The Learned Ladies at TheatreWorks Nov. 29 - Dec. 23

TheatreWorks celebrates the holiday season with the West Coast Premiere of The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue, from award-winning playwright David Grimm. Translated and freely adapted from Molière's Les Femmes savantes, this screwball comedy in rhyming couplets skillfully transports Molière's brilliant farce to the Art Deco splendor of Cole Porter's Jazz Age.  November 29 (opening: December 2) through December 23 at TheatreWorks at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto.

"Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, inside the wealthiest of New York households, a debonair heartthrob proposes to his high-society sweetie, but soon discovers that her mother has another beau in mind, namely a gold-digging poet as pretentious as he is pedantic," states press notes, "Funny, frothy, and occasionally a little bit wicked, The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue is a romantic riff on Molière's biting satire of pretense and learning. This enormously clever send-up of upper-crust extravagance, dubbed 'a real comic gift . . . delicious' by Variety, is a jolt of champagne wit and dazzling farce that spoofs intellectual snobs, social climbers, and secret lovers, all in the name of good fun."

Show times: Previews at 8PM; Performances Tuesdays at 7:30PM (no show Dec. 19), Wednesdays – Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 2 & 8PM (8PM only Dec. 2), and Sundays at 2 & 7PM.  "Visual Voice" audio-described performances are available Dec. 22 & 23 at 8PM.

TheatreWorks Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley directs, featuring Darren Bridgett, Jackson Davis, Brian Herndon, Warren Keith, Maureen McVerry, Phoebe Moyer, Julia Motyka, Kristin Stokes, and Colin Thomson. 

Tickets ($20-56) and information are available by calling 650-903-6000 or visit www.theatreworks.org. Savings available for youth, students, seniors, and members.

TheatreWorks at the Lucie Stern Theatre is located at 1305 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto.