SWEENEY TODD
Tuesday, January 29th, 2019
There will be blood all month in Costa Mesa as South Coast Repertory debuts its scaled-down but still powerful, sensationally performed 40th-anniversary revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Weaver’s musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street..
(read more)
PARADISE
Monday, January 28th, 2019
A Columbia University professor reduced to teaching science in an overcrowded, underfunded Bronx high school and a Muslim-American student with dreams far loftier than her Yemeni immigrant family are likely ever to allow. From these two disparate, desperate souls, Laura Maria Censabella has written Paradise, as intelligent, thought-provoking, compelling, heartbreaking, and satisfying a two-hander as I’ve seen in a good long while.
(read more)
THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN
Saturday, January 26th, 2019
A stageful of stereotype-defying Irish islanders, an abundance of well-earned laughs and maybe even a tear or two thrown in for good measure are just a few of the reasons Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple Of Inishmaan at Antaeus Theatre Company adds up to one supremely satisfying (and pardon my Irish) fecking entertaining evening of L.A. theater.
(read more)
TITANIC THE MUSICAL
Monday, January 21st, 2019
Titanic The Musical sails into Claremont to give Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre one of its best productions ever—superb performances, gorgeous songs, first-class design, and a live orchestra to boot.
(read more)
DEATH HOUSE
Saturday, January 19th, 2019
What starts off as a capital punishment-vs.-life imprisonment debate develops into something considerably deeper and more powerful in Jason Karasev’s profoundly moving Death House, a Road Theatre Company World Premiere.
(read more)
SPRING AWAKENING
Friday, January 18th, 2019
Outstanding performances, nuanced direction, and thrillingly original choreography (all by USC students) make Musical Theatre Repertory’s intimate staging of the 2007 Broadway musical hit Spring Awakening one of the best in a long line of Grade-A MTR productions.
(read more)
LINDA VISTA
Thursday, January 17th, 2019
Tracy Letts could just as easily have called his latest play Train Wreck, so hot a mess is its 50-year-old protagonist that much of the pleasure of Letts’ relentlessly funny, defiantly unsentimental Linda Vista (a Steppenwolf visitor to the Mark Taper Forum) is watching its antihero (emphasis on the anti) get what he so richly deserves.
(read more)
1776
Monday, January 14th, 2019
American history comes stirringly alive in Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776, turning audiences at the La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts into flies on the walls of the Continental Congress of 1776 as our country’s Founding Fathers wrangle over the question of Independence.
(read more)
Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
COPYRIGHT 2026 STEVEN STANLEY :: DESIGN BY