COOPERSTOWN
Saturday, May 25th, 2013
The history-making 1962 induction of Jackie Robinson, America’s first African-American major league baseball player, into the Baseball Hall Of Fame provides a backdrop for Brian Golden’s nostalgic Cooperstown, now getting a first-rate West Coast Premiere at The Road Theatre Company’s brand spanking new second home—The Road On Magnolia.
(read more)
THE CRUCIBLE
Saturday, May 18th, 2013
Arthur Miller’s dramatization of the Salem witch trials has rarely if ever seemed as timeless or proven as powerful as it does in The Antaeus Company’s stunning new revival of the 1953 classic The Crucible, brilliantly directed by Armin Shimerman and Geoffrey Wade.
(read more)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Sunday, March 31st, 2013
What’s in a name? Well, to Gwendolen Fairfax, whose “ideal has always been to love someone of the name Earnest,” it means just about everything, so much so that her beau Earnest Worthing dare not let it slip that “Earnest” is merely a moniker he assumes when in big city London, his real name Jack being reserved for the rest of his life in the Hertfordshire countryside.
Any theater buff worth his or her salt can surely tell you that the “Earnest” in question is but one of two bogus “Earnests” in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, now getting a dandy revival at North Hollywood’s Theatre Banshee under the assured direction of Sean Branney.
(read more)
NUTTIN’ BUT HUTTON
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
The Blonde Bombshell. Annie Oakley. Fred Astaire’s Let’s Dance Co-Star. The Incendiary Blonde. Texas Guinan. Paramount Pictures’ Biggest Star. The Perils Of Pauline’s Pauline. Blossom Dearie. Dean Martin’s “Hetty Button.”
Miss Betty Hutton was all of the above, either in real or onscreen life, and Diane Vincent pays tribute to her Greatest Hits in the terrific new World Premiere Musical/Musical Revue Nuttin’ But Hutton, now delighting audiences at North Hollywood’s NoHo Arts Center under the direction of the ever inventive Larry Raben.
(read more)
MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
Saturday, March 16th, 2013
Daughter Discovers Mom To Be Millionaire Madam
No, this isn’t a headline story in The National Inquirer or on TMZ, nor is it the latest reality TV show or nighttime soap. In fact, the mother and daughter in question are from over a century back (when you only needed $40,000 to be a millionaire) and the two lead characters in George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Can you say “ahead of its time?”
Shaw’s 1893 ground-breaker makes an exciting return to Los Angeles as The Antaeus Company premieres another if its couldn’t-be-better revivals starring the incomparable Anne Gee Byrd in the title role. Who could ask for anything more?
(read more)
MY BIG GAY ITALIAN WEDDING
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
The place is Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where Tony Manero discoed the night away in Saturday Night Fever and where women still live by the credo, “The higher the hair, the closer to God.” The time is the present, meaning that the gay boys of South Brooklyn no longer have to pretend to be straight, and can even tie the legal knot when they meet Mr. Right. What better time could there be for a 20something Italian-American ragazzo like our hero Anthony Pinnunziato to pop the question to his Polish-American sweetie Andrew Polinski? Now all he has to do is convince his traditional Mamma and Papa to give the happy same-sex couple their blessing.
Playwright Anthony Wilkinson thus sets the comedic wheels in motion in his off-Broadway hit My Big Gay Italian Wedding, now getting a hilarious West Coast Premiere in an exuberantly acted albeit barebones production under the peppy direction of Paul Storiale.
(read more)
LADYHOUSE BLUES
Sunday, March 3rd, 2013
Four years had passed since the Equal Rights Amendment was sent to the states to be ratified and three since Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land when Kevin O’Morrison’s Ladyhouse Blues first sent mid-1970s audiences back to 1919, a year after the end of World War I and the watershed year the Senate ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote just as the 1920s began to roar.
Andak Stage Company now revives Ladyhouse Blues under the impeccable direction of Anne McNaughton, offering L.A. audiences an all-around splendid production, one that transports us back nearly a century to the end of a decade in which the times, were (as Bob Dylan was to put it forty-five years later) most definitely “a-‘changin’.”
COMPANY
Friday, February 15th, 2013
“Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!”
As any musical theater buff can tell you, the person whose phone is ringing and whose door is chiming and who is welcoming company into his Manhattan pad is none other than Robert, aka Bobby, aka Bob, aka Bobbo, aka Robby, aka Bobby Baby, aka Robert Darling, aka Bobby Honey, the bachelor lead of Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Tony-winning Best Musical of 1970, now getting its first L.A. production in what seems like eons—and a pretty darned terrific one at that—at North Hollywood’s Crown City Theatre.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2025 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY