RED SCARE ON SUNSET
Sunday, September 21st, 2008RECOMMENDED
No one spoofs classic Hollywood movie genres better than Charles Busch. Whether it be the Ross Hunter women’s pictures of the 1950s and 60s (Die! Mommie! Die!) or Frankie and Annette Beach Party flicks (Psycho Beach Party) or WWII spy epics (The Lady In Question), Busch knows his Hollywood backwards and forwards. The more his audience knows about movie styles and movie stars, the funnier Busch’s plays are, but even those not so familiar with names like 1950s TV staples Kate Smith, Dagmar, and Norman Vincent Peale will find laughs aplenty in Red Scare On Sunset, which lampoons (and pays tribute to) late 40s/early 50s red-baiting propaganda films like Red Menace, I Married A Communist, and My Son John.
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43 PLAYS FOR 43 PRESIDENTS
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Arriving just in time for the election season, 43 Plays For 43 Presidents is a lickety-split rollercoaster ride through the last 219 years of American history.
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WEHO
Friday, September 19th, 2008
Classic nighttime soaps, Dynasty and Melrose Place to name just two, get a hilarious gay spoofing in the Celebration Theater’s latest late night hit, WeHo, named after “the most dramatic city never to hit prime time. Some call it West Hollywood. We call it WeHo!”
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SPEECH & DEBATE
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
A Salem, Oregon high school teacher cruises school restrooms and gay.com to pick up 18-year-old students for sex. Salem’s conservative mayor is rumored to up to similar shenanigans, all the while promoting an anti-gay agenda. Sounds like the basis for a stark, current-as-today’s-headlines drama, right?
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SOUVENIR
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Several decades before Mrs. Elva Miller (known affectionately as “Mrs. Miller”) blithely and cluelessly massacred such 1960s hits as “Downtown” and “A Lover’s Concerto” in her vibrato-heavy, wobbly, off-key mezzo, there was an even more celebrated “pure coloratura” who achieved now legendary fame in the operatic concert world by performing arias in a voice that makes Mrs. Miller’s seem nearly magnificent by comparison.
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SUMMER SIZZLE ONE-ACT FESTIVAL
Friday, September 5th, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
The Production Company is taking a break from its usual full length fare (following their much lauded Mrs. Warren’s Profession and preceding the much anticipated M Butterfly) to give 8 local playwrights the opportunity to show off their comic wares in The Summer Sizzle One-Act Play Festival (and competition).
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LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Lovers And Other Strangers is perhaps best known as the Oscar-winning 1970 movie which starred Gig Young (remember him?), Bea (then Beatrice) Arthur and Cloris Leachman (pre Maud and MTM), and featuring an unknown actress named Diane Keaton in her very first film role. (A dollar to whoever can remember in what category Lovers And Other Strangers won its Oscar.)
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ROSE’S DILEMMA
Friday, August 29th, 2008
The “ghost comedy” is a tried a true genre that, for me at least, never fails to entertain. You know the story. Ghost returns from the other side to haunt our hero (or heroine), the only one who can see or hear said ghost, a situation leading to exchanges like the following (purely of my own creation):
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