OFF THE KING’S ROAD
Saturday, July 4th, 2015NOT RECOMMENDED
Several bright supporting performances and a topnotch production design are not enough to rescue Off The King’s Road from its lackluster script, languorous pacing, and a numbingly dull lead performance, though truth be told it would take an actor with the charisma and star power of the late James Garner to stir up any interest in playwright Neil Koenigsberg’s sad sack protagonist.
(read more)
BAD JEWS
Friday, June 19th, 2015
To the list of female comedy leads that any actress would kill to play (and win awards for), a list that includes Born Yesterday’s Billie Dawn, Twentieth Century’s Lily Garland, and Lost In Yonkers’ Bella Kurnitz, you can now add the name Daphna Feygenbaum, a role that Molly Ephraim knocks out of the ball park—and then some—in the Geffen Playhouse’s West Coast Premiere of Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, a play as hilarious as it is brilliant, and one you’ll be talking about for quite some time to come.
(read more)
THE KINSEY SICKS: AMERICA’S NEXT TOP BACHELOR HOUSEWIFE CELEBRITY HOARDER MAKEOVER STAR GONE WILD!
Thursday, June 11th, 2015
The pulchritudinous potty-mouthed pretties who call themselves The Kinsey Sicks have treated West Hollywood to a taste of their NC-17 naughtiness before heading off for a week of West Coast touring, and as anyone who’s seen one of the queertastic quartet’s previous songfests could easily predict, The Kinsey Sicks: America’s Next Top Bachelor Housewife Celebrity Hoarder Makeover Star Gone Wild! makes for sixty sizzling minutes of double ententres and song.
(read more)
SPRING AWAKENING
Friday, May 29th, 2015
Deaf West’s smash revisal of the Broadway musical hit Spring Awakening has transferred from its Fall 2014 run in the heart of Skid Row to glamorous Beverly Hills, one of the most noteworthy success stories of Los Angeles’s endangered 99-Seat Theatre Plan … and mark my words. You won’t see direction more brilliant nor a cast more gifted nor a production more awe-inspiring than the one now playing at the Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts.
(read more)
THE POWER OF DUFF
Saturday, April 18th, 2015
All hell breaks loose—or is it heaven?—when TV anchor Charlie Duff offers an impromptu (and decidedly prayerful) tribute to his just-deceased father at the end of the nightly news, thereby setting off a firestorm of pro-and-con reactions in Stephen Belber’s The Power Of Duff, a play that is one part dark comedy, one part satire, but ultimately the deeply moving story of one man’s inadvertent quest for redemption.
(read more)
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
Monday, April 13th, 2015
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes may have played nearly 750 performances on Broadway, turned Carol Channing into a star, featured hit songs like “Bye, Bye, Baby” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” and got turned into a Hollywood Movie Classic starring Marilyn Monroe, but when’s the last time you saw it onstage?
The answer may well be “Never,” because that’s what happens to 60something Broadway hits that aren’t Kiss Me Kate, South Pacific, or Guys And Dolls … or rather that’s what would happen without Musical Theatre Guild’s much-loved concert staged readings, the latest of which brings that “little girl from Little Rock,” aka blonde bombshell Lorelei Lee, and her brunette chum Dorothy Shaw, back to entertaining 21st-century musical life.
(read more)
AMERICAN WEE-PIE
Tuesday, March 31st, 2015
Cupcakes offer a down-on-his-luck textbook editor a new lease on life in Lisa Dillman’s magical, whimsical American Wee-Pie, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere in one of my favorite Theatre 40 productions ever.
(read more)
ENTER LAUGHING THE MUSICAL
Wednesday, February 18th, 2015
A long and winding road has at last led a long-forgotten musical comedy gem from its blink-and-you-missed 1976 Broadway run to a delightfully nostalgic, laugh-out-loud hilarious, infectiously tuneful intimate revival at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts Lovelace Studio Theatre.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2026 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY