Posts Tagged ‘Theatre 40’

LATE COMPANY

Anti-gay bullying and its potentially fatal consequences are hardly topics you’d expect to see tackled by a theater company perhaps best known for seniors-friendly mystery/comedy fare, but these are precisely the issues that propel Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill’s shattering family drama Late Company, now being given a compelling American Premiere at Beverly Hill’s Theatre 40.
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THE CONSUL, THE TRAMP, AND AMERICA’S SWEETHEART

Here’s a fun fact for you. Hollywood routinely allowed Hitler’s Nazis to dictate movie content during the decade leading up to World War II, a bit of Tinseltown trivia at the heart of John Morogiello’s The Consul, The Tramp, And America’s Sweetheart, the engaging, enlightening latest from Theatre 40.
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PERFECT TIMING

Audiences in search of a perfectly marvelous time at the theater could hardly make a more perfect choice than the latest from Theatre 40, Kristi Kane’s Perfect Timing, a play so perfectly delightful that you’d expect it had run a decade or more on London’s West End and not a mere six months in Van Nuys way back in the mid-80s before fading into unjust obscurity.
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DOUBLE DOOR

No matter who your favorite TV soap villainess might be, she could learn a thing or two from the selfish, conniving, ruthless monster created way back in 1931 by Elizabeth McFadden for her suspense melodrama Double Door, now deliciously revived for a 21st-century audience at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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PATTERNS

RECOMMENDED

Topnotch lead performances and a “plus ça change” fascination make James Reach’s Patterns, the stage adaptation of a Rod Serling screenplay set in the dog-eat-dog world of 1950s American big business, worth a look-see at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40 despite an overlong running time and a so-so supporting cast.

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AMERICAN WEE-PIE

Cupcakes offer a down-on-his-luck textbook editor a new lease on life in Lisa Dillman’s magical, whimsical American Wee-Pie, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere in one of my favorite Theatre 40 productions ever.
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HELLMAN V. MCCARTHY

Hell hath no fury like a best-selling author dissed, or so Lillian “The Little Foxes” Hellman made abundantly clear when she sued fellow writer Mary McCarthy for disparaging words uttered during a 1980 TV interview with PBS talk show host Dick Cavett.

Playwright Brian Richard Mori returns to the scene of the alleged slander with none other than 78-year-old Dick Cavett playing a 40something Dick in Mori’s terrifically entertaining comedy-drama Hellman v. McCarthy, now getting its West Coast Premiere at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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BLONDE POISON

Salome Jens gives an absolutely riveting performance as Stella Goldschlag, the Berliner whose collaboration with the Gestapo sent thousands of her fellow German Jews to the death camps, in the American Premiere of Gail Louw’s Blonde Poison, now playing at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.
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