THE COLOR PURPLE
Wednesday, June 20th, 2018
Swing Nikisha Williams’ star turn as Celie, a fabulous supporting cast, and imaginative staging make the Broadway Revival Tour of The Color Purple, Alice Walker’s powerful recounting of a young black woman’s road to self-discovery and self-assertion, well worth seeing despite a minimalist scenic design ill suited to (and volume levels turned way too low for) a hall as mammoth as the Segerstrom Center For the Arts.
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CLYBOURNE PARK
Monday, June 11th, 2018
White flight circa 1959 and urban gentrification five decades later fuel Bruce Norris’s button-pushing, political-correctness-be-damned comedy Clybourne Park, winner of both the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play, the finest production I’ve seen at Laguna Playhouse and one of the year’s very best.
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THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG
Monday, May 21st, 2018
Sara, Gorgeous, and Pfeni Rosensweig are back and every bit as smart and sassy and engaging at South Coast Repertory as they were when playwright Wendy Wasserman, fresh from her Pulitzer Prize win for The Heidi Chronicles, debuted The Sisters Rosensweig back in 1992.
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ELEVADA
Monday, May 21st, 2018
A rather nonsensical premise is all that’s holding back Sheila Callaghan’s Elevada from being the unqualified smash romantic comedy it sets out to be. Even so, romcom lovers like this reviewer will find themselves captivated by its terrifically acted, stunningly designed Chance Theater West Coast Premiere.
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HAMILTON
Thursday, May 10th, 2018
The American Revolution revolutionizes American musical theater in Lin Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking, game-changing Hamilton, now thrilling audiences at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts like virtually nothing before.
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GOOD PEOPLE
Sunday, April 29th, 2018
Good People’s Orange County Premiere makes at least two things abundantly clear. First of all that David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2011 Broadway hit is easily one of the past decade’s finest, most compelling new plays, and second, that Chance Theater continues to reign supreme among intimate OC stages.
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LOVE NEVER DIES
Wednesday, April 25th, 2018The music is gorgeous, the plot ridiculous, and the show’s raison d’etre purely monetary, but for those curious to know what happened to the Phantom and Christine a decade after the chandelier fell in the Paris Opera House, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies provides answers this week and next at the Segerstrom Center For The Arts.
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LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS
Tuesday, April 17th, 2018Kemp Powers’ Little Black Shadows takes an intriguing concept (the lives of teenage house slaves serving white teen masters in early-1850s Georgia), then veers off track into family dysfunction, folktales, magical realism, and a couple of weird plot twists that left me scratching my head despite the best efforts of a Grade-A cast headed by the simply sensational Giovanni Adams and Chauntae Pink.
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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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