STAGE DOOR
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s 1936 comedy Stage Door is the kind of play that inspires the proverbial, “They don’t write ’em like that anymore.” Three acts. Twenty-seven characters. Witty dialog. Snappy repartee. Not only do they not “write ’em” like that. In these tough economic times, no mid-to-large-size theater could afford toproduce’em like that either. (Just imagine the cost of salaries and costumes!)
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NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE BRITISH
Friday, January 29th, 2010
All those doors is the first clue that we’re in the land of farce. After all, how many apartment living rooms have six (count’em) doors leading off who-knows-where, in addition to stairs leading up to a second floor? Only the needs of farce (plenty of “he goes out just as she comes in” moments and slammed doors galore) could inspire such a floor plan. Then there are the intercoms (not one, but two) and a hatch opening on to the kitchen that keeps flying down and shutting. Clearly we’re going to be in for an evening of screwball merriment.
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SEASCAPE WITH SHARKS AND DANCER
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
A young man pulls a young woman out of the ocean and brings her back to his rundown Provincetown beach house. He says she was drowning; she says she was dancing. From the get-go, romantic sparks seem to be flying between them. Their repartee recalls those screwball comedies of the 1930s, but the year is 1975 and there are hints that the young woman’s playfully argumentative nature hides a darker side. There’s also the engagement ring she finds hidden in a desk drawer that suggests that the young man too may carry emotional baggage.
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SPIKE HEELS
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
Prolific, popular playwright Theresa Rebeck made her first splash off-Broadway in 1990 with Spike Heels, a darkly funny drama about the war between the sexes in the changed/changing world of the late 20th Century. Set in the Boston apartments of two upstairs-downstairs neighbors in their early thirties, Spike Heels looks perceptively (and bitingly) at the ways men and women exert their power in business, in personal relationships, and in sex.
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SHAKESPEARE UnSCRIPTED
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
The talented folks of Impro Theatre and Combined Artform (aka the best improv actors in town) are back with their latest confection, Shakespeare UnScripted, and like its predecessors Jane Austen UnScripted and Tennessee Williams UnScripted, it adds up to two acts of improvised madness and merriment.
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tick, tick … BOOM!
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
Musical theater lovers under the age of forty may find it hard to imagine a time when Jonathan Larson’s Rent wasn’t part of our national musical theater lexicon. 12 years and 5,124 performances on Broadway, a still ongoing National Tour, a major motion picture, and since its Broadway closing, regional theater productions galore—Rent has truly conquered the musical theater world.
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URINETOWN
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory proves once again (in the immortal words of The Who) that “the kids are alright” with their latest production, the 2001 Broadway hit musical Urinetown.
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SYLVIA
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Sylvia is A.R. Gurney’s tale of an adorable mutt who finds herself a new master in a Manhattan park and a new home in a New York City brownstone. This comic tribute to Man’s Best Friend has become a regional audience favorite since its first staging in 1995 with Sarah Jessica Parker as Sylvia, and its latest incarnation at Hermosa Beach Playhouse is one of the Playhouse’s best.
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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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