WHAT OPA DID
Tuesday, January 27th, 2026Audiences in search of uplifting, escapist entertainment in the dismal times we’re living through will not find it in Christopher Franciosa’s Holocaust drama What Opa Did, a Theatre 40 World Premiere not done any favors by James Paradise’s misguided direction.
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BROWNSTONE
Monday, January 26th, 2026
The walls of a century-old Upper West Side apartment have much to talk about in Catherine Butterfield’s Brownstone, a trio of fascinating tales all taking place in a single residence but at three distinct periods of time.
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LIFELINE
Saturday, January 24th, 2026
A suicide hotline center provides the backdrop for Robert Axelrod’s Lifeline, a Road Theatre Company World Premiere dramedy as compelling as it is funny as it is ultimately quite moving thanks to a terrific script, a fabulous cast, a sensational production design, and Ken Sawyer in the director’s chair.
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KID GLOVES
Tuesday, January 20th, 2026
Reality TV competitions don’t get any more entertainingly cutthroat than the one theatergoers get to witness in Matthew Leavitt and Nathan Wang’s delightful new musical comedy Kids Gloves, now getting its World Premiere at the Skylight Theatre.
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THE ALTRUIST
Monday, January 19th, 2026A promising if rather grim dark comedy premise yields less than satisfying results in Bill Fitzhugh’s “New Play with Music” The Altruist, a World Premiere production at North Hollywood’s the Group Rep.
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THE CLUB OF BROKEN FASTS
Sunday, January 11th, 2026
John Hughes meets William Shakespeare in Phil S. Gould’s Hollywood Fringe Festival hit The Club Of Broken Fasts, now completing its all-too-short three-performance-only reprise at the Long Beach Playhouse.
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THE NOTEBOOK THE MUSICAL
Friday, January 9th, 2026
Exquisitely staged and performed, the best-selling novel-turned-movie blockbuster-turned Broadway crowd-pleaser The Notebook The Musical, now visiting the Pantages, is the most unabashedly romantic musical since The Bridges Of Madison County, not coincidentally another Nicholas Sparks novel-turned-Hollywood blockbuster, and I loved every gloriously sung and heartstrings-tugging moment of it.
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A VERY DIE HARD CHRISTMAS
Monday, December 22nd, 2025The tenth incarnation of Theatre Unleashed’s A Very Die Hard Christmas, Josh Carson’s deliciously clever spoof of the Bruce Willis megasmash as seen through a Saturday Night Live lens (with puppets and songs thrown in for hilarious measure), may lack the production design pluses of its earlier North Hollywood incarnations, but the laughs keep coming fast and furious at Hollywood’s Hobgoblin Playhouse as part of this year’s Frosty Fest.
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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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