A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY UNIT AT MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER OF NEW YORK CITY

The gynecologic oncology unit at New York’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center might seem the last place any playwright in her right mind would choose to set a laugh-packed romcom, but this is precisely where Halley Feiffer has set A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City, an off-the-wall comedic treat now getting an infectiously winning West Coast Premiere at the Geffen.
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PTERODACTYLS

The Commissary at Culver Studios provides September’s most unique theatrical venue as Pop Up Theater, Inc. debuts its entertaining if uneven revival of Nicky Silver’s absurdist AIDS-era tragicomic farce Pterodactyls.
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CARMEN DISRUPTION

Prolific British playwright Simon Stephens goes avant-garde in Carmen Disruption, meaning that no matter how much you may have loved the edgy realism of Punk Rock or the captivating whimsy of Heisenberg or the utter magic of his stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, you may well find his artsy 2015 take on Bizet a good deal less engaging.
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IPHIGENIA IN AULIS

There are perhaps few genres more likely to fill contemporary theatergoers with the fear of dozing off mid-play than the dreaded Greek Tragedy, that is unless the company putting on the show is Chicago’s Court Theater, in town this month to resuscitate the 2400-year-old Iphigenia In Aulis to spellbinding, gut-punching effect at Malibu’s Getty Villa.
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OTHER DESERT CITIES

Real-life sisters Ellen Geer and Melora Marshall and Geer’s daughter Willow play characters with matching family ties in Theatricum Botanicum’s superb outdoor revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities.
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ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

The Brewster Sisters are at it again, bumping off their elderly male lodgers in the name of human kindness, in Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s delectably performed, gorgeously designed intimate revival of Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 Broadway hit Arsenic And Old Lace.
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TROUBLE IN MIND

Pioneer African-American playwright Alice Childress takes a surefire theatrical genre (the backstage comedy à la Moss Hart’s Light Up The Sky or Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo) and transforms it into an examination of mid-20th-century race relations in Trouble In Mind, every bit as relevant at Theatricum Botanicum in 2017 as it was in its 1955 off-Broadway debut … and every bit as hilarious as it is thought-provoking.
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CIGARETTES AND CHOCOLATE & HANG UP

And now for something completely different, Pacific Resident Theatre treats L.A. audiences to the West Coast Premieres of Cigarettes & Chocolate and Hang Up, a couple of Anthony Mighella-penned BBC radio plays from the ‘80s that add up to considerably more than a staged reading, slightly less than the “fully designed/staged production” that’s been advertised, yet one that’s every bit as gorgeously acted as PRT’s compelling best.
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