TIMESHARE
Monday, January 11th, 2016RECOMMENDED
A ragtag sales staff’s attempts to convince would-be buyers to take a chance on the proverbial “deal of a lifetime” add up to a series of wild-and-wacky Act One vignettes till a pre-intermission plot twist sends Steve B. Green’s World Premiere comedy Timeshare into darker, somewhat less successful territory.
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HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Friday, December 18th, 2015
The Christmas season has arrived in Claremont, and with it Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s 30th-annual original holiday musical, and though Home For Christmas may not offer the grown-up pleasures of 2014’s It’s Christmas Every Day and 2013’s Because It’s Christmas, Candlelight’s latest nonetheless provides ample reason for families with children to treat themselves to lunch or dinner and a show at the Pavilion.
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RIO HONDO
Saturday, December 5th, 2015
Earlier this year in their brilliantly spoofy Entropy, playwright Bill Robens and Theatre Of NOTE managed somehow to stage a gazillion-dollar Hollywood space-travel epic inside a 40something-seat theater. Robens and NOTE now work the same magic on that most American of movie genres—the Western—in their World Premiere comedy Rio Hondo, to my knowledge the very first L.A. theater production presented “in CinemaStage” and one that no horse opera lover will want to miss.
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A GOOD FAMILY
Sunday, November 29th, 2015RECOMMENDED
A charge of rape lodged against their college student son casts a pall over a Midwestern American couple’s Christmas Eve celebration in A Good Family, Marja-Lewis Ryan’s World Premiere drama that combines several of the elements that made her award-winning One In The Chamber a critical/popular hit last year—crisp writing, outstanding acting, edge-of-your-seat suspense—yet feels incomplete, and not simply for its hour-and-change running time.
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@thespeedofJake
Wednesday, November 25th, 2015
A grieving father’s attempt to connect with his deceased elementary-school-age son leads him on an unexpected journey towards healing in Jennifer Maisel’s transformative family drama @thespeedofJake, the superbly directed/acted latest World Premiere from Jon Lawrence Rivera and Playwrights’ Arena.
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FRONT DOOR OPEN
Monday, November 23rd, 2015NOT RECOMMENDED
An improbable script, grating characters, problematic performances, lackluster direction, and above all the trivialization of a crippling anxiety disorder afflicting over three million Americans make Tom Baum’s Front Door Open a World Premiere production not worth leaving your house for.
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REUNION
Saturday, November 21st, 2015
Does your upcoming 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, or 50th High School Reunion fill you with excitement and joy … or does the mere thought of attending inspire terror and dread? Either way, Marc Ellis, Michael Lange, and David M. Matthews’ tune-filled, feel-good musical Reunion, now getting its World Premiere at the NoHo Arts Center, is one invitation you’ll want to accept.
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CAKE
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015
The lives of nine college town residents intersect in Wendy Gough Soroka’s World Premiere comedy Cake, the latest from Theatre Unleashed and a crowd-pleaser despite its unnecessarily lengthy scene changes.
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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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