ONCE

posted on September 11th, 2017 at 4:58 PM by Steven Stanley

Take one of the best (and quite possibly the most original) Broadway smashes of the past decade, cast it with some of SoCal’s most gifted actor-singer-musicians, give it a fresh new staging that may actually improve on the Broadway original, and you’ve got Once, as thrilling a South Coast Repertory season opener as any musical theater lover could wish for.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

PTERODACTYLS

posted on September 10th, 2017 at 10:35 AM by Steven Stanley

The Commissary at Culver Studios provides September’s most unique theatrical venue as Pop Up Theater, Inc. debuts its entertaining if uneven revival of Nicky Silver’s absurdist AIDS-era tragicomic farce Pterodactyls.
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posted in Comedy, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls

CARMEN DISRUPTION

posted on September 10th, 2017 at 10:33 AM by Steven Stanley

Prolific British playwright Simon Stephens goes avant-garde in Carmen Disruption, meaning that no matter how much you may have loved the edgy realism of Punk Rock or the captivating whimsy of Heisenberg or the utter magic of his stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, you may well find his artsy 2015 take on Bizet a good deal less engaging.
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posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls

IPHIGENIA IN AULIS

posted on September 7th, 2017 at 5:34 PM by Steven Stanley

There are perhaps few genres more likely to fill contemporary theatergoers with the fear of dozing off mid-play than the dreaded Greek Tragedy, that is unless the company putting on the show is Chicago’s Court Theater, in town this month to resuscitate the 2400-year-old Iphigenia In Aulis to spellbinding, gut-punching effect at Malibu’s Getty Villa.
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posted in Classic Play, Presented Production, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

OTHER DESERT CITIES

posted on September 4th, 2017 at 10:06 AM by Steven Stanley

Real-life sisters Ellen Geer and Melora Marshall and Geer’s daughter Willow play characters with matching family ties in Theatricum Botanicum’s superb outdoor revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities.
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posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE (OR GUESS WHO’S COMING FOR PASSOVER)

posted on September 3rd, 2017 at 2:57 PM by Steven Stanley

A Catholic mom, her Jewish husband and mother-in-law, and a couple of kids raised somewhere in the middle. Meet the protagonists of Gary Lamb’s Somewhere in the Middle (or guess who’s coming for Passover), a World Premiere Crown City Theatre Company dramedy that transcends its “Very Special Episode” premise to make for a discussion-prompting, terrifically acted look at the religious ties that rarely bind in today’s polarized world.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, North Hollywood, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

posted on September 2nd, 2017 at 12:51 PM by Steven Stanley

The Brewster Sisters are at it again, bumping off their elderly male lodgers in the name of human kindness, in Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s delectably performed, gorgeously designed intimate revival of Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 Broadway hit Arsenic And Old Lace.
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posted in Comedy, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

AMERICAN HOME

posted on September 1st, 2017 at 7:13 PM by Steven Stanley

Homeownership dreams come true, then fall apart in Stephanie Alison Walker’s overly ambitious American Home, whose intriguing premise and promising opening scenes soon develop into an excessively populated, tonally uneven, insufficiently involving World Premiere dramedy.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Theater Review

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