ALTAR BOYZ
Saturday, April 5th, 2014
The Christian boy band known as the Altar Boyz have returned to L.A. for the first time in five years in a no-frills production that proves that even without a fancy set, pricy costumes, and surround sound, entertainment value can remain high when performances sparkle under a director as imaginative as Kristin Towers-Rowles.
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GRAND HOTEL
Friday, April 4th, 2014
Broadway buffs are hereby advised. You’ve got this weekend and next to catch what may well be the only big-stage, big-cast revival you’ll ever see of the multiple Tony-winning Grand Hotel.
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DOCTOR ANONYMOUS
Tuesday, April 1st, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
The gay liberation movement may have started in earnest with the 1969 Stonewall riots, but homosexuality was still deemed a “curable” mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association in 1972 when a masked Dr. John E. Fryer addressed the annual APA conference as “Dr. H. Anonymous,” beginning his speech with the simple words “I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.”
A year later homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Inspired by Fryer’s speech, psychiatrist/playwright Guy Fredrick Glass has written Doctor Anonymous, now getting its World Premiere at the Zephyr Theatre, and though several of its actors rise above the material, neither their performances nor a topnotch production design can mask Doctor Anonymous’s many serious flaws.
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CINNAMON GIRL
Monday, March 17th, 2014
Velina Hasu Houston and Nathan Wang transport us to another time, another place, another world in their magical, mystical, marvelous new musical Cinnamon Girl, now playing at the Greenway Court Theatre.
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MY NAME IS ASHER LEV
Saturday, March 1st, 2014
“Be a great painter, Asher Lev. It is the only justification for all the pain you are about to cause.”
Chaim Potok’s acclaimed 1972 novel My Name Is Asher Lev has now been transformed into a powerfully performed, deeply moving showcase for three of L.A.’s finest acting talents and one of our best directors at the award-winning Fountain Theater.
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A NICE INDIAN BOY
Thursday, February 27th, 2014
Playwright Madhuri Shekar puts a fresh, multicultural, same-sex spin on the classic romantic comedy in her World Premiere dramedy A Nice Indian Boy, one of the best original plays I’ve seen at East West Players, a romcom that had me at “Hello,” or in the case of Naveen and Keshav, at “Om.”
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THE RECOMMENDATION
Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
What starts out as an Odd Couple comedy about a pair of mismatched Brown University roommates develops into something considerably more edgy (and edge-of-your-seat) once a third character enters the mix in Jonathan Caren’s The Recommendation, now getting its first Los Angeles production—and its first with a SoCal-based cast—as IAMA Theatre Company introduces L.A. audiences to Caren’s multiple Scenie-winning hit, one guaranteed to keep you guessing from its exhilarating start to its suspenseful finish.
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
Friday, January 24th, 2014
Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along once again proves, as has virtually ever other Musical Theatre Repertory offering reviewed here since Sunday In The Park With George six years ago, that a blackbox production entirely directed, designed, and performed by college students can easily rival the best of 99-seat-plan Los Angeles theater, that is if the students involved are part of USC’s illustrious School Of Dramatic Arts.
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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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