BLOODLETTING
Tuesday, January 10th, 2017A Filipino-American brother and sister’s pilgrimage to their recently deceased father’s birthplace takes a supernatural turn in Boni B. Alvarez’s Bloodletting, a Playwrights’ Arena World Premiere that could appeal to fans of the occult who don’t mind spending seventy-five minutes with a couple of rather obnoxious siblings.
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AMÉLIE, A NEW MUSICAL
Monday, December 19th, 2016
Romance and whimsy reign supreme at the Ahmanson Theatre this holiday season as the century’s most popular French movie heroine takes center stage in Amélie, A New Musical, a Southern California Premiere blessed by a tuneful (and virtually nonstop) score, entrancing performances (including a beguiling star turn by Hamilton star Phillipa Soo), and a magical production design unlike anything I’ve seen before. Give Amélie, A New Musical some judicious book tweaking and it could well prove a Broadway winner in 2017.
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THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF HOME ALONE
Sunday, December 4th, 2016
Rockwell Table And Stage will have audiences rocking around the Christmas tree John Hughes-style all December long with The Unauthorized Musical Parody Of Home Alone, the most rollicking, raunchy, radio-hit-packed holiday entertainment in town.
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BOB’S HOLIDAY OFFICE PARTY
Friday, December 2nd, 2016
Let the beer chugging begin! Bob’s Holiday Office Party, the yuletide season’s side-splittingest antidote to yet another A Christmas Carol, Nutcracker, or It’s A Wonderful Life, is back in town for its 21st year of drunken Midwestern mayhem.
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WHEN JAZZ HAD THE BLUES
Sunday, November 27th, 2016
He was the love of Lena Horne’s life. He ghostwrote and/or arranged many of Duke Ellington’s Greatest Hits. He lived an openly gay life three full decades before Stonewall. He was Billy Strayhorn, and if the name doesn’t ring a bell, playwright Carole Eglash-Kosoff aims to rectify that with her elucidating, engrossing, enormously entertaining World Premiere musical drama When Jazz Had The Blues.
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KENTUCKY
Friday, November 18th, 2016Thomas Wolfe to the contrary, you can go home again. Just don’t expect to have fun once you’ve arrived, not if the family you’ve left behind in the Appalachians is as dysfunctional as Hiro’s in Leah Nanako Winkler’s Kentucky, an entertaining but hit-and-miss East West Players West Coast Premiere that could be a whole lot better without tonal shifts that take it back and forth from over-the-top sitcomish to authentically real.
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HEATHERS: THE MUSICAL
Friday, October 21st, 2016USC’s entirely student-run Musical Theatre Repertory kicks off its twelfth season with Heathers: The Musical, a screen-to-stage adaptation that may not work as well as the similarly-themed Carrie: The Musical, but nonetheless provides plenty of tongue-in-cheek musical darkness for its talented Trojan performers and behind-the-scenes team.
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FRIENDS IN TRANSIENT PLACES
Monday, October 17th, 2016A planeload of passengers jetting from New York to L.A. transports playwright Jonathan Caren into Sarah Ruhl territory in Friends In Transient Places, Caren’s experiment in magic realism that, while it may not have you glued to the edge of your seat as did his The Recommendation and Need To Know, offers its own unique pleasures.
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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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