DRIVING MISS DAISY

posted on February 3rd, 2013 at 1:22 AM by Steven Stanley


Sierra Madre Playhouse follows last year’s superb, Scenie-winning Incident At Vichy with a beautifully acted, directed, and designed production of Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry’s award-winning one-acter about an elderly Southern Jewish widow and the African-American driver foisted upon her by her adult son in the years just preceding the Civil Rights Movement.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, San Gabriel Valley, WOW!

THE SNAKE CAN

posted on February 3rd, 2013 at 1:09 AM by Steven Stanley


When was the last time you saw a play about three women on the cusp of fifty navigating the rough waters of big city singlehood? Actually, when was the last time you saw anything—play, movie, or TV series—about three fiftyish females period?

Since the answer to both of these questions is likely to be a big fat “Never,” Kathryn Graf’s world premiere dramedy The Snake Can comes as a particularly welcome surprise … and a rewarding New Years 2013 treat.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

TRIASSIC PARQ – THE MUSICAL

posted on February 1st, 2013 at 4:32 PM by Steven Stanley


When Michael Crichton first sat down to pen Jurassic Park, little did he realize that a trio of young musical theater writers would one day come up with Triassic Parq – The Musical, an unauthorized retelling of the Crichton novel as the dinosaurs themselves might have told it … and the wildest, wackiest, filthiest, campiest, and most entertaining show ever written from a dino’s point of view.
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posted in Musical, Orange County, WOW!

JOSEPH DAUGHERTY

posted on January 31st, 2013 at 1:09 AM by Steven Stanley

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posted in Interview

HAPPY FACE SAD FACE

posted on January 29th, 2013 at 2:03 AM by Steven Stanley


The term “high concept” is one more often applied to a Hollywood blockbuster than to a play getting its World Premiere in one of L.A.’s many 99-seat theaters. Studios seem far more resistant to films that can’t be pitched in a few succinct words than are our local stages—not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with “high concept,” a fact made abundantly clear by R.J. Colleary’s Happy Face Sad Face, now playing at Hollywood’s Lillian Theatre.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

PLAZA SUITE

posted on January 27th, 2013 at 3:59 PM by Steven Stanley


Neil Simon was the reigning King Of Broadway when his Plaza Suite opened at the Plymouth Theatre on Valentine’s Day, 1968. Only two years before, Simon’s Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple, and Barefoot in the Park were all four playing simultaneously on the Great White Way, and Plaza Suite, the next Simon comedy to open in New York ran over a thousand performances and on into the next decade.

It’s this still rib-tickling, still relevant collection of three short plays, each of them unfolding in Suite 719 of New York’s posh and pricey Plaza Hotel, that the Morgan-Wixson Theatre now revives to near perfection in a production blessed by inspired direction and a pair of sensational lead performances.
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posted in Comedy, West Side/Beverly HIlls, WOW!

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

posted on January 26th, 2013 at 4:10 PM by Steven Stanley


Imagine you wanted to dramatize one of science fiction writer Jules Verne’s greatest novels, one which imagined a journey around the world circa 1872 in a then unimaginable eighty days with stops in Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, and then back to London, an adventure that would include dozens of characters along the way, onboard train and ship and atop elephant, and involve a daring rescue, a visit to a Chinese opium den, an Apache attack, and one unexpected delay after another.
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posted in Comedy, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

SWEENEY TODD

posted on January 25th, 2013 at 5:21 PM by Steven Stanley


Like the Little Engine That Could, USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory’s self-proclaimed “innovative musical theater, for students, by students,” undertakes its most daunting challenge to date, Stephen Sondheim’s epic Sweeney Todd, and comes out with yet another winner.
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posted in Los Angeles, Musical, WOW!

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