TRYING

posted on March 13th, 2010 at 12:32 AM by Steven Stanley


There are times when all it takes is two actors to fill a stage, to fill it with humor and drama and heart. Trying, Joanna McClelland Glass’s much-loved two-hander, provides a pair of actors with just such an opportunity to shine. 

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posted in Comedy-Drama, Ventura County, WOW!

THE WILD PARTY

posted on March 12th, 2010 at 12:29 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED

Just like the kids who pooled their talents to “put on a show” in 1939’s Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland flick Babes In Arms, so the young 21st Century performers of Still Hungry Theatre have banded together to stage Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party on a shoestring—with commendable results.
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posted in Hollywood/West Hollywood, Musical, Recommended

HARAM IRAN

posted on March 11th, 2010 at 12:21 AM by Steven Stanley

NOT RECOMMENDED

In 2005, the Western world recoiled in horror at photos of Iranian teenagers Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, hangman’s nooses around their necks, about to be put to death for, it was reported at the time, the crime of consensual homosexual acts.
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Not Recommended

OEDIPUS EL REY

posted on March 7th, 2010 at 12:15 AM by Steven Stanley


Where so-called “edgy” or “experimental” theater is concerned, the line between brilliant and pretentious is a fine one indeed, and in this reviewer’s experience at least, the latter is more often the case than the former.  That’s why it’s such a pleasure to report that Theatre @ Boston Court’s production of Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey is out-and-out brilliant theater, even for playgoers whose tastes run, as mine do, more toward the traditional.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, WOW!

THE DIVINERS

posted on March 6th, 2010 at 12:09 AM by Steven Stanley

RECOMMENDED
Don’t go expecting a happy ending in Jim Leonard, Jr.’s The Diviners.  The play’s prologue reveals Buddy Layman’s fate from the get-go.  “He’s dead now for certain. He’s passed on beyond us.  The idiot boy is dead.  Buddy Layman’s gone.”

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posted in Drama, North Hollywood, Recommended

MEN OF TORTUGA

posted on March 4th, 2010 at 12:05 AM by Steven Stanley


In a stylish but sterile white office suite, three well-dressed men are discussing what appears to be an assassination plot with a rather scruffy, tattooed visitor whom one surmises to be the prospective assassin.  The latter has qualms, not about the equipment he’ll be using, but about the pane of glass he’ll have to be shooting through. The window could affect the trajectory, he explains, adding that even humidity can affect a bullet’s course.  “I’d have to say you have a low chance of success,” he informs the others.  Since neither the time nor the place of the assassination can be changed, he concludes that a rifle is clearly not the answer.  “If you want to do it, you’ll have to bomb the whole room,” he suggests. Maybe do it with a missile?  The oldest of the three plotters has an even better idea—to put someone in the room who is willing to pay the price. He then volunteers to be that man.
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posted in Drama, Pasadena, WOW!

ESCANABA IN DA MOONLIGHT

posted on March 3rd, 2010 at 12:01 AM by Steven Stanley


Movie star/playwright Jeff Daniels affectionately skewers the natives of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (aka the Yoopers) in his hit comedy Escanaba In Da Moonlight, now making a return engagement at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre.  As an authentic Yooper might put it, “Dis is some funny show, and dat’s da trute.”
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posted in Comedy, Long Beach/San Pedro, WOW!

WIT

posted on February 28th, 2010 at 6:35 PM by Steven Stanley


To paraphrase English poet John Donne, Death is not “too proud” to come knocking on 50-year-old Vivian Bearing’s door in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, now making a return visit to Los Angeles in a production by Actors Co-op that simply could not be better.  
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posted in Drama, Hollywood/West Hollywood, WOW!

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