KING OF THE YEES
Tuesday, July 18th, 2017
Chinese-American playwright Lauren Yee pays affectionate, rib-tickling, ultimately quite touching tribute to her dad Larry in King Of The Yees, a Center Theatre Group World Premiere now both delighting and illuminating audiences of all racial-ethnic-cultural persuasions at Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre.
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THE CAKE
Monday, July 3rd, 2017
Bekah Brunstetter puts a deeply personal, delightfully down-home face on the Gay-Wedding-Cake Wars in The Cake, the gifted young playwright’s latest World Premiere dramedy, another feather in director Jennifer Chambers’ and The Echo Theater Company’s multi-plumed hats.
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LETTERS FROM A NUT BY TED L. NANCY
Friday, June 30th, 2017Despite its inventive multimedia staging and Beth Kennedy’s kaleidoscopic supporting turn, the Geffen Playhouse’s wacky, wispy Letters From A Nut By Ted L. Nancy, even at a mere sixty-eight minutes, runs about half-an-hour too long, and with full-price tickets going for as much as $85 a pop, anyone minus money/time to burn would do better to order a copy of Nancy’s book from Amazon where used copies start at fifteen cents.
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LOVE IS A DIRTY WORD
Friday, June 23rd, 2017
Plenty of actors have stories to tell, and plenty of those may be as solo-show-ready as Giovanni Adams’ tale of growing up black and “sissy” in Jackson, Mississippi, but few end up as exquisitely written, stunningly performed, and strikingly designed as the Yale University grad’s World Premiere Love Is A Dirty Word.
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THE MONSTER BUILDER
Wednesday, May 17th, 2017A topnotch cast attack The Monster Builder with gusto, but a rather creepy lead character and a bit too much of the quirky and bizarre make Amy Freed’s South Coast Repertory World Premiere satire of architectural pretention more miss than hit despite occasional forays into the weirdly hilarious.
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SPECIES NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA
Sunday, May 14th, 2017
Imagine if Chekhov had set The Cherry Orchard in 21st-century Mendocino County and you’ve got Dorothy Fortenberry’s Species Native To California, am IAMA Theatre Company World Premiere dramedy that proves that every good story is worth a good retelling.
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ACTUALLY
Friday, May 12th, 2017
We all know that “No” means “No,” but what’s a college student to think and do when the young woman with whom he thinks he’s having consensual, albeit drunken sex tells him “Actually, um…” mid-coitus?
Anna Ziegler takes this question as her point of departure in Actually, the New York playwright’s darkly comedic, compellingly dramatic look at sex, race, gender, and booze now getting a first-class co-World Premiere* production at the Geffen.
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ARCHDUKE
Wednesday, May 10th, 2017
Leave it to playwright Rajiv Joseph to turn the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, the event that led directly to the outbreak of the First World War, into Archduke, not only the year’s screwballsiest comedy but one with contemporary relevance in a world of suicide bombers and suicide voters.
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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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