CHINGLISH
Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet” … because if so, complications will surely ensue as they do in David Henry Hwang’s hilarious (and eye-opening) Chinglish, freshly arrived at South Coast Repertory from Berkeley Rep with its entire creative team and virtually its entire cast intact.
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FALLEN ANGELS
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
The Pasadena Playhouse has come up with a surefire recipe for crowd-pleasing comedy. Start with a script by a master playwright, hire a cast of crackerjack comedic whizzes, surround them with a production that looks as smashing as Broadway’s best, and above all, entrust the entire project to director Art Manke, who has taken an early Noël Coward gem and turned it into a hilarious hit that would do Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance proud.
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AND THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND
Sunday, February 3rd, 2013
Cabaret, “All That Jazz,” Chicago, “Maybe This Time,” “The Money Song,” Kiss Of The Spider Woman, “My Coloring Book,” “New York, New York” … When you hear the names Kander & Ebb, the list of hit shows and songs goes on and on, so much so that by the year 1991, the time had come for a musical revue saluting John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Greatest Hits, and the Drama Desk Award-winning And The World Goes ‘Round (conceived by Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman, and David Thompson) was born.
Though now officially licensed as The World Goes Round, the revue’s latest revival at the NoHo Arts Center gives it back its original ‘91 title, a decision fully in keeping with this sensational, back-to-its-roots staging of one of the most entertaining, tune-packed song cycles in musical theater history.
DRIVING MISS DAISY
Sunday, February 3rd, 2013
Sierra Madre Playhouse follows last year’s superb, Scenie-winning Incident At Vichy with a beautifully acted, directed, and designed production of Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry’s award-winning one-acter about an elderly Southern Jewish widow and the African-American driver foisted upon her by her adult son in the years just preceding the Civil Rights Movement.
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THE SNAKE CAN
Sunday, February 3rd, 2013
When was the last time you saw a play about three women on the cusp of fifty navigating the rough waters of big city singlehood? Actually, when was the last time you saw anything—play, movie, or TV series—about three fiftyish females period?
Since the answer to both of these questions is likely to be a big fat “Never,” Kathryn Graf’s world premiere dramedy The Snake Can comes as a particularly welcome surprise … and a rewarding New Years 2013 treat.
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TRIASSIC PARQ – THE MUSICAL
Friday, February 1st, 2013
When Michael Crichton first sat down to pen Jurassic Park, little did he realize that a trio of young musical theater writers would one day come up with Triassic Parq – The Musical, an unauthorized retelling of the Crichton novel as the dinosaurs themselves might have told it … and the wildest, wackiest, filthiest, campiest, and most entertaining show ever written from a dino’s point of view.
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HAPPY FACE SAD FACE
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013
The term “high concept” is one more often applied to a Hollywood blockbuster than to a play getting its World Premiere in one of L.A.’s many 99-seat theaters. Studios seem far more resistant to films that can’t be pitched in a few succinct words than are our local stages—not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with “high concept,” a fact made abundantly clear by R.J. Colleary’s Happy Face Sad Face, now playing at Hollywood’s Lillian Theatre.
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PLAZA SUITE
Sunday, January 27th, 2013
Neil Simon was the reigning King Of Broadway when his Plaza Suite opened at the Plymouth Theatre on Valentine’s Day, 1968. Only two years before, Simon’s Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple, and Barefoot in the Park were all four playing simultaneously on the Great White Way, and Plaza Suite, the next Simon comedy to open in New York ran over a thousand performances and on into the next decade.
It’s this still rib-tickling, still relevant collection of three short plays, each of them unfolding in Suite 719 of New York’s posh and pricey Plaza Hotel, that the Morgan-Wixson Theatre now revives to near perfection in a production blessed by inspired direction and a pair of sensational lead performances.
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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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