DOG AND PONY
Sunday, June 15th, 2014RECOMMENDED
A trio of utterly fabulous Broadway leading ladies led by the magical Nicole Parker are reason enough to catch The Old Globe’s latest World Premiere musical, Dog And Pony, though the show itself, despite Roger Rees’ effervescent direction, still needs a good deal of work.
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THE COUNTRY HOUSE
Friday, June 13th, 2014
Dinner With Friends. Shipwrecked! Collected Stories. Sight Unseen. Coney Island Christmas. And now comes Donald Margulies’ latest, The Country House, a captivating look at a contemporary American Royal Family of stage and screen, with stage-and-screen star Blythe Danner bringing her own brand of radiance to the Geffen Playhouse. Who could ask for anything more?
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NICKEL MINES
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014
On October 2, 2006, a 32-year-old husband and father entered an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, took hostage ten girls ages 6 to 13 , shot five of them to death, critically injured the remaining five, then took his own life. Hardly the stuff of your average, everyday musical, and in fact Andrew Palermo’s Nickel Mines (co-written with Shannon Stoeke and Dan Dyer) proves neither average nor everyday but something quite extraordinary indeed, tragedy turned into art, and the power of grace as it may never have been shown before.
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BACKYARD
Monday, June 2nd, 2014
Some teenagers turn to sex. Others turn to drugs. Still others turn to rock ‘n’ roll. The teenagers in Mickey Birnbaum’s violent but exhilarating Backyard turn to wrestling, and so too do the adults in their lives.
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DORIAN’S DESCENT
Saturday, May 31st, 2014NOT RECOMMENDED
A quartet of stellar performers, a gifted composer/musical director, and L.A.’s costume designer du jour at his most over-the-top fabulous can’t, unfortunately, save the Oscar Wilde-based World Premiere musical Dorian’s Descent from descending into three hours’ worth of clichéd dialog and lyrics, jarring tonal shifts, and good intentions gone disastrously bad.
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DEATH OF THE AUTHOR
Friday, May 30th, 2014
An accusation of plagiarism is but the opening shot in Death Of The Author, Steven Drukman’s academia-set World Premiere drama that unfolds like an edge-of-your-seat suspense-thriller from its “gotcha” hook to the unexpectedly satisfying way Drukman manages to tie the whole thing up some ninety minutes later.
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THE HYPOCHONDRIAC
Tuesday, May 13th, 2014RECOMMENDED
Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid gets trimmed down from three acts to a fast-moving fifty-minutes as Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre presents Roger K. Weiss’s The Hypochondriac, and thought results fall short of the brilliance of December’s A Christmas Carol, there are laughs aplenty to be had.
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UNORGANIZED CRIME
Friday, May 9th, 2014
Oscar nominee Chazz Palminteri and Tony nominee Elizabeth Rodriguez bring their Hollywood/Broadway talent/star power to Kenny D’Aquila’s savagely funny goodfellas comedy Unorganized Crime, now getting its World Premiere at Hollywood’s Lillian Theatre under David Fofi’s razor-sharp direction.
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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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