BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!)
Tuesday, November 13th, 2018Clementine, Maddy, and Antonia are women on the verge of a nervous breakdown in North Orange, New Jersey circa 1960 in Jami Brandli’s BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!). That they’re also Clytemnestra, Medea, and Antigone reincarnated is one reason Brandli’s take on mid-20th-century suburbia works considerably less well than it would if she had stuck to satire. The other is the play’s two-and-a-half-hour running time.
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THE COLOR PURPLE
Monday, November 12th, 2018
Sensational performances and an intimate theatrical setting make Greenway Arts Alliance’s The Color Purple an exciting addition to the L.A. holiday scene if not as spectacular a revival as the musical’s 2012 99-seat L.A. debut.
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VALLEY OF THE HEART
Thursday, November 8th, 2018Epic in scope, educational in intent, and exquisite in design, Luis Valdez’s Valley Of The Heart examines America’s WWII internment of its Japanese-American citizens and their foreign-born family members in ways both familiar (the Broadway musical Allegiance played L.A. just ten months ago) and original (our narrator is Mexican-American). If only the Zoot Suit playwright proved more adept at creating authentic-sounding dialog. If only Valley Of The Heart didn’t so often feel like Wikipedia on stage.
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THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF STRANGER THINGS
Monday, November 5th, 2018
The talented team who spoofed Bridesmaids, Clueless, Jurassic Park, Hocus Pocus, and Home Alone to hilarious effect take satirical aim at Stranger Things, the latest of their Unauthorized Musical Parody series at Rockwell Table + Stage and one of UMPO’s best.
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AVENUE Q
Friday, November 2nd, 2018
Avenue Q proves an ideal showcase for ten terrifically talented Trojans, eight of whom are making their Musical Theatre Repertory debuts, as USC’s premier all-student musical theater company opens its 13th season with 2004’s Tony-winning grown-up take on a children’s TV classic.
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VIETGONE
Saturday, October 27th, 2018
Romantic comedy lovers are in for a treat as a couple of Vietnamese evacuees in an Arkansas refugee camp circa 1975 fall reluctantly in love in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone, one of East West Players’ all-around best productions in years.
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BABY EYES
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018Playwright Donald Jolly takes us back to 1950s Baltimore via Ancient Greece in Baby Eyes, a Playwrights’ Arena World Premiere that scores points for ambitious intentions if not for its campy mix of ancient myth, Greek tragedy, ’50s melodrama, and men in drag.
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GLORIA
Tuesday, September 25th, 2018
The office banter amongst the millennials who toil for a New Yorker-style magazine in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Gloria may be catty, querulous, gossipy, back-stabbing, and hilarious as all get-out, but the 33-year-old playwright has far more than edgy cable sitcom humor on his mind in his 2015 off-Broadway hit, a ripped-from-today’s-headlines gut-puncher of an Echo Theater Company West Coast Premiere.
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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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