ART

The stars of last fall’s Moonlight And Magnolias are reunited as best friends in the Hermosa Beach Playhouse production of Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning Art, just one of several reasons not to miss this terrific revival of the 1998 Broadway smash.
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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

Any director tackling Shakespeare is likely to want to put his or her personal stamp on the tragedy or comedy in question, be it the gazillionth Hamlet or the ump-ump-umpteenth Taming Of The Shrew. Stephanie A. Coltrin is no exception, and under her imaginative direction, Hermosa Beach Playhouse’s Taming Of The Shrew becomes a broadly-played comedic delight.
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THE ODD COUPLE

How many plays can you think of that have generated a film adaptation (and a 30-years-later sequel), a long-running sitcom, a short-running African American-cast sitcom, an animated children’s series, an alternate version with the male and female roles reversed, and an updated version with an all new title?
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BAREFOOT IN THE PARK

There’s a fine line in theater between “period” and “dated.” A play that’s dated is one that’s no longer appropriate for a contemporary audience and may even be offensive to current sensibilities. On the other hand, a period play delights us with its look back at the way we were, as seen through then-contemporary eyes. That’s why, when someone recently described Neil Simon’s Barefoot In The Park as “dated,” my immediate response was, “No, it’s not dated at all. It’s period.”
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MOONLIGHT AND MAGNOLIAS

Diehard Gone With The Wind fans may well have seen the 1939 classic 1939 times, but few may be aware of the five days movie mogul David O. Selznick shut himself, director Victor Fleming, and script doctor Ben Hecht inside his office, the three men subsisting entirely on a diet of bananas and peanuts, as Hecht rewrote the entire script of Gone With The Wind, a book he’d never read. Or at least that’s how Hollywood scuttlebutt would have it.

Playwright Ron Hutchinson imagines what might have transpired behind those closed doors in his hit comedy Moonlight And Magnolias, now making its Hermosa Beach Playhouse debut in a delightfully fresh new production. Once again HBP Artistic Director Stephanie A. Coltrin proves herself one of the most reliable directors in town, eliciting splendid performances from Patrick Vest (Selznick), Cylan Brown (Fleming), Joel Bryant (Hecht), and Nicole Wessel (Selznick’s harried secretary Miss Poppenghul). Moonlight And Magnolias is a show which will entertain and elucidate anyone who’s ever seen GWTW, and that’s just about everyone on the planet, right?
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