WICKED LIT 2016
Friday, October 14th, 2016
It wouldn’t be October in L.A. without the annual return of the creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky theatrical event that turns Altadena’s Mountain View Mausoleum And Cemetery into the chills-and-chuckles-packed trilogy of terror and suspense better known as Wicked Lit.
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THE FANTASTICKS
Tuesday, September 13th, 2016
The world’s longest-running musical (aka The Fantasticks) makes for a crowd-pleasing Pasadena Playhouse season opener thanks not only to its time-tested appeal but also to an excitingly contemporary director’s concept and cast choices that celebrate diversity in the most refreshing of ways.
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ARCADIA
Monday, September 12th, 2016
Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia can prove quite a head-scratcher when not done right. Fortunately, despite brain-teasing elements that can challenge even the sharpest intellect, all-around superb acting and incisive direction make A Noise Within’s 25th-season opener as entertaining and accessible as Arcadias get.
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THE GOLDEN DRAGON
Monday, May 9th, 2016RECOMMENDED
Five exceptional performances, Michael Michetti’s highly imaginative direction, and a breathtaking Theatre @ Boston Court production design add up to reason enough to check out Roland Schimmelpfennig’s The Golden Dragon despite a script more pretentious than profound.
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SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR
Tuesday, April 5th, 2016
A Noise Within revives Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 absurdist classic Six Characters In Search Of An Author with enough exciting theatricality to largely overcome the dated melodrama of the play-within-a-play that its sextet of author-seeking Characters are hoping to see performed.
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CASA VALENTINA
Monday, March 21st, 2016
Casa Valentina, Harvey Fierstein’s fact-inspired gender-bending trip down Catskills memory lane, now gets a sensational Pasadena Playhouse West Coast Premiere, one you’ll be talking and thinking about long after the 2014 Best Play Tony nominee’s stunning final fade to black.
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YOU NEVER CAN TELL
Sunday, March 13th, 2016
The words “frothy romp” may not be the first to pop into a theatergoer’s head when describing a George Bernard Shaw comedy, but this is precisely what the author of Man And Superman, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and Saint Joan confectioned back in 1897 when he wrote You Never Can Tell (his “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” response to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest), evidence of which can currently be savored at A Noise Within’s ever so frothy, ever so rompy revival of this lesser-known Shaw gem.
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COLONY COLLAPSE
Monday, February 22nd, 2016
Overambitious Colony Collapse may well be, and run about fifteen minutes longer than it should, but Stefanie Zadravec’s interweaving of five crisscrossing monologs with a realistic family drama plus a mysterious girl inhabiting a world of her own add up to a compelling World Premiere for The Theatre @ Boston Court, one sure to provoke much post-performance discussion with its themes of children gone missing, family relationships broken by drug-addiction, and a mysterious disease that has caused the death of over ten million North American bees in the past ten years.
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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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