feminist comedy Wives as much as I did the delightful performances and dazzing designs on display in its Southern California Premiere at East West Players.
(read more)
THE DANCE AND THE RAILROAD
Monday, October 5th, 2026
Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang combines fact, fiction, and Chinese Opera in The Dance And The Railroad, a strikingly acted, designed, and danced Artists At Play and Latino Theater Company revival of Hwang’s poignant 1981 one-act.
(read more)
THE PETERSON SHOW
Tuesday, September 29th, 2026
The laughs come fast and furious amidst resurrected childhood traumas when five Cosby Show-style sitcom siblings find themselves reunited decades later in Janine Nabers’ The Peterson Show, the latest World Premiere Echo Theater Company must-see.
(read more)
A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026
A pair of single fathers from mirror-opposite backgrounds bond against all odds over parenthood, financial challenges, and a shared “specific kind of sadness” in Samuel D. Hunter’s deeply moving two-hander, A Case For The Existence Of God, the fifth of Hunter’s 15 “Idaho Plays” to get a pitch-perfect Los Angeles Premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre.
(read more)
MARISOL
Saturday, September 19th, 2026
I can’t fault the talent that’s gone into bringing Open Fist Theatre’s revival of José Rivera’s Obie-winning Marisol to nightmarish life, but I found the Puerto Rican playwright’s vision of a dystopian New York City under siege almost as torturous to sit through as the unrelenting, apocalyptic horrors its titular heroine has to endure in scene after excruciating scene.
(read more)
THE ARSONISTS
Saturday, September 5th, 2026
Max Frisch’s 1950s absurdist gem The Arsonists gets a strikingly staged and marvelously performed 21st-century update at the Skylight Theatre that welcomes to the L.A. theater scene an exciting new collective appropriately called The Firebugs.
(read more)
F**KING STRANGERS
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026
Erik Patterson, L.A.’s master of “I didn’t see that coming” plot twists, is back at Echo Theater with his sexiest and most provocative play in years, the twisty-turny, edge-of-your-seat, and very sexy F**king Strangers.
(read more)
IF/THEN
Monday, July 13th, 2026
The production itself is a mixed bag, but at the very least Chromolume Theatre’s black-box staging of the Broadway musical If/Then gives L.A. audiences the chance to rediscover a show that didn’t deserve to vanish from sight after its National Tour played the Pantages ten years ago.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2026 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY