STUPID KID

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

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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FIXED

A sexually confused Filipino-American “ladyboy,” the drag princess’s sexually confused Mexican-American sort-of boyfriend, and the sort-of boyfriend’s just plain confused sort-of girlfriend, all three of them in massive states of denial, play out a centuries-old game of love and death in contemporary L.A. in Boni B. Alvarez’s Fixed, a Filipino-Latino telenovela come deliciously to life on the Atwater Village Echo Theater stage.
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FREDDY

Cate Caplin’s exciting, eclectic choreography and some terrific dance performances from students enrolled in LACC’s Theatre Academy make Deborah Lawlor’s 55-minute look back at largely forgotten mid-20th-century dance icon Freddy Herko worth checking out despite stilted dialog that would challenge even the most accomplished cast.
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BILLY BOY

An unexpected sexual encounter with a former high school girlfriend sends a 60ish gay man and a pair of long-dead ghosts on a trip down memory lane in Nick Salamone’s Billy Boy, a Playwrights Arena World Premiere that starts out promisingly enough before veering off into the Twilight Zone.
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BIG NIGHT

Paul Rudnick flounders Big-Time in Big Night, a World Premiere comedy-melodrama likely to prove a Big Letdown to fans hoping for more of the same hearts-and-minds-changing comedic magic that made Jeffrey and In & Out such crowd-pleasing delights.
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GREY NOMAD

Married 60something fuddy-duddies meet a free-spirited couple of fellow retirees to life-changing effect in Dan Lee’s hilarious, heartwarming World Premiere comedy Grey Nomad, the latest from L.A.’s Australian Theatre Company.
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SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE (OR GUESS WHO’S COMING FOR PASSOVER)

A Catholic mom, her Jewish husband and mother-in-law, and a couple of kids raised somewhere in the middle. Meet the protagonists of Gary Lamb’s Somewhere in the Middle (or guess who’s coming for Passover), a World Premiere Crown City Theatre Company dramedy that transcends its “Very Special Episode” premise to make for a discussion-prompting, terrifically acted look at the religious ties that rarely bind in today’s polarized world.
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