PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
With some rip-roaring performances and a superb production design, A Noise Within’s revival of John Millington Synge’s once scandalous 1907 comedy The Playboy Of The Western World would be all-around wonderful if most of its cast weren’t speaking in a Western Irish accent so thick that it can get downright incomprehensible. Fortunately, the zest with which the performers attack their roles, some terrific physical comedy, and a storyline which (thank goodness) gets easier to follow as Act One turns to Act Two and Act Three make for an entertaining evening of theater directed by Geoff Elliott.
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BECOMING BUTCH
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Some people dream of becoming rich, others of becoming famous, but as a child growing up in Queens, New York, young Vincent James Arcuri dreamed of becoming butch, or so we learn in Becoming Butch, Arcuri’s delightful, captivating, and ultimately inspiring one-man performance, continuing its midweek run at the Celebration Theatre over the next two Tuesdays.
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THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAY
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Here’s a question for all you history buffs out there. What two 20th Century inventions revolutionized gay men’s search for quick, anonymous sex with other men?
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MOSCOW
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Three gay men find themselves trapped in an empty theater that may be heaven, hell, or somewhere in-between (with only Chekhov’s The Three Sisters as their companion) in Nick Salamone and Maury R. McIntyre’s engaging, touching chamber musical Moscow, now playing at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre.
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COPENHAGEN
Friday, May 7th, 2010
There’s a moment early on in Michael Frayn’s Tony Award-winning Copenhagen when Margrethe Bohr says reassuringly to her physicist husband Niels, “I don’t think anyone has yet discovered a way you can use theoretical physics to kill people.” Ironic words indeed when spoken to one of the theoretical physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, weapons which led to the immediate or eventual deaths of 200,000 human beings.
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THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
The projects are alive with the sound of music in Tim Acito’s adaptation of Gloria Naylor’s The Women Of Brewster Place, but don’t expect any “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” or “cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels” anywhere in the vicinity of the walled-in housing development where these women lead their dreary, heartbreaking, and heartache-plagued lives. Times are indeed tough for Mattie, Etta Mae, Kiswana, Lorraine, Tee, Cora Lee, Mavis, and Sophie, but they’ve got their music—and each other—to pull themselves through.
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MATT AND BEN
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
No one except the co-authors themselves knew the true story behind Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Academy Award-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting until well over five years after Oscar night 1998—not until August 21, 2002, that is, when Mindy Kaling and Brenda Wither’s Matt & Ben opened at the New York International Fringe Festival.
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THE GIFT HORSE
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly was one of the biggest critical successes of last year’s theater season, scoring nominations and/or wins at L.A.’s Big Three award ceremonies—the Ovations, the LADCCs, and the LA Weeklys.
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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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