STEEL PIER

posted on March 12th, 2018 at 7:33 PM by Steven Stanley

Few musicals have faded into obscurity more unjustly than John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Steel Pier, just one reason to celebrate its two-decade-awaited West Coast Premiere, and don’t let the term “student production” scare you away. Though its cast may be younger than many of the characters they are playing, in all other respects this UCLA Department Of Theater stunner is second to none.
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posted in Musical, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

UNEMPLOYED ELEPHANTS – A LOVE STORY

posted on March 11th, 2018 at 1:27 AM by Steven Stanley

Playwright Wendy Graf proves herself as adept at the romcom two-hander as she is at her dark, dramatic solo pieces in Unemployed Elephants – A Love Story, a Victory Theatre World Premiere sparked by Maria Gobetti’s deft direction and a couple of couldn’t-be-better leads.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Theater Review, Two-Hander, World Premiere, WOW!

EL NIÑO

posted on March 6th, 2018 at 6:17 PM by Steven Stanley

No one mines more laughs from dysfunction than Justin Tanner, and if you don’t believe me, check out the latest from the playwright who gave the world Voice Lessons, Teen Girl, Oklahomo!, Space Therapy and more, and whose latest, El Niño, proves the perfect Rogue Machine follow-up to the darkness and depravity of Ruth Fowler’s bled for the household truth.
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

THE GRADUATE

posted on March 5th, 2018 at 7:07 PM by Steven Stanley

Melanie Griffith delivers a superstar turn as befits a Best Actress Oscar nominee, director Michael Matthews once again proves himself an L.A. theater superstar, and newcomer Nick Tag reveals emerging-star power in Laguna Playhouse’s The Graduate, a production so stellar you might just think you’re seeing a Broadway show.
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

A RAISIN IN THE SUN

posted on March 5th, 2018 at 1:15 AM by Steven Stanley

A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s piercing look at racial discrimination, gender roles, family values, and burgeoning African-American identity in the pre-Civil Rights Era 1950s gets revived to powerful effect at Pasadena’s A Noise Within.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

posted on March 4th, 2018 at 10:42 AM by Steven Stanley

Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire undergoes a radical reinvention at The Theatre @ Boston Court where director Michael Michetti has transposed the seven-decade-old classic to 21st-century New Orleans to stunning effect.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Theater Review, WOW!

ALLEGIANCE

posted on March 2nd, 2018 at 5:52 PM by Steven Stanley

Allegiance has arrived at Little Tokyo’s Aritani Theatre, and if the feel-good Broadway musical about the forced internment of 70,000 American citizens and another 40,000 longtime U.S. residents tries too hard to be a crowd-pleaser in ways that the similarly fact-based Parade and The Scottsboro Boys did not, its East West Players debut is if nothing else a splendidly performed (and refreshingly homegrown) Los Angeles Premiere that scores bonus points for the light it sheds on a dark stain in American history.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

JACKIE UNVEILED

posted on March 1st, 2018 at 5:44 PM by Steven Stanley

Saffron Burrows grants Wallis Center For The Performing Arts an up-close-and-personal, warts-and-all tête-à-tête with one of the 20th century’s most famous, most speculated about, and most enigmatic of legends in Jackie Unveiled, Tom Dugan’s gripping, elucidating look at the woman who was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
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posted in Solo Performance, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, World Premiere, WOW!

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