TO THE BONE
Sunday, October 9th, 2022
Pay no mind to its frustratingly cryptic and even off-putting title. Catherine Butterfield’s alternately sidesplitting/heartstrings-tugging To The Bone is not only one of the year’s best new plays, like David Lindsay-Abaire’s similarly set Good People, the Open Fist Theatre Company World Premiere will keep you guessing—and keep surprising you—from its hilarious start to its unexpected, laughter-through-tears finish.
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CARRIE: THE MUSICAL
Saturday, October 8th, 2022
Director extraordinaire Kari Hayter strips Carrie: The Musical down to basics to better reveal the heart and soul of the Broadway adaptation of the Brian De Palma horror classic, and the results, performed by an all-student cast at USC’s McClintock Theatre, are nothing short of spectacular, even minus the spectacle that’s been a hallmark of previous productions.
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A GREAT WILDERNESS
Wednesday, October 5th, 2022
Idaho playwright Samuel D. Hunter tackles gay conversion therapy in his expectations-defying, cliché-free 2014 drama A Great Wilderness, the riveting latest from Rogue Machine Theatre.
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BABE
Monday, September 26th, 2022Cliffhangers are perfectly fine if you’re writing a series pilot or season finale. Not so much if you’ve written what purports to be a full-length play, which is why, engaged as I was throughout Echo Theater Company’s Babe, I left feeling frustrated, angry, and confused as to why playwright Jessica Goldberg didn’t finish what she’d started so provocatively sixty-five minutes earlier in a more satisfyingly conclusive way.
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OKLAHOMA!
Friday, September 16th, 2022
Forget every Oklahoma! you’ve ever seen. Forget everything you’ve ever heard or said or thought about the 79-year-old classic. Director Daniel Fish’s radically revisionist revival of the Broadway musical that reinvented the genre back in 1943 now feels every bit as revolutionary in 2022 as Rent did in 1994, Spring Awakening in 2006, and Hamilton just a handful of years back.
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LAVENDER MEN
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022
Queer playwright Roger Q. Mason explores the love that dared not speak its name between Abraham Lincoln and his “close friend” Elmer Ellsworth in Lavender Men, at once a gay American history fantasia, a very public therapy session for its self-described “black, fat, femme” author, and one of the most stunning productions in town.
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THE PROM
Thursday, August 11th, 2022
A gaggle of liberal-minded Broadway narcissists descend on conservative Middle America to aid an Indiana teen who just wants to dance in public with the girl she loves in The Prom, the multiple-Tony-nominated musical that now ranks sky-high on my list of 21st-century favorites.
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IF I FORGET
Saturday, July 30th, 2022
A long-simmering family feud fuels Steven Levinson’s hilarious and harrowing off-Broadway tragicomedy If I Forget, dazzlingly reconceived for the Fountain Theatre by director Jason Alexander.
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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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