Kentwood Players, one of the longest continuously operating Los Angeles theater groups, continues to celebrate its 70th Anniversary Year by presenting VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE, a comedy by Christopher Durang, opening Friday, March 13 and continuing through Saturday, April 18, 2020 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:00pm. Performances take place at the Westchester Playhouse, located at 8301 Hindry Avenue in Los Angeles, CA 90045, home of the Kentwood Players, voted the #1 Live Theater Group on the Westside in 2019 by readers of the Argonaut newspaper.
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.
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.
10-year-old Martin loves to scare people. He tells terrifying ghost stories at Cub Scout campouts, he fills the neighbor kids heads with tales of demons and monsters, and subjects his 6-year-old sister Simone to each and every one of his yarns. He watches scary movies obsessively. The kids' 14-year-old babysitter Lucy Rish, a nervous sort already, is a reluctant viewer of these films and is clearly more traumatized by them than either Martin or Simone. The movies and stories have so affected Lucy that an everyday occurrence such as a knock at the door, a phone ringing, or a floor board creaking can send her into a fearful hysteria, leaving Martin and Simone to 'baby-sit the babysitter.'
Kentwood Players, the community theater group based at the Westchester Playhouse, was founded in December 1949 by Jan and Arky Marcom, for whom the group's annual Marcom Masque Awards are named. The first Marcom Masque Awards were presented for the 1957-1958 season with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof winning the award for Best Play. The 2018-2019 season included the following six productions: Match, Daddy's Dyin', Who's Got the Will?, Dangerous Obsession, Disney's The Little Mermaid, Our Town, and Sunday in the Park with George. Awards are determined by all Kentwood Players members who voted by secret ballot in several artistic categories after seeing each show, Season Subscribers, and production teams for all shows.
The Sacred Fools Theater Company is delighted to announce its three shows at this year's Hollywood Fringe Festival. Along with managing the Broadwater Theater Complex as a host venue for this Festival, the company is contributing three unique World Premieres that couldn't be more different, yet couldn't be less (Sacred) Foolish.
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
Anyone who has had a loving dog as their companion will certainly understand the glory of waking up next to the best friend you could possibly ever have. No doubt among those people are the men who created BARK! The Musical, composer David Troy Francis; book by Mark Winkler and Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, with lyrics by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, Mark Winkler, Robert Schlock, Jonathan Heath and Danny Lukic, when they created such a fabulous, episodic song fest to the glory of dog, musically communicated from six very different types of pooches as each awaits a happy reunion with their master at the end of the day.
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!
GOOD PEOPLE centers on life in South Boston, a working-class neighborhood on hard times, which is no joke for single mother Margaret Walsh. Fired from her job, facing eviction and with nowhere to turn, she and her grown, disabled daughter, represent a large portion of today's society. Will she get a break from her young manager at the Dollar Store or the landlady with a craft business selling googly-eyed rabbits, or the man from her past, now a successful doctor, who left town at a crucial moment long ago? With cutting humor and amazing realism, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsey-Abaire creates a loving portrait of his hometown and a relatable story of socioeconomic struggle.
Kentwood Players proudly presents THE IMAGINARY INVALID by Moliere, an outrageous satire of medicine and its practitioners, opening Friday, January 13 through Saturday, February 18, 2017 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:00pm at the Westchester Playhouse, located at 8301 Hindry Avenue in Westchester, CA 90045. There will be a champagne and dessert reception between 7:00-7:30pm for season subscribers and members attending the Saturday, January 14 performance. The production is directed by Susan Stangl, who just happens to be a medical doctor adding her unique spin to the production, and produced by Sheridan Cole for Kentwood Players. Featured in the cast in alphabetical order are Harold Dershimer, Mitch Feinstein, Drew Fitzsimmons, Sydney Holliday, Daniel Kruger, Zachary Leonard, Aaron Merken, Lezlie Moore, Michele Selin, Beau Smith, and Jenna Tovey.
With more than twenty-five plays, three screenplays and numerous books to his credit, American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator Charles Busch is known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. His offbeat comedy "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" is probably his best-known and most "normal" play, which was a hit on Broadway running for more than 700 performances. It was nominated for several Tony awards including Best Play (Mr. Busch), Best Actress (Linda Lavin) and Best Featured Actress (Michele Lee), and can now be seen onstage at Theatre Palisades' Pierson Playhouse through December 11.
Kentwood Players, the community theater group based at the Westchester Playhouse, was founded in December 1949 by Jan and Arky Marcom, for whom the group's annual Marcom Masque Awards are named. The first Marcom Masque Awards were presented for the 1957-1958 season with 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' winning the award for Best Play.
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.
On Friday, March 11, Kentwood Players welcomed the multiple Tony Award winning musical "MAN OF LA MANCHA" with Book by Dale Wasserman, Music by Mitch Leigh and Lyrics by Joe Darion to the Westchester Playhouse where performances will continue through April 16. The production is directed by Susan Goldman Weisbarth with Musical Director Mike Walker and Choreographer Drew Fitzsimmons, produced by Margie Bates and Gail Bernardi by special arrangement with Tams Witmark Music Library. Here's your first look at onstage photos by Shari Barrett.
