HENRY V
Tuesday, March 20th, 2018
Those who insist on three-plus hours of Shakespeare may well get their knickers in a twist over the sixty-some minutes chopped from Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott’s excitement-packed Henry V now on show at Pasadena’s A Noise Within. Not this reviewer, who welcomes not just its refreshingly brief two-hours-and-change running time but its multitude of action movie-ready thrills.
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A RAISIN IN THE SUN
Monday, March 5th, 2018
A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s piercing look at racial discrimination, gender roles, family values, and burgeoning African-American identity in the pre-Civil Rights Era 1950s gets revived to powerful effect at Pasadena’s A Noise Within.
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A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Sunday, March 4th, 2018
Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire undergoes a radical reinvention at The Theatre @ Boston Court where director Michael Michetti has transposed the seven-decade-old classic to 21st-century New Orleans to stunning effect.
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PIRATES OF PENZANCE
Thursday, February 1st, 2018
Pasadena Playhouse is throwing a beach party and you’re invited to share the stage with the players as the audaciously talented young Chicago troupe known as The Hypocrites treat L.A. audiences to the fun-in-the-sun extravaganza that is their take on Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates Of Penzance.
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MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET
Saturday, December 16th, 2017Pasadena Playhouse fills this year’s holiday slot with a “live radio play” adaptation of the 1947 movie classic Miracle On 34th Street, a charmer, make no mistake, but more stocking stuffer than a full-fledged Christmas gift to follow the back-to-back brilliance of Our Town and King Charles III.
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BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: A CHRISTMAS ROSE
Friday, December 15th, 2017
Belle discovers the beauty beneath a monster’s fur and horns as never before in the family-friendly holiday treat that is Beauty And The Beast: A Christmas Rose, the sixth Lythgoe Family Panto to visit Pasadena and the first to play the historic 2,997-seat Pasadena Civic.
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KING CHARLES III
Friday, November 17th, 2017
William Shakespeare is dead. Long live Mike Bartlett, author of Charles III, a “future history” The Bard himself might have written had he been looking back, not at Kings crowned Richard or Henry but at a 21-century monarch facing the crisis of his or any sovereign’s reign. Now getting a spectacular Southern California Premiere at a newly revitalized Pasadena Playhouse, King Charles III is the best play William Shakespeare never wrote.
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A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Friday, October 20th, 2017
Forget every A Tale Of Two Cities you’ve seen before, and that includes the 1935 MGM classic. A Noise Within’s United States Premiere of Mike Poulton’s thrillingly reconceived 2014 stage adaptation is in a class by itself, Dickens retold for a 21-century audience, instantly compelling, gorgeous to look at, profoundly moving, and as directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliot, the absolute must-see production of ANW’s all-around smashing Fall 2017 season.
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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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