TUCUMCARI

posted on February 2nd, 2011 at 4:36 PM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
A rundown motel on Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico was the last thing Lillian expected as a honeymoon present, but that’s precisely what the young newlywed finds herself the co-proprietor of in Riley Steiner’s old-fashioned romantic drama Tucumcari, now playing at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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posted in Drama, Recommended, West Side/Beverly HIlls

MR. KOLPERT

posted on February 1st, 2011 at 3:59 PM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

When a play gets a 5-star review in London’s The Guardian yet fails to impress in an intimate Los Angeles production, one can’t help wondering, “What went wrong in the transatlantic transfer?”
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posted in Comedy, Los Angeles, Not Recommended

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

posted on January 31st, 2011 at 8:58 PM by Steven Stanley


From the moment the lights come up on Theseus, Duke Of Athens (Elijah Alexander), and Hippolyta, Queen Of The Amazons (Susannah Schulman) posing in glamorous 1950s garb to the flash of paparazzi light bulbs, you know this will not be your grandfather’s, your father’s, or even your older brother’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Clearly director Mark Rucker has tricks up his sleeve, the revelation of which make South Coast Repertory’s production of William Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy something very special indeed.
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posted in Comedy, Orange County, WOW!

PLAY DATES

posted on January 29th, 2011 at 9:11 PM by Steven Stanley


The war between the sexes has never been funnier than it is in Play Dates, Sam Wolfson’s hilarious new comedy now playing at Theatre Asylum under the sparkling direction of Jennifer Chambers.
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posted in Comedy, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

MLLE. GOD

posted on January 28th, 2011 at 9:06 PM by Steven Stanley


Though Frank Wedekind’s name may not be as well-known as Bertolt Brecht’s, the German playwright is making a comeback nearly a hundred years after his death, first with the Broadway smash Spring Awakening and now with Nicholas Kazan’s Mlle. God, a contemporary stage adaptation of Wedekind’s Lulu Plays, perhaps best known as the basis for silent film star Louise Brooks’ most famous flick, Pandora’s Box.
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posted in Comedy-Drama, Los Angeles, WOW!

LOVING REPEATING

posted on January 27th, 2011 at 11:32 AM by Steven Stanley


If you’d asked me a few days ago what I knew about Gertrude Stein, my answer would have been “Not that much,” aside from her oft-quoted “A rose is a rose is a rose,” her relationship with longtime lesbian companion Alice B. Toklas, and some sense that she’d lived a good deal of her life in Europe. Though there are doubtless many theatergoers my age considerably better informed than I, I’d venture to guess an even greater number, particularly those under forty, know not even that much. For this reason alone, “A Musical Of Gertrude Stein” would seem to have at least one strike against it from the get-go. Add to that the fact that the musical in question has little or no storyline, that its relatively few spoken words come from a lecture delivered by Stein at the University of Chicago in 1934, and that the lyrics of this mostly sung-through musical are taken from Stein’s idiosyncratic poems (“Each one of them of the three of them meant something by being such a one”) and you have rather a hard-sell of a show—particularly if your audience of subscribers is accustomed to more traditional, linear fare.
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posted in Long Beach/San Pedro, Musical, WOW!

HAIR

posted on January 25th, 2011 at 8:42 PM by Steven Stanley


It was mid-1968. LBJ was still President, with Richard Nixon’s election and seven more years of war in Vietnam yet to come. Already, though, there were “tribes” of young people in their teens and twenties whose dissatisfaction with an America riddled with racism, poverty, sexism, sexual repression, and political corruption led them to create the hippie movement of the 60s. More than anything else, though, these “new American patriots,” as they saw themselves, were in revolt against a war they believed to be unjust, unnecessary, and un-American.
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posted in Musical, National Tour, Orange County, WOW!

JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA

posted on January 23rd, 2011 at 7:12 PM by Steven Stanley


183 years before Hate At First Sight turned into Happily Ever After for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail, a bickering Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley finally realized they were Made For Each Other in Jane Austen’s Emma. As fans of the 1996 movie adaptation (starring a very British Gwyneth Paltrow) or the more recent Pride And Prejudice (with Keira Knightley—no relation to George—as Emma’s literary cousin Elizabeth Bennet) are well aware, contemporary romantic comedies owe more than a minor debt of gratitude to Miss Austen.
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posted in Musical, San Diego County, WOW!

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