WINE IN THE WILDERNESS
Tuesday, September 9th, 2025
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum concludes one of its best seasons ever with an absolutely terrific staging of Alice Childress’s slice-of-1960s-African-American-life Wine In The Wilderness.
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THE SEAGULL: MALIBU
Monday, August 18th, 2025
Ellen Geer updates Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull from 1890s tsarist Russia to Malibu, California during the “It’s All About Me” 1970s, and the exhilarating result is The Seagull: Malibu, a romantic dramedy that’s both Chekhovian and Southern Californian, and a Summer Of 2025 treat no matter how you feel about Chekhov.
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TUNE IN
Wednesday, August 13th, 2025
Playwright Carlos Lacámara tackles university politics, mental illness, psychedelic drug therapy, childhood trauma, and women in academia in the early 1960s, stirs in at least one soap opera-worthy plot twist, and garners more than a few laughs along the way in Tune In, another fabulous Theatre Of NOTE World Premiere.
REEL TO REEL
Monday, July 28th, 2025Ever notice how the minutes can go by lickety-split or seem to move at a snail’s pace depending who you’re with? In the case of the octogenarian couple whose 55-plus-year relationship playwright John Kolvenbach has us spending an hour and a half with in his 2018 four-actor two-hander Reel To Reel, I found the latter to be the case.
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THE RESERVOIR
Saturday, June 28th, 2025
Two talented Jakes make stunning Geffen Playhouse debuts in The Reservoir, Jake Brasch’s hilarious, heartbreaking, ultimately hopeful look at alcoholism and Alzheimer’s that has rising star Jake Horowitz standing in for the playwright in one of the year’s most captivating performances.
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NICE GIRL
Monday, June 23rd, 2025
What’s a Nice Girl to do when she finds herself still living at home with her mother and rapidly approaching the age when singledom turns into spinsterhood? That’s the dilemma Jo faces in Melissa Ross’s tangy slice-of-1980s-life now captivating audiences on Rogue Machine’s uber-intimate Henry Murray Stage.
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A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2
Tuesday, May 20th, 2025
It’s a whole new A Doll’s House, Part 2 at the Pasadena Playhouse with director Jennifer Chang and an ab-fab foursome of TV/stage stars bringing to scintillating life comedic elements left mostly unexplored in the two previous productions I’ve seen of Lucas Hnath’s 2017 Broadway hit.
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FROU-FROU: A MENAGERIE OF SORTS
Monday, March 3rd, 2025
If Tennessee Williams were alive today, he might have written Frou-Frou: A Menagerie of Sorts, John Anthony Loffredo’s deliciously daring queer riff on Williams’ A Glass Menagerie, with a little bit of A Streetcar Named Desire testosterone (and some extended full-frontal male nudity) thrown in for seductive measure.
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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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