MOBY DICK – REHEARSED
Tuesday, August 27th, 2019
With metatheatrical stage adaptations of literary classics almost as commonplace today as cell phones and email, Orson Welles’ Moby Dick — Rehearsed feels like it could have been written last week and not way back in 1955. It’s also as thrilling a production as I’ve seen at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum.
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THE JOY LUCK CLUB
Tuesday, August 27th, 2019Sierra Madre Playhouse offers audiences a timely salute to the immigrant experience while exploring the generation/culture gap that separates four middle-aged Chinese women from their grown American daughters in an exquisitely staged and designed production of Susan Kim’s not entirely successful adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.
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BEAST ON THE MOON
Saturday, August 24th, 2019Richard Kalinsoki’s Beast On The Moon may have been performed in over twenty countries and translated into nineteen languages, but its latest incarnation at International City Theatre reveals flaws both in the play itself and in the production now on stage in Long Beach.
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DRIVING WILDE
Friday, August 23rd, 2019Though it goes haywire about halfway through, Driving Wilde, Jacqueline Wright’s trippy contemporary Americanized take on The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, is far from dull.
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EARLY BIRDS
Tuesday, August 20th, 2019
Night-and-day-different 70somethings bond aboard ship in Dana Schwartz’s Early Birds, a World Premiere comedy as entertaining and charming as it is predictable, and nothing wrong with that.
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HANNAH AND THE DREAD GAZEBO
Monday, August 19th, 2019Magic realism has never been my thing, and since Hannah And The Dread Gazebo relies on an abundance of it to tell the story of a 30something Korean-American’s visit to her parents’ homeland, I ended up unengaged by Jiehae Park’s overly fanciful comedy despite some terrific performances and a dazzling production design.
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FRANKENSTEIN
Sunday, August 18th, 2019
Playwright Nick Dear humanizes the monster commonly if incorrectly known as Frankenstein in his 2011 stage adaptation of the Mary Shelley classic, an A Noise Within season opener as compelling as it is unexpectedly poignant.
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DOPE QUEENS
Saturday, August 17th, 2019Dope Queens, Grafton Doyle’s seamy dissection of the go-nowhere lives of three drug-addicted, fresh-out-of-prison LGBTQ street walkers (two of them gender non-conforming POCs and one a GWM) is not just a major downer, it’s an overwrought, all-over-the-place two-acter that overstays its welcome by at least half an hour.
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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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