MY ANTONIA
Sunday, July 6th, 2008
Willa Cather’s epic 1918 novel has been transformed into an absolutely exquisite memory play by writer/director Scott Schwartz. For those like myself who missed the production’s debut at the Ventura’s Rubicon this past May, Antonia is back, in the more intimate setting of Venice’s Pacific Resident Theatre, and certain to enchant audiences of all ages for weeks to come.
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SPRING’S AWAKENING
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Spring’s Awakening was so shocking for its era that when it finally opened in New York 26 years later, it took a Supreme Court injunction to allow the show to go on … and then only for a single performance before closing. With scenes of masturbation, violence, and sex between 14-year-old characters, it is no wonder that pre-Roaring 20s audiences were shocked to the point of outrage.
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SHIPWRECKED!
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Whether you are eight years old or eighty, you will delight in the sheer magic of live theater at the Geffen Playhouse’s production of Donald Margulies magnificent adventure story, Shipwrecked! What would cost Hollywood a couple hundred million dollars to achieve, the geniuses behind this production and its three supremely gifted actors (doing the work of the proverbial “cast of thousands”) achieve at a fraction of the cost, with equal or greater entertainment value.
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RETURN
Friday, June 13th, 2008RECOMMENDED
Sonia Levitan’s award-winning young adult novel The Return has been turned into a musical, entitled simply Return, with often powerful results.
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EMERGENCY
Saturday, April 26th, 2008RECOMMENDED
A 400-year-old slave ship rises out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty and all of New York is riveted. As one African-American man swims out to climb atop it, his grandchildren watch from the shore. Many are inspired to think about their lives, and the lives of black people who came before them. No one remains untouched by this miraculous event.
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DINNER WITH FRIENDS
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
“You never know what couples are like when they’re alone.”
Thus speaks one of the characters in Donald Margulies’ Dinner With Friends, a play which allows us, the audience, to see what its two couples are like behind closed doors. Like flies on the fourth wall, we observe Gabe and Karen’s (and Tom and Beth’s) most private moments. We also see each couple as they see the other, and what they see is often quite different from the other couple’s intimate reality.
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COFFEE WILL MAKE YOU BLACK
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Coffee Will Make You Black may seem at first an odd choice for the Celebration, L.A.’s professional theater representing the gay and lesbian community. None of its 18 characters are gay men, and of its many female characters, only a handful may (or then again may not) be lesbian. Hopefully this will not be a turnoff to the Celebration’s loyal core audience, for Coffee Will Make You Black is a joyous, engaging, and laugh-out-loud uproarious celebration of the birth of African American identity in the late 1960s.
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THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE WORLD
Thursday, March 27th, 2008RECOMMENDED
The life of Albert Einstein might seem an unlikely topic for a musical, but Russ Alben, John Sparks, and Jerry Hart have tackled it in The Smartest Man In The World, now playing at the Pico Playhouse. Though the results are uneven, there are many bright moments and some fine performances to make this quaint, old-fashioned musical worthy of a look-see.
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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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