RED

posted on August 25th, 2013 at 12:41 PM by Steven Stanley

Following its six 2010 Tony wins (including Best Play), John Logan’s Red now gets its very first from-the-ground-up Los Angeles-area staging at Long Beach’s International City Theatre, and what a splendid production ICT has mounted under the astute, nuanced direction of its Artistic Director caryn desai.

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posted in Drama, Long Beach/San Pedro, Theater Review, WOW!

RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN

posted on August 23rd, 2013 at 5:02 PM by Steven Stanley


Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Gina Gionfriddo examines the changing roles of women from the pre-Betty Friedan 1950s to the post-post-Feminist now in Rapture, Blister, Burn—and if this sounds like a potentially dry (i.e. boring) way to spend a night at the theater, think again. I haven’t had a more exhilarating time with four fabulous women and one not-so-fabulous man in I don’t know how long.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

THE ROYAL FAMILY

posted on August 20th, 2013 at 6:05 PM by Steven Stanley


Theatrical royalty play theatrical royalty as Will Geer’s own “royal family” bring George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s The Royal Family to hilarious, effervescent life—with enough star power to rival those twinkling orbs shining down on the Topanga hills Theatricum Botanicum calls home.
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posted in Comedy, Theater Review, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY

posted on August 19th, 2013 at 12:56 AM by Steven Stanley


Director Jeremy Lelliott works wonders with Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day, turning a play that in other hands might seem stuffy or talky or dated into an exciting, utterly relevant evening of theater.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Theater Review, WOW!

PRAIRIE-OKE!

posted on August 17th, 2013 at 3:55 PM by Steven Stanley


Any resemblance between the show being reviewed here and a certain TV series that ran from 1974 to 1983 on NBC and starred Michael Landon, Melissa Gilbert, and Karen Grassle as a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota in the 1870s and 1880s is “entirely coincidental,” as Silverlake’s Cavern Club Celebrity Theater welcomes back master parodist Dane Whitlock’s Prairie-oke!, aka “That Totally Unauthorized Karaoke Parody Musical Formerly Known As Something Else.”
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, Theater Review, WOW!

eve2

posted on August 16th, 2013 at 5:19 PM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

Playwright Susan Rubin experiments with the surreal in eve2, an avant-garde one-act that left me scratching my head in bewilderment.
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posted in Drama, Los Angeles, Not Recommended, Theater Review

THE KITCHEN WITCHES

posted on August 15th, 2013 at 5:21 PM by Steven Stanley


A pair of lifelong best enemies catfight it out on the set of a community access cable TV cooking show in Caroline Smith’s entertaining if minor comedy The Kitchen Witches, now playing at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre.
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posted in Comedy, Long Beach/San Pedro, Theater Review, WOW!

BRITISHMANIA

posted on August 14th, 2013 at 2:19 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED

Though the production is bare-bones (and “John,” “Paul,” “George,” and “Ringo” probably look most Beatle-like when seen from the Laguna Playhouse back row), there’s no denying that the multitalented stars of BritishMania sound so much like The Beatles as they sing and play their way through two hours of ‘60s British pop that if you’re anything like this reviewer, this nostalgic trip back in time will end up worth a drive down to Laguna Beach.

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posted in Musical Revue, Orange County, Recommended, Theater Review

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