Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’
FATHERS AT A GAME
Friday, July 12th, 2013
A pair of night-and-day different dads cheering on their teenage sons at a high school football game would seem more likely to inspire an odd-couple comedy à la Richard Dresser’s hilarious Rounding Third than an electrifyingly edge-of-your-seat thriller, but this is precisely what Trey Nichols has concocted in his one-act Fathers At A Game, now completing a brief Best Of Fringe extension following its original Hollywood Fringe run.
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WATSON AND THE DARK ART OF HARRY HOUDINI
Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
What do you do when you’re writer-director Jaime Robledo and your play Watson: The Last Great Tale Of The Legendary Sherlock Holmes has won just about every award in the book? Elementary, my dear reader. You do what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did after creating his mystery-solving supersleuth in A Study In Scarlet (and what Universal Pictures kept doing year after year for their own inimitable Sherlock, Basil Rathbone). You write and direct a sequel, in this case Watson And The Dark Art Of Harry Houdini, and if the results don’t match the original in sheer brilliance, Watson 2.0 does for the most part avoid the dreaded sophomore curse.
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SWEET KARMA
Saturday, July 6th, 2013
He was a 35-year-old physician when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia, and barely escaped the holocaust that took the lives of more than a quarter of his countrymen. He was a refugee-turned-movie actor, winning an Oscar for his film—and acting—debut as real-life Cambodian journalist Dith Pran. He was a humanitarian who worked to rebuild his shattered country. And after surviving the killing fields, he met his death in the streets of Los Angeles, murdered by members of a predominantly Cambodian street gang.
This was the life—and death—of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, explored by playwright Henry Ong in the powerful Sweet Karma, now getting an exquisitely designed, imaginatively directed, and beautifully acted West Coast Premiere at the Grove Theatre Center.
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KISMET
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013
A dozen supremely talented musical theater triple-threats and an inspired director-choreographer joined forces this past weekend to bring back the Golden Age Broadway hit Kismet, demonstrating once again that the “concert staged reading” may well be the very best way to revive forgotten musical theater gems.
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ABSOLUTELY FILTHY
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013
For anyone who has ever wondered how the Peanuts gang might have turned out later in life, Brendan Hunt’s Absolutely Filthy now joins Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God in answering just that question; and though Royal’s Peanuts-As-Teens satire ends up more to my liking than Hunt’s Peanut-At-Thirty parody, it’s easy to understand why Absolutely Filthy became such a hit for Sacred Fools that they brought it back for five performances at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
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STEEL MAGNOLIAS
Saturday, June 29th, 2013
A trio of L.A. busiest community and 99-seat theater veterans, a pair of musical theater triple-threats, and one relative newcomer to our Los Angeles stage scene join forces to bring Little Fish Theatre’s revival of Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias to effervescent life.
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THE BONEYARD AND TALISMAN
Friday, June 28th, 2013NOT RECOMMENDED
There’s no L.A. actress whose work I enjoy seeing more than Elephant Theatre Company’s Kate Huffman. Elephant artistic director David Fofi is one of the consistently finest directors in town. Timothy McNeil’s Supernova was singled out for a Scenie as one of The Twelve Best Plays Of The Year and McNeil’s performance in The Little Flower Of East Orange won him a Best Lead Actor Scenie. That’s why it’s disappointing to report that their latest collaboration as star, director, and writer/star of the pair of one-acts entitled The Boneyard and Talisman ended up not this reviewer’s cup of tea despite three excellent performances and Fofi’s sharp direction.
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ModRock
Monday, June 24th, 2013
The city was London, the season was Summer Of ’65, and the Beatles had only recently “crossed the pond” to conquer America. Back in the UK, the Profumo Affair and its sexy instigator Christine Keeler was being splashed across British tabloids while at nearby seaside resorts, leather-clad Rockers were clashing in the streets with trendily dressed Mods.
This heady period in 20th Century English history now returns to bouncy, tuneful life in ModRock, Hagan Thomas-Jones’ dandy new jukebox musical that’s a little bit Romeo & Juliet, a little bit Grease, and a whole lot of fun.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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