TUNE IN

posted on August 13th, 2025 at 8:43 AM by Steven Stanley

Playwright Carlos Lacámara tackles university politics, mental illness, psychedelic drug therapy, childhood trauma, and women in academia in the early 1960s, stirs in at least one soap opera-worthy plot twist, and garners more than a few laughs along the way in Tune In, another fabulous Theatre Of NOTE World Premiere.

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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

STRIFE

posted on August 12th, 2025 at 9:13 AM by Steven Stanley


The rich get richer and the poor get poorer in Strife, John Galsworthy’s more-relevant-than-ever look at the darker side of HBO’s The Gilded Age.
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posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

SOMETHING ROTTEN

posted on August 11th, 2025 at 12:59 PM by Steven Stanley


Torrance Theatre Company has done it again, delivering a big-stage, big-cast, big-orchestra summer musical so professionally staged and performed, you just might find yourself thinking you’re seeing the 2015 Broadway hit Something Rotten being performed at one of our major SoCal regional theaters.
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posted in Musical, South Bay, Theater Review, WOW!

GLORY DAYS

posted on August 9th, 2025 at 12:31 PM by Steven Stanley


Four high school besties discover that life after graduation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in Nick Blaemire and James Gardiner’s engaging slice-of-teen-life musical Glory Days, a terrific (and terrifically entertaining) talent showcase for a quartet of up-and-coming triple threats at the Broadwater Black Box Theatre.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

THE FANTASTICKS

posted on August 3rd, 2025 at 3:34 PM by Steven Stanley

The ups and downs of first love are explored to engaging, tuneful effect in the Ruskin Group Theatre’s 65th-anniversary revival of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s The Fantasticks, though for me at least, the world’s longest-running musical begins somewhat to outstay its welcome at around the two-hour point.

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posted in Musical, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls

THE HEIDI CHRONICLES

posted on August 2nd, 2025 at 12:35 PM by Steven Stanley


Playwright Wendy Wasserstein encapsulates a quarter century of the American women’s movement as she recounts the Life and Loves of Heidi Holland in her Pulitzer Prize-winning dramedy The Heidi Chronicles, now being given an absorbing, illuminating 37th-anniversary revival at the Group Rep Theatre.

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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

SOME LIKE IT HOT

posted on July 31st, 2025 at 3:34 PM by Steven Stanley


Not everybody things hot, but it’s hard to imagine any Broadway musical lover not being smitten by the quadruple-Tony-winning stage adaptation of the Billy Wilder movie classic Some Like It Hot now playing at the Hollywood Pantages, a song-and-dance-and-laugh-packed entertainment bonanza with an updated sensibility where race and gender are concerned.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Musical, National Tour, Theater Review, WOW!

REEL TO REEL

posted on July 28th, 2025 at 4:21 PM by Steven Stanley

Ever notice how the minutes can go by lickety-split or seem to move at a snail’s pace depending who you’re with? In the case of the octogenarian couple whose 55-plus-year relationship playwright John Kolvenbach has us spending an hour and a half with in his 2018 four-actor two-hander Reel To Reel, I found the latter to be the case.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review

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