LAST CALL
Monday, February 4th, 2019
Anne Kenney is hardly the first writer to tackle the issues confronting adult children of aging parents but her theatrical debut, Last Call, an Open Fist Theatre Company World Premiere, is as perceptive and powerful as family dramas get.
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AUGUST WILSON’S TWO TRAINS RUNNING
Sunday, February 3rd, 2019
August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Two Trains Running arrives at the Matrix just in time for Black History Month in as powerfully staged and performed a production as any theatergoer, regardless of color, could possibly wish for.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Friday, January 18th, 2019
Outstanding performances, nuanced direction, and thrillingly original choreography (all by USC students) make Musical Theatre Repertory’s intimate staging of the 2007 Broadway musical hit Spring Awakening one of the best in a long line of Grade-A MTR productions.
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LINDA VISTA
Thursday, January 17th, 2019
Tracy Letts could just as easily have called his latest play Train Wreck, so hot a mess is its 50-year-old protagonist that much of the pleasure of Letts’ relentlessly funny, defiantly unsentimental Linda Vista (a Steppenwolf visitor to the Mark Taper Forum) is watching its antihero (emphasis on the anti) get what he so richly deserves.
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DESERT RATS
Tuesday, January 8th, 2019
It isn’t just aspiring kidnappers who owe it to themselves to check out Nate Rufus Edelman’s Desert Rats for a primer on what not to do when abducting a high school cheerleader but anyone seeking L.A. theater at its entertainingly edgy best.
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WINK
Saturday, December 29th, 2018Casting a non-binary actor as a non-binary protagonist merits snaps, but the two-hour suspension of disbelief required of an audience by Neil Koenigsberg’s Wink sinks whatever good intentions may have prompted its playwright to put fingertips to keyboard.
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SISTERS THREE
Friday, December 21st, 2018A pair of quirky contemporary adult siblings bearing more than a passing resemblance to Anne and Emily Brontë generate dramatic sparks aplenty in Jami Brandli’s Sisters Three, that is until Charlotte shows up near the end and the Inkwell Theater World Premiere turns from a mostly quite absorbing two-hander to a solo performance that goes off the deep end … way off.
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SCISSORHANDS
Sunday, December 16th, 2018
The magic and wonder and humor and heart of a Tim Burton movie classic come to haunting musical life as Rockwell Table + Stage and The Fuse Project debut Scissorhands, the ideal holiday alternative for those who prefer their Christmas season entertainment with an edge.
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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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