OUTSIDE MULLINGAR
Saturday, November 21st, 2015
A couple of long-feuding Irish neighbors find themselves moonstruck in John Patrick Shanley’s delightfully quirky romantic comedy Outside Mullingar, now charming audiences at the Geffen Playhouse.
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DOUBLE DOOR
Tuesday, October 13th, 2015
No matter who your favorite TV soap villainess might be, she could learn a thing or two from the selfish, conniving, ruthless monster created way back in 1931 by Elizabeth McFadden for her suspense melodrama Double Door, now deliciously revived for a 21st-century audience at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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THESE PAPER BULLETS!
Friday, September 18th, 2015
The Bard meets The Fab Four in Rolin Jones’ exuberantly entertaining These Paper Bullets!, now getting its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, and while audience members lacking either a soft spot for iambic pentameter or a familiarity with Beatles legend might just end up tuning out, at least during the show’s overlong first act, by the time Act Two rolls around with its Monty-Python-meets-Benny-Hill delights (and with Billie Joe Armstrong’s songs the absolute next best thing to Lennon-&-McCartney circa 1964), it’s hard to imagine anyone not ultimately falling under These Paper Bullets!’ magic spell.
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WHEN STARS ALIGN
Monday, September 7th, 2015
A mixed-race slave comes of age on a Mississippi River cotton plantation during the Civil War years in Carole Eglash-Kosoff and John Henry Davis’s epic interracial love story When Stars Align, a mini-series worth of plot compacted into two hours (plus intermission) of gorgeously-staged historical melodrama that proves involving and ultimately quite moving despite some occasionally clunky dialog along the way.
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ASSASSINS
Sunday, September 6th, 2015
Haste is of the essence in catching Red Blanket Productions’ superb intimate stage revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins, not simply because only weeks remain in what looks to be a sold-out run at the Pico Playhouse but because, if Actors Equity has its way, starting next June you will never again see such a 99-seat production in Los Angeles County. Ever. (More on that later.)
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CAFÉ SOCIETY
Monday, August 24th, 2015
Zaniness reigns supreme in Peter Lefcourt’s screwball Café Society, now getting a terrifically performed, imaginatively directed, cleverly designed World Premiere at West L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre, the ever so “Westside” laughfest marred only by a jarring 11th-hour tonal shift that bears rethinking.
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PATTERNS
Friday, August 14th, 2015RECOMMENDED
Topnotch lead performances and a “plus ça change” fascination make James Reach’s Patterns, the stage adaptation of a Rod Serling screenplay set in the dog-eat-dog world of 1950s American big business, worth a look-see at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40 despite an overlong running time and a so-so supporting cast.
GREEN GROW THE LILACS
Sunday, August 9th, 2015
Theatricum Botanicum revives a Golden-Era theatrical gem in a production worth a whole heap of whoopin’ and hollerin’ … but before I go ahead and name it, here’s a question for all you theater lovers out there.
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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