Theatrical shows registered on the Better Lemons calendar!
For more shows visit our Calendar.
For shows with a LemonMeter rating, visit our LemonMeter page.
Tangerine Sunset
“Every paradise has a tragic, uh, comic, no, dark side (yes). This homegrown play will close the 22nd Season in the Broadwater Main Stage. In the vein of Absolutely Filthy, Watson, A Kind of Love Story and Beaverquest!, Sacred Fools brings you another show created in its late-night comedy cauldron, Serial Killers. TANGERINE SUNSET tells the story of several unlucky souls who find themselves the involuntary guests of a palatial estate on a mysterious private island. These celebrities, billionaires, madmen, and innocents desperately try to survive the night with their lives and sanity intact. Somewhere in the dark intersection of murder, mayhem, and laughter lies the Tangerine Sunset.”
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Faith Healer
“Brian Friel’s mysterious, humorous and unforgettable work about the life and times of an itinerant Irish healer. Is Fantastic Francis Hardy a miracle worker — or a showman in search of a dollar?.At once a Rashomon type mystery, a delving into talent versus sham and, ultimately, a uniquely metaphysical view of life .March 23 – May 12: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. with 3 additional weeknight performances on Wed., April 10; Thurs, April 18; and Wed., May 10, all at 8 p.m. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025; For reservations and information, call (310) 477-2055 or go to OdysseyTheatre.com.”
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The Sound of Murder
“Charles Norbury is a wildly successful author of children’s books. He hates children, and pretty much anyone else, too. He’s petty, cruel, vindictive, and treats his unloved wife like a slave. He also refuses to have children with her. In short, he’s the sort of fellow who would make the world a better place if only he would just die. Anne, the wife, has found some solace in the arms of her handsome lover, Peter. Charles won’t grant her a divorce: It would damage him professionally with the parents of his juvenile fans. The one person who has real regard for Charles is his loyal secretary, Miss Forbes. She is infatuated with Peter.
Anne and Peter deduce that the only way they will ever be to be together forever is if they kill Charles. They come up with a scheme to effect his murder. But things just don’t go according to plan…
The plot of The Sound of Murder has more twists and turns than the Arroyo Parkway. Surprise follows surprise, and you’ll be kept guessing as to what exactly the heck is going on until the very end.”
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Clybourne Park
“Pulitzer Prize winning family drama inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Act One, set in 1959, shows nervous white community leaders trying to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act 2, set in 2009, the same house, the same neighborhood, shows the now-predominantly African-American neighborhood battling to hold its ground in the face of white gentrification. How the world turns!”
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Social Media Tips and Tricks for Creatives
“From Beefing it Up to Navigating Algorithms…This workshop is specifically for anyone who is promoting a theater production, venue, film, documentary or short, writing, or is looking to self-promote in general on social media. In this 1 hour presentation with a Q & A following, writer Monique LeBleu will share tools on how to beef up your social media presence—or start one—find your target audience, make the best use of online event calendars, create a timeline for promoting your project, and learn to use social media algorithms to your best advantage. You will learn how to: Determine the best times to post on social media to reach your audience Find Groups and public event postings Use open online calendaring forms Find where you can post press releases online for free Use hashtags, tagging, and other tools that aren’t just exclusive to social media Attendees will receive handouts of information to take, along with a completed flowchart to help jump-start the process guiding you forward, and networking and idea sharing will be encouraged at Studio C thereafter.”
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Stuart Little
“Stuart Little is a mouse born into a human family in New York City. Though his stature is appropriately small for a mouse, he displays a wit and intelligence far beyond his years. He engages in a variety of adventures: Winning a sailboat race in Central Park; Befriending a beautiful bird and protecting her from a malicious cat; Attempting to court a diminutive human female from a wealthy society family; Being rescued from a garbage scow; Learning to drive a car; Working as a substitute teacher; Searching for a missing friend; Making his way (rather successfully) in the world.”
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LACKAWANNA BLUES
“A magical, musical, and deeply personal work written and performed by Tony Award® winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Lackawanna Blues is a reminiscence of his 1950s childhood in a small town on the banks of Lake Erie. Santiago-Hudson takes on more than 20 colorful characters—from would-be philosophers and petty hustlers to lost souls and abandoned lovers—in a brilliant celebration of the eccentric boardinghouse he grew up in. Santiago-Hudson returns to his roots in this tour de force performance with live blues music by composer Bill Sims Jr., performed by Grammy Award-winning blues guitarist, composer, and actor Chris Thomas King.”
