100 SAINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW

posted on May 27th, 2011 at 5:15 PM by Steven Stanley


Matters of love, sex, faith, and family are explored with utmost originality in Kate Fodor’s engrossing, deeply moving 100 Saints You Should Know, now getting an impeccable West Coast Premiere at the Elephant Theatre Company under the inspired direction of Lindsay Allbaugh.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

FERNANDO RICHARDSON’S TREACHEROUS BRAIN

posted on May 26th, 2011 at 1:14 AM by Steven Stanley


Fernando Richardson’s brain surgery is tomorrow, but the 40ish building contractor doesn’t seem all that worried. “Doctor was just here,” he tells his wife Kate and best friend Patrick. “Said I may not remember people for a few days. I may be really confused.” The Fernando who emerges from the operating room is more than merely confused however, or so his family and friends will soon discover in Fernando Richardson’s Treacherous Brain, now playing Thursdays at Open Fist Theatre.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood

THREE DAYS OF RAIN

posted on May 24th, 2011 at 11:01 AM by Steven Stanley


Tony-winning playwright Richard Greenberg might well have called his fourteenth play Sins Of The Fathers, so heavily do the sins (or at least the perceived sins) of Walker Janeway’s parents continue to weigh on the life of this angry young man in Three Days Of Rain, now getting a pitch-perfect revival at South Coast Repertory, the same theater that world premiered it in 1997.
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posted in Drama, Orange County, WOW!

STANDING ON CEREMONY: THE GAY MARRIAGE PLAYS

posted on May 23rd, 2011 at 10:53 AM by Steven Stanley


Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays is back—in a terrific new venue and featuring a hilarious newcomer to its roster of one acts. What hasn’t changed is the excitement of both its concept and its execution.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

THE TRAVELING LADY

posted on May 22nd, 2011 at 11:10 AM by Steven Stanley


No one wrote more affectionately or accurately about the plain folk of Middle American than Horton Foote. In plays and movies like Tender Mercies, The Trip To Bountiful, and To Kill A Mockingbird, Foote returned home to those small towns where everybody knows your name—and your business … and your life is all the richer for it.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

GYPSY

posted on May 21st, 2011 at 7:00 AM by Steven Stanley


Ask any true Broadway aficionado to name the greatest musicals ever written and it’s a sure bet that Gypsy: A Broadway Fable (best known simply as Gypsy) will top many if not most lists. Though overshadowed in its original Broadway run by The Sound Of Music and Fiorello, which tied for the 1960 Best Musical Tony, Gypsy has stood the test of time with four Broadway revivals (including two in the 2000s alone), even more cast recordings, and a list of hit songs that seems to go on forever.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, WOW!

FIFTH OF JULY

posted on May 20th, 2011 at 1:19 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
Lanford Wilson’s Broadway hit Fifth Of July gets an intimate staging by the esteemed The Production Company, and while I can’t confess to being a fan of the play itself, there are good reasons for those who are to catch its latest revival.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Recommended

ART

posted on May 19th, 2011 at 5:34 PM by Steven Stanley


The stars of last fall’s Moonlight And Magnolias are reunited as best friends in the Hermosa Beach Playhouse production of Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning Art, just one of several reasons not to miss this terrific revival of the 1998 Broadway smash.
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posted in Comedy, South Bay, WOW!

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