Sherman Wayne News

Los Angeles is never lacking outstanding theatre, whether epic Broadway shows, engrossing dramas or bold fringe offerings. BroadwayWorld is rounding up our top recommended theatre every month. Our top picks for May 2023 include Melissa Errico, LA Opera, and more!

After opening its season with the critically acclaimed production of drama, 'Other Desert Cities,' Theatre Palisades will be amusing its audience with the laugh out loud English farce, 'Run For Your Wife' by Ray Cooney.

​​​​​​​Theatre Palisades was founded in 1963, making 2023 their 60th anniversary. They will be opening the anniversary season with 'Other Desert Cities' by Jon Robin Baitz. The play made its Broadway debut in November 2011 and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Theatre Palisades Will Presents 'The Sweet Delilah Swim Club' by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten from November 4 - December 11, 2022.

Theatre Palisades will present NUNSENSE. NUNSENSE is a hilarious spoof about the misadventures of five nuns trying to manage a fundraiser. Sadly the rest of the sisterhood died from botulism after eating vichyssoise prepared by Sister Julia Child of God.

With live theatre slowly returning to Los Angeles, Theatre Palisades veteran director Sherman Wayne is presenting 'When Shakespeare's Ladies Meet' by Charles George, which was safely recorded live on April 24th on the Theatre Palisades stage. The one-act 30-minute play is now streaming on the Broadway on Demand platform June 1 through June 5. And the group's Youth Theatre Program is presenting 'Disney's Aladdin Jr.' this summer.

Give yourself some relief from the stress of life by indulging in some real suspense that will, according to social scientists, get your psychological immune system pumping in a safe and controlled environment and make you feel better. Experience an evening of the suspense of Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott, a classic thriller. Opening Friday March 27 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 P.M. and Sundays at 2:00 P.M. at the Pierson Playhouse located at 941 Temescal Canyon Dr. (just south of Sunset Blvd.)Pacific Palisades 90272.

Playwright Robert Harling based the STEEL MAGNOLIAS story on his experience with the death of his diabetic sister. As her best friend and closest sibling, Harling found it difficult to cope with losing her, and his friends advised him to write about his feelings as a coping method. What began as a short story then evolved into a full-length play due to the complexity of the relationships and emotions that existed among the female characters who are a?oeas delicate as magnolias but as tough as steela?? who utilize humor and lighthearted conversations to cope with the seriousness of life's underlying situations.

How do you solve a problem like that child Shelby?! You don't. A tender, funny, sad, funny play about the family tug of war between mother (M'lynn) and daughter (Shelby). And their friends who all come to the same beauty parlor where life and its issues get discussed and dissected in a very Southern and ladylike way. A perennial favorite of the American stage!

RUTHLESS! THE MUSICAL originally opened Off-Broadway in 1992, created as an over-the-top dark comedy spoof of the films The Bad Seed and All About Eve, and well-known Broadway musicals Gypsy and Annie. Similar to the dark comedy in musicals such as Little Shop of Horrors and Sweeney Todd where characters are murdered and then eaten, RUTHLESS! THE MUSICAL centers on 8-year old Tina Denmark, who knows she was born to play the lead in her school's third grade show and will do anything to win the part. And I do mean anything. Now onstage at Theatre Palisades, directed by Alta Abbott who first fell in love with the show during its 1993 West Coast premiere at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, I can only say that the over-the-top production sometimes seemed so dark that the comedy became invisible.

Theatre Palisades brings some fun to the upcoming holiday season by presenting 'Ruthless! The Musical' a hilarious musical comedy spoof with book and lyrics by Joel Paley and music by Marvin Laird. Opening Friday November 1, through Sunday December 8, 2019 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 P.M. and Sundays at 2:00 P.M. at the Pierson Playhouse, located at 941 Temescal Canyon Dr. (just south of Sunset Blvd.) in Pacific Palisades 90272.

Theatre Palisades is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Broadway opening of Ken Ludwig's LEND ME A TENOR, presenting the hilarious comedy which won three Tony Awards and four Drama Desk Awards. An angry wife, a presumed death, crazy costumes designed by June Lissandrello, secret sex romps, loads of slamming doors and mistaken identities make for a delightful, farcical comedy. Director Sherman Wayne encourages you to attend with a willing suspension of disbelief, putting aside your rational faculties and sense of realism/logic for the sake of theatrical merriment and enjoyment, just as worldwide audiences have been doing for the past 30 years. It's an ideal way to laugh your troubles away for a few hours!

