TARTUFFE

posted on March 4th, 2014 at 6:41 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
A Noise Within opens its Spring 2014 season with the classical theater company’s own distinctive take on Molière’s classic French farce Tartuffe*, and though not the inspired revival audiences were treated to in Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Beaux Stratgem, this entertaining if at times overly dark production does at the very least make relevant points about the hypocrisy, greed, and corruption of (at least certain members of) the clergy.
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posted in Comedy, Pasadena, Recommended, Theater Review

CLOSELY RELATED KEYS

posted on March 3rd, 2014 at 7:12 PM by Steven Stanley


A hotshot young corporate lawyer discovers she has an Iraqi half-sister from her father’s long ago extramarital relationship in Wendy Graf’s riveting Closely Related Keys, a World Premiere drama as topical as today’s headlines.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, World Premiere, WOW!

GOING TO ST. IVES

posted on March 1st, 2014 at 5:32 PM by Steven Stanley


A woman wracked with guilt over the unintentional role she has played in her son’s accidental death. A woman tormented by having given birth to a murderous son. These two mothers meet, with life-changing consequences, in Lee Blessing’s powerful two-hander Going To St. Ives, the latest from Hollywood’s illustrious Actors Co-op.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Theater Review, WOW!

MY NAME IS ASHER LEV

posted on March 1st, 2014 at 11:59 AM by Steven Stanley

“Be a great painter, Asher Lev. It is the only justification for all the pain you are about to cause.”

Chaim Potok’s acclaimed 1972 novel My Name Is Asher Lev has now been transformed into a powerfully performed, deeply moving showcase for three of L.A.’s finest acting talents and one of our best directors at the award-winning Fountain Theater.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

A NICE INDIAN BOY

posted on February 27th, 2014 at 5:44 PM by Steven Stanley


Playwright Madhuri Shekar puts a fresh, multicultural, same-sex spin on the classic romantic comedy in her World Premiere dramedy A Nice Indian Boy, one of the best original plays I’ve seen at East West Players, a romcom that had me at “Hello,” or in the case of Naveen and Keshav, at “Om.”
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, World Premiere

THE RECOMMENDATION

posted on February 25th, 2014 at 3:55 PM by Steven Stanley


What starts out as an Odd Couple comedy about a pair of mismatched Brown University roommates develops into something considerably more edgy (and edge-of-your-seat) once a third character enters the mix in Jonathan Caren’s The Recommendation, now getting its first Los Angeles production—and its first with a SoCal-based cast—as IAMA Theatre Company introduces L.A. audiences to Caren’s multiple Scenie-winning hit, one guaranteed to keep you guessing from its exhilarating start to its suspenseful finish.

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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

SEX AND EDUCATION

posted on February 24th, 2014 at 7:25 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
The venerable Colony Theatre enters the 21st Century with a 4-letter-word-propelled bang as it reaches out to extend its subscriber base beyond the blue-hair set with an envelope-pushing production of Lissa Levin’s Sex And Education.
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posted in Burbank/Glendale, Comedy, Recommended, Theater Review

NOËL COWARD’S BRIEF ENCOUNTER

posted on February 23rd, 2014 at 2:11 PM by Steven Stanley


Married housewife Laura meets married physician Alec when a cinder gets in her eye at a London train station and he kindly removes it for her. Shared tea and conversation in the station tea room lead to another meeting, and another, until Laura and Alec can no longer deny their love, nor the knowledge that as an adulterous middle-class couple living in 1938 London, there is no possibility of a happily-ever-after.

Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter now comes to magical, imaginative, supremely theatrical onstage life as the Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts presents the Cornwall-to-London-to-Broadway-to-Beverly Hills production of Kneehigh Theatre’s Tony-nominated adaptation of David Lean’s über-romantic 1945 film classic, itself based on Coward’s one-act gem Still Life.
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posted in Downey/La Mirada, National Tour, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

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