Ben Hecht News

Dan Wackerman, Artistic Director and frequent stage director for the Peccadillo Theatre Company, has regularly displayed a golden touch for mounting crackling revivals of long-forgotten Broadway plays like Elmer Rice's Counsellor-at-Law, Dorothy Parker and Arnaud d'Usseau's The Ladies of the Corridor and, in an absolutely hilarious mounting, John Murray and Alan Boretz's Room Service. But with Charles MacArthur's 1942 political screwball farce, Johnny On A Spot, he and his Peccadillo cohorts attempt their toughest feat of alchemy yet in belief that this 4-performance Broadway flop was an unfortunate victim of the public's squelched taste for satire a mere month after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

TheatreWorks, the nationally-acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, is proud to present the regional premiere of TWENTIETH CENTURY by Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur, based on a play by Charles Bruce Milholland in a new adaptation by Ken Ludwig. Broadway and Hollywood collide in this classic screwball comedy set in the 1930s, in which a rapidly declining Broadway impresario looks to revive his sagging career. Using mistaken identity, chicanery, and catastrophe, he attempts to coax his unforgiving former flame (now a mercurial silver screen starlet) into starring in his next stage production while aboard a train roaring across the U.S.

TheatreWorks presents the Tony nominated comedy hit Twentieth Century. Adapted by celebrated farceur Ken Ludwig, this classic screwball comedy, based on the 1930's play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, tells the tale of a Broadway impresario on the decline,who, desperately seeking to revive his sagging career, used mistaken identity, chicanery, and catastrophe to coax his unforgiving former flame and mercurial silver screen starlet into starring in his next production.

George Street Playhouse begins 2009 with its production of Donald Marguiles' Sight Unseen. When first presented in 1992, the play won the OBIE Award for Best New American Play, was nominated for a Drama Desk, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. George Street Playhouse Artistic Director will helm the production, slated to run at the New Brunswick theatre January2020 - February 15, 2009. Matthew Arkin, last seen at GSP in their production of Theresa Rebeck's The Scene, leads an ensemble including Heidi Armbruster, Christopher Curry and Kathleen McNenny.

'Moonlight and Magnolias' goes behind closed doors at Selznick International Pictures in 1939 as the highly anticipated epic gets a new screenplay and a new director to meet boffo expectations

On Sunday, November 9, the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and 75 years since Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and The Royal Conservatory of Music, Canada, will launch 'Music in Exile-Emigré Composers of the 1930s,' a five-day series of concerts, talks, and a music-theater piece celebrating the music of Jewish composers forced to flee the Third Reich and German composers who resisted the Nazi regime.

On Sunday, November 9, the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and 75 years since Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in association with Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music, will launch 'Music in Exile-Emigre Composers of the 1930s,' a five-day series of concerts, talks, and a music-theater piece celebrating the music of Jewish composers forced to flee the Third Reich and German composers who resisted the Nazi regime.

Sean Holmes' production of Ron Hutchinson's Moonlight & Magnolias returns to the Tricycle Theatre for a strictly limited four week run from 2 July - 2 August with original cast members.

Sean Holmes' production of Ron Hutchinson's Moonlight & Magnolias returns to the Tricycle Theatre for a strictly limited four week run from 2 July - 2 August with original cast members Andy Nyman (Selznick) and Steven Pacey (Fleming) who are joined by new cast members Nicholas Woodeson (Hecht) and Rebecca Calder (Miss Poppenghul).

The Tricycle Theatre Announces their Summer/Autumn Season.

Among the many real-life characters depicted are Peter H. Bergson (a Zionist emissary in the United States, born Hillel Kook,) prominent Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (FDR's Secretary of the Treasury,) Breckenridge Long (FDR's obstructionist immigration overseer,) and Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht.

Among the many real-life characters depicted are Peter H. Bergson (a Zionist emissary in the United States, born Hillel Kook,) prominent Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (FDR's Secretary of the Treasury,) Breckenridge Long (FDR's obstructionist immigration overseer) and Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht.

The award-winning actor currently costars in 'Hunting and Gathering', the second of three plays he's in this season.

TheatreWorks, the nationally-acclaimed theatre of Silicon Valley, announced its 2008-09 season, including 'Grey Gardens, 'Doubt, 'Radio Golf' and new works by Stephen Schwartz and GrooveLily.

The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles will present the West Coast premiere of The Accomplices, the first play written by former New York Times Hollywood correspondent Bernie Weinraub.

The West End premiere of Ron Hutchinson's Moonlight and Magnolias opens October 1 at the Tricycle Theatre, with performances through November 3.

The Tricycle Theatre announces their upcoming season, which includes the British premieres of Moonlight and Magnolias and the award-winning play, Doubt. Plus the world premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company's I'll Be The Devil and a special engagement from the Edinburgh Festival.

The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, opens the Williamstown Theatre Festival Main Stage on July 4. Set in a Chicago newsroom in the late 1920's, this classic Broadway comedy about the nature of media in society is directed by Ron Daniels.

Williamstown Theatre Festival announces additional casting and directors for the upcoming season.

The journalistic skills of first-time playwright Bernard Weinraub are put to good use in this drama of a Jewish activist who came to America in 1940 with a mission to convince the United States to help stop the systematic extermination of his people.