NETWORK

Bert Emmett is on fire in the role that won Peter Finch a posthumous Oscar, but the snail-paced production the Group Rep has staged of Lee Hall’s West End-to-Broadway adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay for 1976’s Network fails to ignite similar sparks.
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LEAR REDUX


A stage-and-screen legend battles dementia and a couple of greedy offspring remarkably similar to those of a legendary Shakespearean monarch in Lear Redux, the audacious, imaginative latest from adapter-director-choreographer John Farmanesh-Bocca, now getting a stunning World Premiere at the Odyssey.
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HARVEY


Mary Chase’s 1944 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy classic about a man and an invisible six-foot-one-and-a-half-inch-tall rabbit called Harvey returns 81 years after its Broadway debut to close out Whittier Community Theatre’s 101st season on a delightfully (and thought-provokingly) winning note.
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FLASHES OF LIGHT

It takes chutzpah to juxtapose Greek mythology with 20th-century American history, but this is precisely what the creators of the tuneful World Premiere musical Flashes Of Light have done on the Sierra Madre Playhouse stage, albeit more successfully in the show’s delightful first act than in its more far-out second half.
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THE CHINESE LADY


A largely forgotten figure in Asian-American history is resurrected to indelible life by a stunning Michelle Krusiec in Chance Theater’s gorgeously staged regional premiere of Lloyd Suh’s critically-acclaimed off-Broadway hit The Chinese Lady.
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RODGERS + HAMMERSTEIN’S CINDERELLA


Delightful performances, clever direction, and Douglas Carter Beane’s fresh new book are three big reasons why Wisteria Theater’s scaled-down take on the 2013 Broadway revival of the 1950s live TV classic known as Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella makes it four winners in a row for the new North Hollywood company.
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A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2


It’s a whole new A Doll’s House, Part 2 at the Pasadena Playhouse with director Jennifer Chang and an ab-fab foursome of TV/stage stars bringing to scintillating life comedic elements left mostly unexplored in the two previous productions I’ve seen of Lucas Hnath’s 2017 Broadway hit.
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BECKY’S NEW CAR


Great play. Great direction. Great cast. Great design. Theatre 40’s intimate revival of Becky’s New Car, Steven Dietz’s unorthodox look at marital devotion and extramarital hanky-panky has everything it takes to make it one of Theatre 40’s most all-around fabulous productions in years.
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