CHOIR BOY
Wednesday, October 1st, 2014
A gay African-American prep school student comes of age in the Geffen Playhouse West Coast Premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play-with-music Choir Boy, exquisitely performed by an all-around superb cast and impeccably helmed by its original New York/Atlanta director.
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THE GOAT, OR WHO IS SYLVIA?
Tuesday, September 30th, 2014
A different kind of Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name speaks its name in Edward Albee’s Tony Award-winning Best Play Of 2002, The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?, the latest from the theater and director who revived Ira Levin’s Deathtrap to brilliant, controversial life a couple years back—and that’s about all I have to say about the team’s latest production before launching into a spoiler-filled second paragraph. Proceed with caution.
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THE WHY
Tuesday, September 30th, 2014
Comedy might be the last approach you’d expect a playwright to take in response to the Columbine High School massacre of April 20, 1999, but leave it to an audacious teenager to pen The Why, the darkest, funniest, most button-pushing and thought-provoking play you may ever see about gun violence.
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BRONIES: THE MUSICAL
Sunday, September 28th, 2014
The charming musical-in-the-rough that was Bronies: The Musical at this past summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival has since been polished into the sparklingly rainbow-hued gem now getting its official World Premiere Production at the Third Street Theatre. Simply put, Bronies: The Musical is the feel-best show in town.
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MAPLE AND VINE
Saturday, September 27th, 2014
If you could leave your cell phone and sushi and Facebook and lattes and 21st-Century stress behind for a trip back in time to the halcyon Leave It To Beaver mid-1950s, would you? Could you?
This is the question faced by a publishing executive and her plastic surgeon husband in Jordan Harrison’s provocative if somewhat problematic Maple And Vine, now getting a first-rate Greater Los Angeles Premiere at Orange County’s Chance Theater.
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CABARET
Friday, September 26th, 2014
It takes a combination of inspiration and chutzpah to reinvent a 58-year-old musical theater classic that’s been reinvented time and time again—but director Gary Lamb has done just that with Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, his creative touches adding up to the best of the five intimate Cabarets I’ve seen and one of the top two or three of the ten productions I’ve experienced in all.
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KISS ME KATE
Thursday, September 25th, 2014
A stellar, (almost) all-African-American cast breathe new life into the 1948 William Shakespeare-meets-Cole Porter classic Kiss Me Kate, an innovative Pasadena Playhouse revival that works to perfection for all but about ten minutes of its thrillingly reinvigorated two acts.
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MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT
Monday, September 22nd, 2014
Rare is the musical that can delight and satisfy both Broadway buffs and those who would never be caught dead at My Fair Lady, The Sound Of Music, or heaven forbid, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Monty Python’s Spamalot is that rare Broadway show, and therefore a supremely savvy follow-up to Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s recent Smokey Joe’s Café. That it happens to be served up in an all-around splendid production is like whipped cream on one of Executive Chef Juan Alvarado’s scrumptious desserts.
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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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