ABIGAIL/1702

posted on May 2nd, 2015 at 12:11 PM by Steven Stanley


When last we saw her in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, teen temptress Abigail Williams was about to flee Salem, Massachusetts and its infamous witch trials, leaving in her wake twenty hanged (or otherwise executed) victims of her venomous, vile, trumped-up accusations.

Playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa now imagines Abby’s life ten years later, and fascinatingly so, in Abigail/1702, a play and production no Crucible lover will want to miss, and the latest from Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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posted in Drama, Long Beach/San Pedro, Theater Review, WOW!

I AND YOU

posted on May 1st, 2015 at 5:28 PM by Steven Stanley

When was the last time you saw a contemporary teen dramedy that not only featured a pair of complex, non-stereotypical characters but added something to the genre and in its final moments left you breathless?

Lauren Gunderson’s I And You is that play, at once funny, captivating, and profoundly moving, a powerful piece of theater now getting its Los Angeles Premiere in a production highlighted by Jennifer Finch’s and Matthew Hancock’s star-making performances under Robin Larsen’s inspired direction.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

MURDER FOR TWO

posted on April 30th, 2015 at 4:18 PM by Steven Stanley

Who says you need a dozen performers and a full orchestra to create a supremely inventive, thoroughly delightful (Ladies’ and) Gentlemen’s Guide To Love And Murder? As Joe Kinosian & Kellen Blair’s Murder For Two makes abundantly clear, all it takes is a pair of gifted quadruple-threats, four hands, a baby grand piano, a nifty plot, an inventive book, and some clever, catchy songs to come up with an award-winning off-Broadway hit.
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posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

BOY GETS GIRL

posted on April 28th, 2015 at 5:48 PM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Terrific performances by a thoroughly engaging Ivy Khan and a riveting if miscast Jim Martyka highlight Theatre Unleashed’s ill-advised fifteenth-anniversary revival of Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl, one which leaves this reviewer wondering how Gilman’s pseudo-thriller ended up named Time Magazine’s #1 Play Of The Year.
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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, Not Recommended, Theater Review

SIDE SHOW

posted on April 27th, 2015 at 11:49 AM by Steven Stanley

Freaks reign supreme in 3-D Theatrical’s big-stage revival of Bill Russell and Henry Krieger’s Side Show (The Original), easily one of the finest 3-D productions ever, and for those of us who have marveled at their Ragtime, Funny Girl, and Parade (among others), that is saying something indeed.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, Theater Review, WOW!

MY BARKING DOG

posted on April 26th, 2015 at 8:50 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED

Performances are outstanding and the production design sensational, the director is Michael Michetti (need I say more?), and the ideas put forth are provocative, but an overreliance on monologs proves off-putting in the West Coast Premiere of Eric Cable’s two-hander My Barking Dog, the latest from The Theatre @ Boston Court.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, Recommended, Theater Review

THE ANARCHIST

posted on April 25th, 2015 at 12:32 PM by Steven Stanley


Felicity Huffman and Rebecca Pidgeon square off in the cat-and-mouse game that is David Mamet’s provocative yet abstruse The Anarchist, the duo’s superb performances and bona fide star power, the intimacy of Theatre Row’s Theatre Asylum, and ticket prices about a quarter of what they were when Mamet’s latest premiered on Broadway combining to make this 99-seat-plan production a likely candidate for hottest ticket in town.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

WORDS BY IRA GERSHWIN

posted on April 24th, 2015 at 4:44 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED

The play may indeed be the thing, at least most of the time, but it’s the songs and the singers (and not the show’s rather uninspired format) that make the Los Angeles Premiere of Joseph Vass’s self-described “musical play” Words By Ira Gershwin worth a drive to Burbank’s Colony Theatre.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Musical Revue, Recommended, Theater Review

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