CHASING MEM’RIES: A DIFFERENT KIND OF MUSICAL
Friday, November 17th, 2017Tyne Daly rises above the material she’s been given in Chasing Mem’ries: A Different Kind Musical, though if by “different,” book writer Josh Ravetch means clichéd, maudlin, sitcommy, and song-deficient, then this Geffen Playhouse World Premiere “musical” is indeed quite different from the rest.
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LITTLE WOMEN [a multicultural transposition]
Tuesday, November 7th, 2017
If Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March had come of age in post-WWII L.A. as the Mayeda sisters, offspring of a Japanese-American father and a Chinese-American mother, Louisa Mae Alcott’s classic novel might look and sound just like Little Women [a multicultural transposition], Velina Hasu Houston’s unabashedly G-rated World Premiere rewrite that had me in its spell from ebullient start to heartwarming finish.
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THIS LAND
Tuesday, October 31st, 2017
At once epic and intimate, Evangeline Ordaz’s This Land weaves two centuries of Watts history—from the Mexican ranchers who seized Tongva Indian land in the 1880s, to the white homeowners who took flight in the 1950s when blacks moved in, to the Latinos who became the majority four decades later, to today’s white gentrifiers—into two absorbing, illuminating hours of Los Angeles theater at its best.
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SINNER’S LAUNDRY
Monday, October 30th, 2017No playwright could ask for a better cast or finer production design than IAMA Theatre Company has given John Lavelle’s Sinner’s Laundry. Audiences, on the other hand, may find themselves leaving the Lounge Theatre clueless to the message, meaning, or simple raison d’être of Lavelle’s World Premiere absurdist existentialist comedy. I certainly did.
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REDLINE
Sunday, October 29th, 2017
A decades-estranged father and son meet for the first time since a car crash ripped their family to shreds in Christian Durso’s gripping, emotionally-charged Redline, an IAMA Theatre Company World Premiere that held me in its grip from the bombshell revelation that sets it in motion to its life-and-death final seconds.
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RUNAWAY HOME
Tuesday, October 17th, 2017
A fourteen-year-old far too smart, self-assured, and resourceful for her own good takes to the streets of New Orleans three years after Hurricane Katrina lay waste to the city’s Lower Ninth Ward in Jeremy J. Kamps’ Runaway Home, a Fountain Theatre World Premiere that proves every bit as compelling a slice-of-post-Katrina-life as it is a bona fide crowd-pleaser.
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STUPID KID
Monday, October 9th, 2017
Folks are dumb where Chick Ford comes from, which is why you may be excused for assuming at first that Sharr White’s Stupid Kid has nothing but poor white trash jokes in store for audiences at The Road On Magnolia. But think again. Chick and his kinfolk are about to reveal far more about the Eastern Colorado Fords than initially meets the eye.
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WALKING TO BUCHENWALD
Friday, October 6th, 2017
An intergenerational trek across Europe turns a good deal darker than the lighthearted family road trip it initially promises to be in the Open Fist Theatre Company’s World Premiere Walking To Buchenwald, the funny, impactful latest from the endlessly self-reinventing Tom Jacobson.
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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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