STAGE DOOR: 67% Sweet – UPDATED

BITTERSWEET
So what’s missing here? Not all the actors are up to the challenges of this production’s style, nor any acting style. Too bad this sinks our complete enjoyment here. But credit Open Fist Theatre Company with giving so many actors a chance to ply their skills onstage—an opportunity the devoted women of the Footlights Club would be fighting for.
Dany Margolies – Backstage

BITTERSWEET
That being said, the Company did an estimable job reviving this somewhat dated piece. Director Barbara Schofield manages to keep 26 balls in the air, through all the entrances and exits, the comings and goings of the female residents of the “Footlights Club” as well as those of their myriad “gentlemen callers.” Adding to the air of hubbub and activity, the area in front of the stage served as busy 53rd Street, so audiences have full view of not only the characters currently in the club’s community room that made up the stage, but also those that are just leaving and those that are about to enter.
Joel Elkins – LA Theatre Review

SWEET
With over 75 productions opening in January alone, I almost missed Stage Door. Thank goodness I didn’t. I would have hated not to have seen this rarely staged 1930s gem, presented here in all its big-cast, big-stage splendor. Oh, and there’s a party in the lobby after every performance, one more reason to catch Stage Door, the perfect antidote to all the small-cast, small-stage productions that abound as we enter this new decade. No offense to reduced-cast, reduced-budget theater, but in this case, bigger is quite special indeed.
Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA

SWEET
In her deft and stylish staging of a cast that tops two dozen, Barbara Schofield pits the brunette Terry against blond Jean, the talented against the talentless. Terry had been dating a lefty playwright (Matt Roe) who sold out his pedantically stated ideals quicker than it now takes to swipe a credit card. This production comes on the heels of last year’s Light Up the Sky, demonstrating this company’s firm grip on smart, sassy period comedies. Detailed set by James Spencer and Shon LeBlanc’s textured costumes further feed the ambiance.
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly

BITTER
That about covers all that is good in this revival. It is hard to know, from most of the performances on view, if the actors are bad or if they have been trapped in a kind of stylization it would take much more practiced performers to bring to fruitful realization. (Only Arthur Hanket, as a Hollywood producer with a sentimental attachment to the theater, and Judith Scarpone, as an aging actress who runs this hotel for women, come through as real people.) But, truthfully, the problem is the play itself. There is good reason why this play is so rarely revived. Despite Ferber and Kaufman’s obvious contempt for Hollywood as opposed to their love of “the theatuh,” the irony is that, when Hollywood got their hands on the material, they made a film that was totally different from and vastly superior to the play, one of the rare instances when this happened.
Harvey Perr – Stage and Cinema

SWEET
This is a fabulous presentation that I could sit through again and again. It’s visually splendid, beautifully directed and acted. There’s no business like show business! A must-see!
Don Grigware – BroadwayWorld

SWEET
Playwrights Ferber and Kaufman evidently took the plight of struggling New York actresses so much to heart that they wrote parts for all of them here, resulting in the menagerie of house residents and their visitors who parade through James Spencer’s meticulously frayed-but-dignified lobby set, draped in Shon LeBlanc’s period costumes. Credit the 25-member cast for clearly differentiated characters — sometimes with only a few snippets of dialogue — and Barbara Schofield’s sharp direction to reveal both their comic and darker nuances.
Philip Brandes – LA Times

BITTER
There’s a time for revivals, and a time for retirement. George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s “Stage Door” announces, quite vociferously, that it might just be interested in being ‘one for the books’. Starting with the huge cast, several members of which are less than identifiable – as in, “what are all these squealing retro females doing up there?”, the play is not only old, it’s old-hat, old-fashioned, and old-timey in its references.
Madeleine Shaner – Park La Brea News/Beverly Press (opens in pdf)