CLYBOURNE PARK is a savagely funny, ferociously smart, and brilliantly written play by Bruce Norris which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. Perhaps best known as a companion piece to Lorraine Hansberry's classic play A RAISIN IN THE RUN, an audience favorite that has been produced at theaters all over the world, Norris' play is set in the home purchased by Lena Younger in an all-white neighborhood of Chicago in Raisin although we never see the home during that play, However, in it we do meet Karl Linder, a representative from the Clybourne Park community association who attempted to convince the Youngers to NOT move into the home as he, as well as many others, believes racial integration would ruin property values for everyone else staying in the area. In CLYBOURNE PARK we meet the sellers, and then re-visit the house 50 years later during its next sale.

The 1936 Hungarian play PARFUMERIE by Miklos Laszlo has the humble distinction of living in the shadow of the more famous movies (and Broadway musical) that it inspired. In fact, Hollywood has cashed in on the play not once but three times - the first adaptation was the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy 'The Shop Around the Corner,' starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, which was followed by the 1949 screen musical version 'In the Good Old Summertime,' starring Judy Garland, and much later by the 1998 Nora Ephron movie 'You've Got Mail,' with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. And of course, the Broadway musical 'She Loves Me' - adapted from the play by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joe Masteroff - opened in New York in 1963 and is now one of the most beloved (and revived) musicals during the Christmas season each year. All I can say is for those who enjoy this story of mistaken identity between pen-pal lovers should see one of those versions

English playwright and screenwriter Frederick Knott, though a reluctant writer, is known for his ingeniously complex, crime-related plots even though he only completed three plays in his career. Two have become classics: the London-based stage thriller Dial M for Murder, which was later filmed in Hollywood by Alfred Hitchcock, and the chilling 1966 play Wait Until Dark, which also became a Hollywood film starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman terrorized by thugs in her basement apartment. His third play, WRITE ME A MURDER, has never achieved the same acclaim nor been performed nearly as much as his other two hit plays. See it now at Theatre Palisades, directed with attention-grabbing skill by Michael-Anthony Nozzi.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a volunteer theatrical production will certainly understand the craziness associated with amateurs attempting to put on a play due to both their lack of acting experience, taking direction, or the maddening interference from its meddling playwright who drops in at every rehearsal with newly revised and/or added scenes which contradict what they have already been rehearsing. Such is the case in Rick Abbot's comedy PLAY ON! which is currently being presented at Theatre Palisades as the second show of its 2018 season, directed by Sherry Coon and produced for the community theater group by Martha Hunter and Sue Hardie.

THE PRICE by Arthur Miller premiered on Broadway in 1968 and was nominated for two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Scenic Design. It is a timeless piece regarding the choices we make and the consequences we eventually face. It is about family dynamics, the price of furniture and the price of one's decisions, taking place in a soon to be demolished family house where two brothers, estranged for decades, meet together to dispose of their late parents' property. The resulting confrontation leads them to examine the events and qualities of their very different lives and the price each of them has had to pay to have the lives they now lead.

No doubt, each of us has those out-of-kilter family members everyone makes fun of for their quirks and strange behaviors when the family gets together for the holidays. After all, don't we all laugh at movies, TV shows and plays designed to make fun of those types of people to make us realize we are not alone in our trying times with our own families? Such is the case in Steve Franco's timely holiday comedy IN-LAWS, OUTLAWS AND OTHER PEOPLE (that Should Be Shot), being presented by Theatre Palisades and brilliantly directed by Ria Parody Erlich so that each bad habit of the strange Douglas family is brought to life thoroughly by her 15 talented actors each and every moment they are onstage, whether speaking or not. Running through December 10, this dysFUNctional family holiday comedy will leave you quite merry with laughter!

There are many reasons why THE FANTASTICKS original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the world's longest-running musical which continues to enchant audiences around the world. Aside from it being a 'Romeo and Juliet' type story we can all relate to, but with a much happier ending, its most well-known song, 'Try to Remember,' speaks to everyone wanting to go back to a time in our lives when all things were much more simple, romantic, and totally carefree.

Each of us has our own vision of what paradise looks like. It could be a city of skyscrapers or a tropical island, or perhaps a lovely wooded area as it changes colors with the seasons. Our search may take us to the far reaches of the globe, or perhaps to the small town where we were raised that now seems to be the perfect place for us to settle down and make a great life. Of course, there is no guarantee the place you select will contain all the colors of paradise you imagine, given how tough it is for small towns everywhere to survive when people move on after local businesses start shutting down. Such is the case at THE SPITFIRE GRILL in Gilead, Wisconsin.