NICKY
Friday, June 9th, 2017
Chekhov’s melancholy antihero Nikolai Ivanov is alive and well and living unhappily ever after in today’s Palm Springs as Nicky, the titular protagonist of Boni B. Alvarez’s rewardingly adventurous reinvention of a late-19th-century Russian classic.
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THE LAST BREAKFAST CLUB
Sunday, June 4th, 2017
Imagine John Hughes’ archetypal Brain, Athlete, Basket Case, Princess, and Criminal performing twenty or so ‘80s hits to a live band inside the Shermer High School library as the only kids left in “an apocalypse of nuclear zombies” and you’ve got The Last Breakfast Club, the latest from Rockwell Table And Stage and the ab-fab first in a series of The Fuse Project musical movie spoofs.
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FIVE GUYS NAMED MOE
Monday, May 22nd, 2017
The Nate Holden Performing Arts joint is a-jumpin’—and then some—as Ebony Repertory Theatre thrills L.A. audiences with its 25th-anniversary revival of the Best Musical Tony-nominated Five Guys Named Moe, Broadway’s crowd-captivating tribute to the songs of 1940s R&B pioneer Louis Jordan.
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JERSEY BOYS
Friday, May 19th, 2017
Mark Ballas shows off Frankie Valli vocals to match his Dancing With The Stars footwork as Jersey Boys, the 12th-longest-running show in Broadway history, arrives at the Ahmanson Theatre to dazzle audiences with its true-life story of pop legends The Four Seasons (plus a few dozen Top Forty smashes thrown in for zing).
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NEXT TO NORMAL
Friday, May 19th, 2017Deedee Magno Hall gives a beautifully nuanced performance as bipolar wife-and-mother Diana Goodman opposite her real-life spouse Cliffton Hall’s powerful Dan Goodman in Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Next To Normal, and though the East West Players season closer doesn’t deliver on all fronts, it provides the Halls with a pair of dream roles and audiences with a moving musical look at the effects of mental illness on an all-American family.
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SPECIES NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA
Sunday, May 14th, 2017
Imagine if Chekhov had set The Cherry Orchard in 21st-century Mendocino County and you’ve got Dorothy Fortenberry’s Species Native To California, am IAMA Theatre Company World Premiere dramedy that proves that every good story is worth a good retelling.
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FEFU AND HER FRIENDS
Wednesday, May 10th, 2017If, as Shakespeare put it, the play’s the thing, then I must confess that Maria Irene Fornés’s avant-garde Fefu And Her Friends is not my thing, that is unless it happens to performed inside (and in the gardens of) the architectural masterpiece that is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. For its one-of-a-kind setting alone, Hollyhock Fefu merits attention (if not absolute affection).
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ARCHDUKE
Wednesday, May 10th, 2017
Leave it to playwright Rajiv Joseph to turn the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, the event that led directly to the outbreak of the First World War, into Archduke, not only the year’s screwballsiest comedy but one with contemporary relevance in a world of suicide bombers and suicide voters.
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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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