FAILURE: A LOVE STORY

posted on April 17th, 2017 at 10:11 AM by Steven Stanley

Center Theatre Group opens Block Party, its three-play salute to the best of Los Angeles intimate theater, with an exquisitely expanded Kirk Douglas Theatre staging of Coeurage Theatre Company’s multiple-award-winning Failure: A Love Story, Philip Dawkins’ whimsical meditation on the fragility of life and the resiliency of those who live it.
(read more)

Tags: , , , , ,
posted in Comedy-Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

PURE CONFIDENCE

posted on April 16th, 2017 at 2:07 PM by Steven Stanley

Pure confidence is just one of the qualities distinguishing Simon Kato from his fellow Kentucky slaves in the year 1860. Another is the champion jockey’s talent for winning any race he sets his mind to, and these days what Simon wants to win (or more precisely to buy) is his freedom.

Welcome to the world of Carlyle Brown’s Pure Confidence, the latest from Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble and quite possibly the most purely entertaining (and elucidating and emotionally powerful) show in town.
(read more)

Tags: , ,
posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD’S HOME FOR UNWED MOTHERS

posted on April 15th, 2017 at 3:44 PM by Steven Stanley

Unplanned pregnancy yields ghastly consequences in Louisa Hill’s Lord Of The Underworld’s Home For Unwed Mothers, a Skylight Theatre Company World Premiere whose cast, director, and production design succeed as often as not in overcoming the memory play’s abrupt second-act tonal shift, some cardboard supporting characters, and too much narration throughout.
(read more)

Tags: , ,
posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, World Premiere

THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE

posted on April 14th, 2017 at 9:40 AM by Steven Stanley

Two stars are born in the Geffen Playhouse West Coast Premiere of The Legend Of Georgia McBride. One is the Florida Panhandle drag queen whose reputation gives Matthew Lopez’s crowd-pleasing comedy its name. The other is Andrew Burnap, whose revelatory performance as an Elvis impersonator who discovers a whole new love of performing portends huge things ahead for the 2016 Yale School Of Drama MFA grad.
(read more)

Tags: , ,
posted in Comedy, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

PUNK ROCK

posted on April 13th, 2017 at 5:30 PM by Steven Stanley

The Breakfast Club’s all-American teen quintet may have found themselves holed up in the high school library like the seven English “sixth-formers” of Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock, but the world inhabited by those 1980s John Hughes archetypes seems positively Disneyesque compared to the dystopia their contemporary UK counterparts call home in Stephens’ riveting slice of middle-class private-school life, now being given an edge-of-your-seat Los Angeles Premiere by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.
(read more)

Tags: , ,
posted in Drama, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

posted on April 11th, 2017 at 7:58 AM by Steven Stanley

Candlelight Pavilion hits the Easter-season jackpot with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, a spellbinding big-stage revival that earns highest marks for Chuck Ketter and John LaLonde’s dynamic, imaginative direction, its all-around stunning production design, and a cast to rival regional theater’s finest. (Oh, and there’s not a note of prerecorded instrumentals to be heard.)
(read more)

Tags: , ,
posted in Musical, San Gabriel Valley, Theater Review, WOW!

THE BELLE OF AMHERST

posted on April 10th, 2017 at 10:26 AM by Steven Stanley

Ferrell Marshall is luminous as Emily Dickinson in Sierra Madre Playhouse’s gorgeously staged intimate revival of William Luce’s the Belle Of Amherst, impeccably directed by Todd Nielsen.
(read more)

Tags: , , ,
posted in San Gabriel Valley, Solo Performance, Theater Review, WOW!

MACBETH: REVISITED

posted on April 9th, 2017 at 12:44 PM by Steven Stanley

Shakespeare’s Scottish Play is back, in streamlined form, as The New American Theatre debuts Macbeth: Revisited, and if the newfangled title suggests a more radically rethought Macbeth that this one actually is, director/star Jack Stehlin and his company of actors do indeed deliver the bloody goods.
(read more)

Tags: , ,
posted in Classic Play, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

Next PagePrevious Page