THE LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE PRESENTS THE WEST COAST PREMIERE OF:
LAST EASTER
Written by: Bryony Lavery
(the Tony Award-nominated author of Frozen)
Directed by: Richard Stein
Limited Engagement opens Saturday, April 22 at The Laguna Playhouse!
June has a terrible secret. Gash has an outrageous plan.
Leah is open to possibilities. Joy is drinking to forget.
LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 1, 2006 - Laguna Playhouse presents the sixth production of its 2005-2006 season, LAST EASTER, written by Bryony Lavery and directed by Richard Stein. This is only the second production of LAST EASTER, which received its world premiere at MCC Theatre in New York on October 7, 2004, where it was directed by Doug Hughes. LAST EASTER, opens on Saturday, April 22, 2006 and continues through Sunday, May 21 (Previews: April 18 – 21) at the Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach.
June has a secret. When her best friends, Leah, Joy and Gash unravel the mystery, they embark on a whirlwind journey, whisking her from her home in London all the way to Lourdes , France (where she is thoroughly dunked in the holy water). The four showbiz friends’ lunatic pilgrimage is filled with laughing, singing, drag acts, a ghostly stagehand, and of course, many bottles of good, red wine. Upon their return, they commit an unspeakable act of love. This Easter, they remember. A provocative, funny and moving new play about friendship, its obligations and its unforeseen consequences.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM
BRYONY LAVERY (Playwright) has just completed the first draft of The Thing With Feathers for the McCarter Theatre, Princeton, is about to go into workshop for Wise Children for The National Theatre in London and she is researching Dirt for Manhattan Theatre Club. Previous plays include Helen and Her Friends (1978), Bag (1979), Family Album (1980), Missing (1981), Calamity (1983), Origin of the Species (1984), Witchcraze (1985), Her Aching Heart (Pink Paper Play of the Year 1992), Wicked (1990), Kitchen Matters (1990), Flight (1991), Nothing Compares to You (1995), Ophelia (1996) and A Wedding Story (2000). Her play, Frozen, received Tony, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League nominations and won the TMA Best Play Award and the Eileen Anderson Central Television Award in 1998. Her extensive work for BBC Radio includes No Joan of Arc (Sony nomination), Velma and Therese, The Smell of Him, Requiem and adaptations of Wuthering Heights and Lady Audley’s Secret for the Classic Serial, and, most recently Angela Carter’s Wise Children. She is an honorary Doctor of Arts at De Montfort University. She is a director, with John Retallack, of Performing Arts Labs Playwriting. She has been a tutor on the M.A. Playwriting Course at Birmingham University, Arvon and many others. She was an Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop and her own company, Les Oeufs Malades. For two years she was writer-in-residence for the Unicorn Theatre for Children. She has just written a thriller, Smoke, for the New Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent. Her adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop for Shared Experience opened at the Soho Theatre in January 2002. In summer 2003 her adaptation of Mary Webb’s Precious Bane for Pentabus Theatre Company toured four stately homes with a cast of eight actors, an 80-strong choir and a live horse. Restless Farewell, her first screenplay, was produced as part of PAL Screenwriting Lab. Future plans include Angela Carter’s Wise Children for the Royal National Theatre, Dante’s Inferno for the Unicorn Theatre for Children and Told by an Idiot, and her unsellable TV series goodbye.
RICHARD STEIN (Director) has been executive director of The Laguna Playhouse since March, 1990. His Playhouse directing credits include: the West Coast Premiere of Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie, the American Premiere of Michael Weller’s What the Night is For, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jon Marans’ Old Wicked Songs and the world premiere of Marans’ Jumping for Joy, the West Coast premiere of Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, Arthur Miller’s The Price, the Southern California premiere of Richard Dresser’s Gun-Shy, the Los Angeles area premiere of Giles Havergal’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt, the 1996 Laguna Playhouse production of Jeremy Brooks & Adrian Mitchel’s adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales and the World Premiere of David Drummond’s The Labors of Hercules. At the University of Hartford’s Lincoln Theatre, he directed professional productions of Isaac Bashevis Singer & Eve Friedman’s Teibele and Her Demon and Edward Albee’s Seascape. The latter was named one of the top ten productions that year by Variety.
The cast of LAST EASTER will feature: Kirsten Chandler, whose credits include the West Coast Premiere of The Wild Party at the Hudson Theatre, performances at the Denver Center Theatre Company, Pasadena Playhouse and two national tours as well as the Laguna Playhouse production of the musical Inside Out in 1998, will play “Joy”. Yosefa Forma, a young actress with Off-Broadway credits will play “Leah”. Kelly Mantle, who has appeared on “Will & Grace,” “E.R.,” and “NYPD Blue,” and in Los Angeles and Chicago theatrical productions such as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Four Dogs and A Bone will play “Gash”. Helen Wassell, a British born actress, whose credits include the Royal National Theatre and West End productions as well as Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors at the Laguna Playhouse in 2000 will play “June”. The role of “Howie” will be played by Jay Skovec.
The Set Design is by Narelle Sissons (The Last 5 Years and The Secret Order at the Laguna Playhouse). The Lighting Design is by Tom Ruzika (Tuesdays With Morrie, What The Night Is For at The Laguna Playhouse). The Costume Design is by Dwight Richard Odle (Numerous Laguna Playhouse credits). The Sound Design is by Laguna Playhouse resident Sound Designer David Edwards. Honorary Producers are Haskell & White, CPA’s.
Tickets are now on sale. For tickets, please call the Laguna Playhouse Box Office at 949-497-2787.
GROUP SALES CALL 949.460-8676
VISIT: www.LagunaPlayhouse.com
THEATRE: 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, California
For press comps or interviews, please contact David Elzer
at DEMAND PR - 818-508-1754 or ElzerD@aol.com.
