THE LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE ANNOUNCES THE 2007-2008 SEASON
Season Features Three World Premieres (Including Two Laguna Playhouse Commissions), One Southern California Premiere, And Three Proven Hits!
FEBRUARY 5, 2007 - LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA – The Laguna Playhouse is pleased to announce that it has selected its 2007-2008 Mainstage season of seven plays beginning July 10, 2007 -- its 87th year of continuous operation.
In making the announcement, Laguna Playhouse Executive Director Richard Stein commented, “The new season reinforces this theatre’s growing commitment to new work by featuring the greatest number of World Premieres ever offered here in a single season, including two, The Playhouse itself, has commissioned. Balancing out the new will be a revival of what has become a contemporary classic: Yasmina Reza’s ART. We’ll also offer the Southern California Premiere of RED HERRING, by Michael Hollinger, an extremely clever and humorous detective drama that depicts love in the time of Senator Joe McCarthy’s red-baiting. And continuing our tradition of pure summer fun, we’ll be the first theater in Orange County to present the international theatre sensation, MENOPAUSE: THE MUSICAL.®
The Playhouse will also bring back its limited-run Christmas crowd-pleaser: SISTER'S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM.
LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE 2007-08 SEASON
Menopause: The Musical®
July 10 – September 2, 2007
By Jeanie Linders
Imagine four women at a Bloomingdale’s lingerie sale with little in common besides night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, and more. Inspired by a hot flash and a bottle of wine, Menopause: The Musical® is a joyful celebration of women living through The Change. Featuring a parody of 25 re-lyricized classic Baby Boomer hits (“Puff the Magic Dragon” becomes “Puff, My God I’m Draggin’,” while “Staying Alive” is reworked as “Staying Awake”), the show has been a runaway success, with men and women, ever since it opened at a tiny perfume shop-turned-theatre in Florida six years ago.
Art
September 11 – October 14, 2007
By Yasmina Reza
Translated by Christopher Hampton
Directed by Andrew Barnicle
Art, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder but that doesn’t stop the three men in Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning runaway hit from having strong opinions about it. Serge has paid a small fortune for a large white-painted canvas. Friend Marc is scornfully unimpressed, while Ivan tries to avoid taking sides. What begins as a sparkling debate about the nature of art soon morphs into a wittily observed, often poignant examination of friendship itself. Just how strong are the ties that bind?
Hank Williams: Lost Highway
November 13 – December 16, 2007
By Randal Myler and Mark Harelik
Country and Western music icon Hank Williams touched the hearts of millions in his short career. Now his unique magic as a performer and the simple spell of his yearning songs return to life in this unforgettable musical tribute. Chock-full of familiar melodies – from “Lovesick Blues” to “Your Cheatin’ Heart” – the show recounts Williams’ often lonely journey from backwoods Alabama obscurity to super-stardom at the Grand Ole Opry. Though his life ended tragically, Williams’ legend lives on through songs that celebrate the tenderness of the heart and the hopefulness of the human spirit.
Southern California Premiere
Red Herring
January 1 – February 3, 2008
By Michael Hollinger
Directed by Andrew Barnicle
Take three pairs of lovers, add an unsolved murder, several pinches of espionage and pickle everything in a brine of early Cold War paranoia and you have the ingredients for a side-splitting black comedy enmeshed in tangled romance. Why is Senator Joe McCarthy’s daughter dating a would-be traitor? And what’s that supposedly dead Russian fisherman doing pretending to be feisty landlady Mrs. Kravitz’ deaf husband? Did we mention the pair of dogged gumshoes? Hollinger’s spoof Red Scare drama will keep audiences reeling with laughter and gasping for air.
World Premiere
Tranced
February 12 – March 16, 2008
By Bob Clyman
Directed by Richard Stein
In this fast-paced, suspense-filled thriller by the author of The Laguna Playhouse hit drama, The Secret Order, a foreign student comes to Philip Malaad for help. He’s a respected psychiatrist famous for his form of hypnosis called “trancing,” and she believes he can help uncover suppressed memories that are disturbing her. What Malaad learns from their sessions, however, is that her secret could have profound consequences for thousands of people in her homeland unless something is done soon. Malaad decides to act but is pulled into a vortex of high-level political intrigue and personal duplicity that leave him deeply shaken and questioning the very nature of truth.
World Premiere Commissioned by The Laguna Playhouse
Brownstone
March 25 – April 27, 2008
By Catherine Butterfield
As the saying goes, “If only these walls could talk,” and in Catherine Butterfield’s imaginative new play they do. A Manhattan brownstone. Three contrasting eras. Three sets of occupants. There’s the pampered rich young couple of the 1930s, eager for adventure in Paris. There are the starry-eyed aspiring actresses of the 1970s and the chillingly self-absorbed “power couple” of the new millennium. They all have dreams but as events unfold they must learn to ride the shifting waves of fortune. These walls have stories – funny, tragic and mysteriously linked. From the author of The Playhouse hit comedy The Sleeper.
World Premiere Commissioned By The Laguna Playhouse
Alexandros
May 27 – June 29, 2008
By Melinda Lopez
It’s a birthday party nobody will forget! In this hilarious human comedy with a warm Latin heart, Abuela, the matriarch of a Cuban-exile family, is turning 75. Much-married Maritza and her teenage daughter, Marty, have driven in from Texas. Live-at-home single son, Tio, wants everything to go smoothly, but as the punch flows, the Miami sky turns stormy and Eric, the handsome gardener arrives, the party unravels. Meanwhile, Alexandros, Abuela’s bad-tempered pooch becomes the catalyst for an emotional meltdown in which closet doors open, truths tumble out and the bonds of family love are inspiringly reasserted. From the author of last season’s acclaimed Sonia Flew.
AND, BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND…
SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM
The Mystery of the Magi’s Gold
December 17– 23, 2007
Think CSI: BETHLEHEM as Sister tackles the question that has been puzzling historians throughout the ages: What ever happened to the Magi's gold? Sister engages her audience to help solve the mystery through a forensic examination of the nativity scene. Sister hunts under the manger and over camel humps in her quest for clues.
Subscription Prices: $175 - $700
For tickets or subscription information, please call The Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Rd. in Laguna Beach at 949-497-2787 or visit www.lagunaplayhouse.com
For additional press information or to set up interviews, please contact Greg Patterson at 949-497-2787 x216 or at gpatterson@lagunaplayhouse.com
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Media Contact: Greg Patterson, 949-497-2787 ext. 216
E-mail: gpatterson@lagunaplayhouse.com
