HARMONY, KANSAS
Sunday, June 24th, 2012
If it seems at times that native Angelinos are about as rare as a 99-seat production that starts at 8:00 on the dot, it’s perhaps even harder to find big-city LGBTs who haven’t left their small town homes for greener big city pastures, or so it may seem. No wonder, then, that Blue State gays and lesbians tend to forget just how many of us there still are in the American heartland.
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THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
Most Palisades High School theater students would probably never dream of making a career out of producing and starring in William Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits, yet that is precisely the dream that Charles Pasternak and his fellow Pali-Highers Edward Castuera and Jack Leahy shared a decade or so ago, a dream which led to the 2006 founding of an exciting young theater company bent on staging every single play in the Shakespearean oeuvre. When I reviewed my very first The Porters Of Hellgate production, Love’s Labor’s Lost, back in 2008, they were already at number eight in only their second season. The Merry Wives Of Windsor makes it fourteen* and counting, and as in productions past, The Porters have once again come up with an original take on a Shakespeare standard and done so with considerable skill and panache.
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D IS FOR DOG
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012
What starts out as a clever, visually stunning satire of 1950s family sitcoms like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet turns into something a good more Twilight Zonesque in Rogue Artists Ensemble’s D Is For Dog, now returning to Los Angeles a year after its award-winning initial run, terrific news for those like this reviewer who somehow missed it the first time around.
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THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012NOT RECOMMENDED
When deciding whether to spend an hour and a half with a trio of loony Irish sisters in Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom, the latest production of the multiple award-winning Rogue Machine, you might want to ask yourself how important it is for you to understand what’s happening onstage when watching a play. How important is it for you that a story should unfold in some kind of recognizable reality? How willing are you to suspend disbelief, ignore confusion, and simply go with the flow?
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THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
Monday, June 18th, 2012
The Little Dog Laughed, Douglas Carter Beane’s hilarious, edgy Hollywood-New York showbiz satire, has arrived in North Hollywood with its cutting-edge love story between a gay movie star and a bisexual hustler and its much touted (albeit brief) display of full-frontal male nudity. Though one of its four performances still needs considerably sharpening, director Jon Cortez and cast are largely successful in entertaining, titillating, and maybe even coaxing a tear or two from audiences in search of comedy with a bite.
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THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION
Sunday, June 17th, 2012
For socially liberal Christians, secular humanists, agnostics, and/or atheists, there may seem to be little difference these days between Catholics and Evangelicals. Both would appear to be anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-anything that contradicts the strict tenets of their faiths.
Pit a die-hard Pentecostal against a die-hard Papist, however, and you will stand corrected once each side begins attempting to prove the other wrong.
This is precisely what playwright Evan Smith does to hilarious and thought-provoking effect in The Savannah Disputation, his highly intelligent comedy now getting its Los Angeles Premiere after a New York debut and a slew of well-received regional productions.
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LANGUAGE ROOMS
Friday, June 15th, 2012
In his dramatic, suspenseful Back Of The Throat, Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi explored the plight of an Americanized young Arab who finds himself caught in the Hitchockean dilemma of being pursued for a crime he did not commit—in this case, of plotting terrorist acts in a post-9/11 world. By making Khaled an entirely likeable boy-next-door type with an American girlfriend and nary the trace of an Arabic accent, El Guindi got his audience firmly on the side of the accused before starting to plant seeds of doubt in our minds. Might Khaled actually be the terrorist he’s accused of being?
Language Rooms, El Guindi’s latest, takes a more comedic approach to the same post-9/11 world, but one no less powerful for the laughter it provokes, and has been brought down to Los Angeles lock, stock, director, cast, designers, and barrel by San Francisco’s Golden Thread Productions.
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LES MISÉRABLES
Thursday, June 14th, 2012
Cameron Mackintosh’s New 25th Anniversary Production Of Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, now playing at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, is not only the most gorgeous Les Miz you’ve ever seen, it’s one of the most gorgeous productions ever, so perfectly realized that it may make you wonder who ever thought this show needed the revolving stage of the London/Broadway original. Then again, designers back in 1985, when Les Misérables opened in London’s West End, could hardly have imagined the technical advances that make this revolutionary return to Victor Hugo-land a reality.
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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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