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Nude Art LA’s Spring 2019 Art and Fashion Show
“Nude Art LA is an event unlike anything you have ever seen. Exploring the artistic expression of the nude human form, the show combines a carefully curated collection of world-class, traditional fine art (photographs, paintings, sculptures, etc.) with interactive exhibits and jaw-dropping live performances that include body painting, burlesque, live figure sketching, nude yoga, pole dancing, and so much more. And, new for Spring, 2019: a “naked fashion show” with some of the most amazing and revealing examples of wearable art and fashion you have ever seen…The Fall 2018 show featured 65 artists and a dozen live performers, and admitted over 1,000 guests in just four hours!”
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Fuddy Meers
“Rubicon Theatre continues the company’s 21st “Coming of Age” season with the hilarious and harrowing, politically incorrect comedy FUDDY MEERS by playwright DAVID-LINDSAY-ABAIRE. In this outrageously funny roller-coaster ride of a play, Claire, an amnesiac. wakes up each day having forgotten the details of her life. This morning, like all mornings, her seemingly devoted husband Richard greets her with a cup of coffee and a scrapbook of memories. But when he steps away, a limping, lisping man claiming to be Claire’s brother pops out from under her bed and says he is there to save her. He takes her to her mother’s home in the country, where Claire meets a naïve man with a foul-mouthed puppet, discovers her husband and son have kidnapped an aggressive lady cop, and comes face-to-face with her past.”
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Leaving Prince Charming
“Follow an unorthodox fairy godmother as she travels down the rabbit hole of intimate partner abuse, manipulation, and trauma bonding. This IS a love story, but not the kind you’re expecting.
A one-woman serio-comedy told through multimedia and fifteen unique characters, “Leaving Prince Charming” is an unconventional fairytale of one damsel’s journey to a different kind of Happily Ever After. Content Warning: Triggering sexual content and usage of prop gun. Not kid friendly.”
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SIMPATICO
“Sam Shepard puts his spin on noir, where he exposes the underbelly of the horse track world. When a couple of grifters, Vinnie and Carter, are caught by a prominent horse racing official, they conjure up a blackmail scheme that involves some scandalous photos and hush money. Now, twenty years later, the past catches up to them when Vinnie decides he’s done with being hushed. Colorful characters and juicy dialogue make Shepard’s obscure little comedy a wild ride to remember.”
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Small Little Safe World
“Small Little Safe World is the story of Dave, a middle-aged lonely man with no living family and only one friend. He works as a motel desk clerk and eats his meals in a diner. One day, Erin, a much younger woman, strikes up a conversation with him in the diner. They hit it off and enter a relationship, but Erin is looking for a very specific type of relationship, one that will walk the fragile line of reality and fantasy.”
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This is the first production of the Garry Marshall Theatre (formerly the Falcon), but I have to admit that I didn’t have high expectations. The play Masterclass was first produced in 1995 – right here at the Ahmanson, then on Broadway – with Patti Lupone as the aging Maria Callas and the young Audra McDonald as one of her students; and it’s been revived several times since. Was this really how you want to kick off a new theatre? Well, it turns out that the answer is Yes. This is a stellar revival. In fact, it’s so alive, so strong moment-to-moment, that it doesn’t feel like a revival, it feels like an Event. This is largely thanks to Carolyn Hennessy, who is wonderful and simply seems to BE Maria Callas. She inhabits the play, she comes to life as a creature of the stage, full of joy, sorrow and many contradictions. But everything is excellent in this production, from Callas’s students (I was especially taken with Landon Shaw II as a tenor who is especially taken with himself) to Manny the accompanist (Roy Abramsohn) to Francois-Pierre Couture’s heartbreakingly beautiful stage design of the naked stage. Credit must go to director Dimitri Toscas, who is also co-director of the Garry Marshall Theatre (GMT). He clearly has a passionate connection to this play and to the character of Callas. He deeply feels her pain – the pain of dislocation and loneliness. “You know the only place where Callas truly fit in? On stage. In the opera house,” Toscas writes in the program notes and wonderfully dramatizes on the GMT’s stage.
