THE HOMOSEXUALS
Saturday, October 26th, 2013
The flamboyant theater queen who lives to rag on this year’s Tony winners. The average-looking all-around good gay who’s everybody’s best friend and nobody’s boyfriend. The foreign-born charmer living with HIV—though no longer with his (married-her-for-a-green-card) wife. The small-town boy whose move to the big city has meant making gay friends—and a new life he could never have had back home.
We’ve seen these gay men, or gay men like them, on stage before, most notably in the pre-Stonewall world of Mart Crowley’s The Boys In The Band and in the AIDS-crisis world of Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion!
Now, young Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins brings these gay archetypes into the 21st Century in his 2011 Jefferson Award-nominated dramedy The Homosexuals, now being given a couldn’t-be-better West Coast Premiere by Celebration Theatre.
DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
Saturday, October 12th, 2013
The multi-talented student triple-threats of USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory are back onstage again in their latest student-directed, designed, and performed musical hit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and though its lead characters are indeed the dirtiest of scoundrels, there’s nothing at all rotten about MTR’s latest Broadway-to-blackbox gem. Quite the contrary, there’s not a more sensationally performed 99-seat musical now playing in all L.A.
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THE NORMAL HEART
Saturday, October 5th, 2013
Larry Kramer’s landmark drama The Normal Heart gets its first L.A. staging in nearly two decades, and tough as it may be to revisit the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, this absolutely brilliant production is one that no Los Angeles theater lover should miss, and the younger the audience the better.
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THE END OF IT
Friday, September 27th, 2013RECOMMENDED
A 50ish couple (or is it three?) confront the dissolution of a twenty-year relationship in Paul Coates’ The End Of It, a World Premiere production elevated above a too generic script by sensational direction, fine acting, and one humdinger of a gimmick.
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LOST GIRLS
Wednesday, September 18th, 2013
Let’s say your most recent play has won every major Best Production award in L.A. and you’re about to head back east to star in it off-Broadway. That would be one tough act to follow, wouldn’t it?
But follow it John Pollono has with Lost Girls, a night-and-day departure from the aforementioned Small Engine Repair, but a humdinger of a play in its own right, and one whose last five minutes elevate it to a whole new level of amazing.
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STEEL MAGNOLIAS
Thursday, September 12th, 2013
You may have seen Steel Magnolias before, either on stage or on film, but you’ve never seen magnolias of steel quite like the six women now lighting up the stage at East West Players’ David Henry Hwang Theater. Robert Harling’s now iconic Southern belles are Asian-American this time round, their ethnicity adding new shadings to this sextet of women whose delicate exteriors mask tough-as-nails cores.
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bare a rock musical
Saturday, September 7th, 2013
A Catholic high school is hardly the most welcoming environment for two boys to fall in love, especially when one of them is deeply conflicted about his sexuality, as Jon Hartmere and Damon Intrabartolo’s bare made heartbreaking clear in its 2000 World Premiere at the Hudson Mainstage Theater.
Now, thirteen years later, glory|struck productions brings bare back to the city of its birth in an exciting revival that could easily turn into the season’s biggest intimate musical smash.
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THE ARCTIC CIRCLE (and a recipe for Swedish pancakes)/THE MATADOR
Sunday, September 1st, 2013
Whimsy and more than a touch of the surreal link an entertaining pair of one-acts now getting their West Coast Premieres at Studio/Stage, both of them penned by members of The Playwright’s Lab @ Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.
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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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