REEFER MADNESS
Thursday, May 12th, 2011
“Creeping like a communist, it’s knocking at our doors—turning all our children into hooligans and whores. Voraciously devouring the way things are today, savagely deflowering the good ol’ U.S.A.—it’s Reefer Madness. Reefer Madness.”
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THE CHAIRS
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
A pair of nonagenarians are the only characters visible throughout most of The Chairs, but who knows how many invisible ones there are on stage by the end of Eugène Ionesco’s “tragic farce,” the latest production from A Noise Within—and a terrific one as might be expected from California’s Home For The Classics.
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9 TO 5
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
Violet, Doralee, and Judy, the trio of office gals made famous by Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda in 1980’s 9 To 5 are back—in a re-directed, re-choreographed, re-designed National Tour of the Broadway musical which world premiered a few years back at the Ahmanson.
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RENT
Saturday, May 7th, 2011
When Jonathan Larson’s megahit Rent ended its twelve-year-long Broadway run in 2008, regional theaters finally got their crack at staging the now iconic tale of impoverished young artists and musicians living in New York’s Lower East Side during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. Sadly though, despite an (over)abundance of Southern California productions since then, few appear to have achieved the greatness that Rent deserves. This is a show that requires bona fide triple threats in all its roles, including its many ensemble tracks, and despite our SoCal talent pool, this may have proved more easily said than done.
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THICKER THAN WATER
Friday, May 6th, 2011
Three-time Best Actress Emmy-winner Barbara Bain and well-known film/TV actor D.B. Sweeney are among the baker’s dozen performers headlining Thicker Than Water, an entertaining, perceptive evening of one-acts by Dale Griffiths Stamos at Santa Monica’s Promenade Playhouse.
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THE MALCONTENT
Friday, May 6th, 2011
An overthrown national leader sneaks back into to his country in disguise, hoping to engineer a return to power. To do so, he must match wits with the new leader’s ruthless, ambitious young protégé, who is having a secret affair with the new leader’s beautiful young wife, who is in turn being pursued by a second handsome, unprincipled schemer. And that’s just the start of two and a half hours of lust, intrigue, betrayal, passion and politics in John Marston’s The Malcontent.
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THE COLUMBINE PROJECT
Sunday, May 1st, 2011
Few L.A. theater projects have had quite the success (or the journey) of The Columbine Project, Paul Storiale’s meticulously researched docudrama about the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. World premiering in April of 2009 at the 48-seat Avery Schreiber Theatre in North Hollywood, The Columbine Project was extended twice before transferring to off-Broadway with unprecedented swiftness (and with the entire L.A. cast intact). Its July through October New York run at the Actors Temple Theatre was praised by the prestigious New Yorker magazine as a production which “fills the tiny, funky theatre with talent and gravity.” In December of the same year, the original North Hollywood production was awarded five ADA (Artistic Director Achievement) Awards including a Best Director award for its creator/writer/director Paul Storiale.
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I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER
Friday, April 29th, 2011
As long as there are parents and children and their accompanying relationship ups-and-downs, Robert Anderson’s I Never Sang For My Father will remain every bit as relevant to our times as the latest World Premiere drama. For proof positive, do not fail to catch The New American Theatre’s superb revival at the McCadden Place Theatre.
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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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