FUTURA
Sunday, October 10th, 2010
What do you call a play that starts with a 35-minute university lecture on “From Pen To Pixel: A History Of Typography,” turns in an instant into an edge-of-your-seat thriller, and finally becomes something quite lyrical which leaves you breathless?
You call it brilliant.
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THE GOOD BOOK OF PEDANTRY AND WONDER
Sunday, August 1st, 2010
In 1879, British lexicographer James Murray was hired by Oxford University Press to edit a new dictionary of the English language, a task expected to take about ten years and result in a 7,000-page tome. Holed up in a corrugated-iron garden shed on the grounds of Mill Hill School, Murray began the monumental undertaking with the help of a small team of assistants. Neither the linguist nor the dons of Oxford could have imagined that it would take until 1928 for the dictionary to be completed (nearly a decade after Murray’s death) and that the final product would end up a twelve-volume tome instead of the initially planned four volumes.
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SKYLIGHT
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
30-year-old schoolteacher Kyra Hollis has scarcely gotten back to her East London flat, the evening’s groceries in tow, when recent high school grad Edward Sargeant arrives on her doorstep with a question and a request. Kyra, a former employee of Edward’s restaurateur father, had been living with the Sargeants for half a dozen years until suddenly vanishing from their lives a couple years back. Not long after, Edward’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, her death last year leaving Edward without the two most important women in his life, his real life Mum and the “older sister” Kyra had become to him. Edward wants to know why Kyra abandoned them. He also wants her to do something to help his father, Tom, who’s not been doing all that well since his wife’s death.
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BOOM
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
From the way Jules and Jo “meet cute” in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom, now playing at Pasadena’s Furious Theatre Company, you’d think you were in for the kind of romcom that’s made stars of Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, and Reece Witherspoon, any one of whom could have played Jo at one point in their careers opposite a young Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, or Mark Ruffalo.
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THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAY
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Here’s a question for all you history buffs out there. What two 20th Century inventions revolutionized gay men’s search for quick, anonymous sex with other men?
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OEDIPUS EL REY
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
Where so-called “edgy” or “experimental” theater is concerned, the line between brilliant and pretentious is a fine one indeed, and in this reviewer’s experience at least, the latter is more often the case than the former. That’s why it’s such a pleasure to report that Theatre @ Boston Court’s production of Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey is out-and-out brilliant theater, even for playgoers whose tastes run, as mine do, more toward the traditional.
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MEN OF TORTUGA
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
In a stylish but sterile white office suite, three well-dressed men are discussing what appears to be an assassination plot with a rather scruffy, tattooed visitor whom one surmises to be the prospective assassin. The latter has qualms, not about the equipment he’ll be using, but about the pane of glass he’ll have to be shooting through. The window could affect the trajectory, he explains, adding that even humidity can affect a bullet’s course. “I’d have to say you have a low chance of success,” he informs the others. Since neither the time nor the place of the assassination can be changed, he concludes that a rifle is clearly not the answer. “If you want to do it, you’ll have to bomb the whole room,” he suggests. Maybe do it with a missile? The oldest of the three plotters has an even better idea—to put someone in the room who is willing to pay the price. He then volunteers to be that man.
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CAMELOT
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
If you’re an avid musical-theatergoer like this reviewer, you’ve probably seen at least one production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot that made you think, “Bo-ring.” Then there are those Camelots that feature a 60something King Arthur, forgetting that Richard Burton was but 35 when he originated the role on Broadway and Richard Harris all of 36 when he made the movie. Dozens of lords, ladies, and “simple folk” in 6th Century garb may be gorgeous to look at (the original Broadway production of Camelot had a cast of 55!), but they have tended to bog down Camelot’s romantic triangle under the weight of all those costumes. Besides, what theater can afford a cast of even 25 these days?
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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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