NEXT TO NORMAL

posted on May 19th, 2017 at 9:37 AM by Steven Stanley

Deedee Magno Hall gives a beautifully nuanced performance as bipolar wife-and-mother Diana Goodman opposite her real-life spouse Cliffton Hall’s powerful Dan Goodman in Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Next To Normal, and though the East West Players season closer doesn’t deliver on all fronts, it provides the Halls with a pair of dream roles and audiences with a moving musical look at the effects of mental illness on an all-American family.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, Theater Review

THE MONSTER BUILDER

posted on May 17th, 2017 at 2:00 PM by Steven Stanley

A topnotch cast attack The Monster Builder with gusto, but a rather creepy lead character and a bit too much of the quirky and bizarre make Amy Freed’s South Coast Repertory World Premiere satire of architectural pretention more miss than hit despite occasional forays into the weirdly hilarious.
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, Theater Review, World Premiere

DRY LAND

posted on May 15th, 2017 at 4:33 PM by Steven Stanley

Teagan Rose and Connor Kelly-Eiding reprise their fearless star turns in Ruby Rae Spiegel’s darkly comic, graphically disturbing Dry Land, a 2016 Echo Theater Company smash now returning to riveting, larger-sized life as the third and final offering of Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre Block Party 2017.
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posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

SPECIES NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA

posted on May 14th, 2017 at 5:33 PM by Steven Stanley

Imagine if Chekhov had set The Cherry Orchard in 21st-century Mendocino County and you’ve got Dorothy Fortenberry’s Species Native To California, am IAMA Theatre Company World Premiere dramedy that proves that every good story is worth a good retelling.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

THE LYONS

posted on May 13th, 2017 at 2:44 PM by Steven Stanley

Ben, Rita, Lisa, and Curtis Lyons give the Lomans, the Tyrones, and the Giddenses a run for their dysfunctional family money, albeit with considerably more laughter-provoking results in Nicky Silver’s The Lyons, the latest darkly comedic bit of brilliance from The Road Theatre Company, a Los Angeles Premiere incisively directed by Scott Alan Smith.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, North Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

ACTUALLY

posted on May 12th, 2017 at 12:38 PM by Steven Stanley


We all know that “No” means “No,” but what’s a college student to think and do when the young woman with whom he thinks he’s having consensual, albeit drunken sex tells him “Actually, um…” mid-coitus?

Anna Ziegler takes this question as her point of departure in Actually, the New York playwright’s darkly comedic, compellingly dramatic look at sex, race, gender, and booze now getting a first-class co-World Premiere* production at the Geffen.
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posted in Theater Review, Two-Hander, West Side/Beverly HIlls, World Premiere, WOW!

FEFU AND HER FRIENDS

posted on May 10th, 2017 at 10:21 AM by Steven Stanley

If, as Shakespeare put it, the play’s the thing, then I must confess that Maria Irene Fornés’s avant-garde Fefu And Her Friends is not my thing, that is unless it happens to performed inside (and in the gardens of) the architectural masterpiece that is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. For its one-of-a-kind setting alone, Hollyhock Fefu merits attention (if not absolute affection).
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review

ARCHDUKE

posted on May 10th, 2017 at 9:58 AM by Steven Stanley

Leave it to playwright Rajiv Joseph to turn the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, the event that led directly to the outbreak of the First World War, into Archduke, not only the year’s screwballsiest comedy but one with contemporary relevance in a world of suicide bombers and suicide voters.
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

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