THE IDIOT BOX
Monday, June 1st, 2015
If you could live your life in sitcom land and just forget about war, poverty, homelessness, and the complexities of human sexuality, would you?
Playwright Michael Elyanow poses this question in his very funny, very smart The Idiot Box, back for only its second L.A. production ever, and a highly entertaining one at that as staged by Theatre 68 at the NoHo Arts Center.
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VIOLET
Sunday, May 17th, 2015
L.A. audiences can at last discover one of the unsung treasures of contemporary musical theater as Kelrik Productions presents the Los Angeles County Premiere of Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s 1997 musical gem Violet, and a superbly performed L.A. debut she makes.
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MACBETH
Monday, May 11th, 2015
Macbeth in sixty minutes. What sweeter words are there to those for whom Shakespeare is a taste not quite acquired (or those with only an hour to spare), especially when it’s Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group’s Macbeth, adapted and directed by Denise Devin. Now, that’s my way to see The Scottish Play (or Playlet as the case may be).
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MUD BLUE SKY
Monday, May 11th, 2015
If three middle-aged flight attendants spending the night with a 17-year-old high school boy in a Chicago hotel room sounds like the setup for a 1960s sex farce à la Boeing-Boeing, think again. Marisa Wegrzyn’s Mud Blue Sky, the latest from The Road Theatre Company, turns out to be not just a laugh-out-loud comedy but a touching look at friendship, parenting, life choices, sisterhood, loneliness, growing older, and coming of age in the 21st Century.
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A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
Sunday, May 3rd, 2015
The theater company whose recent reinvention of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret for the intimate stage earned it both critical and audience raves now returns with a “downsized” staging of the Stephen Sondheim classic A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and the result is one of the funniest—and most ingenious—Forums ever.
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BOY GETS GIRL
Tuesday, April 28th, 2015NOT RECOMMENDED
Terrific performances by a thoroughly engaging Ivy Khan and a riveting if miscast Jim Martyka highlight Theatre Unleashed’s ill-advised fifteenth-anniversary revival of Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl, one which leaves this reviewer wondering how Gilman’s pseudo-thriller ended up named Time Magazine’s #1 Play Of The Year.
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SWEENEY TODD
Saturday, April 11th, 2015
A cast of eighteen, ten of them members of Actors’ Equity, bring Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street to thrilling life on the intimate stage of North Hollywood’s Monroe Forum Theatre, a powerful reminder that should Equity’s 99-seat plan bite the dust per AEA’s wishes, productions of this size, scope, and caliber may soon be a much-mourned memory of our Los Angeles theater past.
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THIEVES
Saturday, March 21st, 2015
Family relationships don’t get any more twisted than those of the dysfunctional East Texas brood who air their dirty laundry in Charlotte Miller’s high-octane comedy-drama Thieves, now getting a humdinger of a World Premiere production at the Monroe Forum Theatre inside North Hollywood’s historic El Portal.
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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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