David Callander

Campus Cabaret’s artistic director and co-founder David W. Callander thought long and hard in considering Terrence McNally’s A PERFECT GANESH as their first production post-pandemic (opening October 29th at The Pico). David had the opportunity to see the very first production of A PERFECT GANESH back in 1993 at the Manhattan Theatre Club. “It's a play that stayed with me for many, many years.

The playwright nervously awaiting the make-or-break review on opening night has been the setting of many stage and movie scenes. But in this play, McNally runs with the idea, taking no prisoners across two acts boasting almost as many Broadway name-drops as punch lines, all delivered with perfect comic timing by a cast of talented actors who know how important it is to both give and take with each other as the wide range of human emotions overcomes the a?oestarsa?? who hope and pray this play will revive their struggling careers. And all the while, the laughs abound non-stop.

The Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica will present Terrence McNally's barb-filled love letter to the madness of high-stakes New York theater, It's Only a Play, playing now through Feb. 9, 2020, with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. The production is directed by Aric Martin, produced by Kalila Horwitz, and stage managed by Ashley DeFrancesco, with costume design by Kristie Mattsson and set and lighting design by William Wilday. The cast features (in alphabetical order) Chris Aruffo, Michael Bernstein, David Callander, Joanna Churgin, Justin Heller, Kelly McReynolds, and Kent Navarette.

MAME, the 1966 multiple Tony Award winning musical, based on the biographical novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis and subsequent play and film Auntie Mame by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is a wonderful, warm, and witty narrative enhanced with Jerry Herman's evocative, lively, and sentimental music and lyrics. Bohemian Mame Dennis is a larger-than-life personality living in New York City during the Great Depression. Mame has a collection of eccentric, wealthy society friends and her life is one endless party; that is until her young nephew Patrick "walks into her life."