DIVIDING THE ESTATE
Monday, January 30th, 2012
The late, great Horton Foote returned to the small-town Texas he knew so well—in comedic mode this time round—in his Dividing The Estate, Tony-nominated as Best Play of 2009 and now playing at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre with two-thirds of its New York cast intact, including Foote’s daughter Hallie in the role that scored her a Tony nomination.
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BOEING-BOEING
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
There’ll be no louder peals of laughter in the South Bay over the next few weekends than those emanating from Rolling Hills Estates as the Norris Center For The Performing Arts presents an all-around splendid revival of Marc Camoletti’s saucy, sexy French farce Boeing-Boeing under James W. Gruessing’s sparkling direction.
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NOgoodDEED
Friday, January 27th, 2012
“No good deed goes unpunished,” or so Richard Jewell discovered when the mass media, having previously heralded his heroism at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, turned viciously against him, dragging the security guard through the mud without a shred of proof—or even evidence, all because he “fit” an FBI criminal profile.
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WHAT THE BUTLER SAW
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Here’s a quick quiz for theater aficionados:
Who can name a screwball comedy which deals with, features, or mentions all of the following: depravity, disguises, gender identity, the government, hanky-panky, hermaphroditism, homosexuality, incest, insanity, marriage, mistaken identities, nymphomania, pederasty, psychiatry, rape, religion, reunited orphan siblings, slapstick, and transvestitism?
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
Woody Allen is back on screen—and better than ever—in his critically acclaimed box-office smash Midnight In Paris, making the Morgan-Wixson Theatre’s decision to program one of Allen’s earliest hits as part of their 2011-12 season a stroke of prescient genius. That Morgan-Wixson’s staging of Play It Again Sam, Allen’s late-1960s comedy about a Humphrey Bogart-obsessed nebbish, turns out to be quite a gem of a production is icing on the cake.
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THE 39 STEPS
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
A quarter century before Cary Grant found himself pursued across the United States by enemy spies mistakenly believing him to be a CIA agent in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller North By Northwest, a young man named Richard Hannay wound up in similar straits in The 39 Steps, one of the master of the suspense’s earliest hits, and one whose now iconic sequences include a train-top chase leading to Hannay’s daredevil jump onto the Forth Bridge, a seemingly fatal shooting of our hero midway through, hero handcuffed to Hitchcock Blonde heroine as he searches for a villain recognizable only by the missing top joint on one of his fingers, and a very public climactic scene at the London Palladium, much like the one Hitchcock later filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in The Man Who Knew Too Much.
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THE WATER’S EDGE
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
A man’s return visit to the wife and children he left behind seventeen years ago yields unexpected consequences in The Water’s Edge, Theresa Rebeck’s gripping family drama (with a twist), now getting a sensational Los Angeles Premiere at North Hollywood’s The Road Theatre under the inspired direction of Sam Anderson.
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THE DROWSY CHAPERONE
Friday, January 20th, 2012
The Tony-winning 2006 Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone proves the best possible showcase for more than twenty talented USC undergrads (and audiences lucky enough to catch it during its sold-out six-performance run through Sunday).
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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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