Showing results by publisher "L.A. Theatre Works" in All Categories

L.A. Theatre Works presents four plays about the Japanese American experience during and after World War II: Sisters Matsumoto, Hold These Truths, For Us All, and No-No Boy.

Written by Susan Glaspell in 1916, Trifles is a one-act play about a woman accused of strangling her husband. Based on an actual murder case reported by Glaspell for the Des Moines News, the play represented an early exploration of gender relationships in a time when women often were considered to be mere trifles. A groundbreaking feminist play, Trifles is often included in anthologies of drama and literature.

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hamilton and Missy Yager, the original cast was reunited for this exclusive L.A. Theatre Works performance of This is Our Youth. In 1982, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, three pot-smoking teenagers are resoundingly rejecting the 1960's ideals of their affluent parents. In hilarious and bittersweet detail, This is Our Youth follows forty-eight turbulent hours in the lives of three very lost souls at the dawn of the Reagan Era.

Sir Laurence Olivier. Orson Welles. Vivien Leigh. Joan Plowright. Kenneth Tynan. When these champions of the theatre get together to rehearse Ionesco's Rhinoceros, mere mortals best step aside. With lightning wit and scathing insight into the true nature of genius, Austin Pendleton's new play opens the private worlds of these very public people, exposing their warmth, their egos, and their glittering madness.

Never has the Revolutionary War been so entertaining. Shaw stands "do or die" melodrama on its head, with a cast of unforgettable characters, from the deliciously urbane "Gentlemanly Johnny" Burgoyne, to the misguided romanticism of beautiful young Judith Anderson, to the Devil's Disciple himself, a dashing young American hero who disdains heroism, even as he makes the ultimate sacrifice for honor and country.

Molly Sweeney, by the great Irish playwright Brian Friel, tells the story of married couple Molly and Frank, who live in a remote Irish village. Molly has been blind since birth, but now a surgeon - Mr. Rice - believes he may be able to restore her sight. In a series of interwoven monologues, Molly Sweeney takes us into the minds of three people with very different expectations of what will happen when Molly regains her vision.

An intense, chilling take on life behind bars, this performance strikes a fine balance of intellectual vigor and sophistication on the one hand and so much anguished passion on the other.

In this unique audio adaptation of Neil Simon’s screenplay, Paula McFadden’s a down-on-her-luck actress who’s forced to take in a new roommate - the eccentric, noisy, and generally unpleasant Elliot Garfield - who also happens to be an actor. As their careers and finances hit new lows, their reluctant partnership threatens to turn into something neither one wants.

This acclaimed World War II psychological court room drama was the sensation of 1954. The play portrays a mutiny of naval officers aboard the U.S.S. Caine. Their suspicions concerning their captain's sanity lead to their rebellion and a subsequent court-martial.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production. In this riveting political drama, Sara, along with her German husband Kurt, returns to the opulent Washington, DC, mansion of her mother, Fanny, after years away in Europe. With Hitler and Mussolini assuming full power, Kurt finds himself blackmailed for his anti-Fascist activities as the conflict in Europe crosses the hearth of this tranquil home.

This Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning play is the tale of a baby-boomer's long hard road from 1960s confusion to 1990s self-made woman...or so she hopes.

This Pulitzer Prize-winner is a deeply touching and funny play about three eccentric sisters from a small Southern town rocked by scandal when Babe, the youngest, shoots her husband. Humor and pathos abound as the sisters unite with an intense young lawyer to save Babe from a murder charge, and overcome their family’s painful past. A BBC co-production.

Academy Award-winner Athol Fugard, one of theatre's most acclaimed playwrights, finds humor and heartbreak in the friendship of Harold, a 17-year-old white boy in 1950s South Africa, and the two middle-aged black servants who raised him. Racism unexpectedly shatters Harold's childhood and friendships in this absorbing, affecting coming-of-age play. The play, initially banned from production in South Africa, is a Drama Desk Award winner for Outstanding New Play.

From the pen of the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama! The Crump family is adrift and in trouble. Widowed Godfrey is under the spell of Sweet Father Divine, while his teen daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, immerse themselves in the illusions of Hollywood to escape racial prejudice. But things change quickly when free-spirited Aunt Lily shows up: Godfrey remarries a white woman, Ermina discovers boys, and Ernestine is torn between Communism and bebop!

Visitors try to retrieve lost daughters, remember drunken nights, deal with denial in a big way best friends coming unraveled. Just like Simon’s Plaza Suite (also available from L.A. Theatre Works), we have four couples who separately inhabit the same Beverly Hills hotel suite, bringing along their problems, anxieties, and comical marital dilemmas.

Three famous spy cases rocked America between 1948 and 1954: Alger Hiss; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Each program combines dramatic re-enactments based on archival material, new evidence, the latest assessments by American historians and scientists, and the commentaries of relatives and friends of the accused.

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Dinner with Friends examines the lives of two couples and the repercussions of divorce on their friendship. With wit, compassion, and consummate skill, playwright Donald Margulies weighs the costs of breaking up...and of staying together.

Beware the gossips! Lady Sneerwell and her hireling, Snake, are certainly up to no good in this timeless send-up of hypocritical manners. Thanks to their scandal-mongering, the comely Lady Teazle must fend off the slanderous barbs that have caught the ear of her elderly husband - as well as every other gossip in London! What follows is a torrent of mistaken identities and sex-crazed scheming in which the upper classes have never looked so low class.

In this contemporary murder mystery, set within the confines of a convent, Agnes is a devout, innocent young nun accused of infanticide. As a psychiatrist - herself a lapsed Catholic - and the Mother Superior struggle over Agnes' fate, the play plunges deeply into the mystery of faith and the consequence of truth.

Hedda and George have just returned from their honeymoon, but when her former lover Eilert appears with a brilliant new manuscript, George’s hopes for a professorship are dimmed. Hedda’s desperate dissatisfaction with her life leads to dangerous choices in this startling portrait of a woman hell-bent on destruction.