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

Three one-act plays from David Mamet, one of the master stage writers of our time.

Rosalind Franklin was a gifted research scientist who was part of the race to uncover the secrets of DNA in the 1950’s. Her more famous contemporaries Watson and Krick took all the kudos for the discovery of the molecule’s double helix structure – yet it was Franklin’s skill with X-ray diffraction that first uncovered what’s called “the secret of life”. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Miriam Margolyes as Rosalind; Matthew Arkin as Caspar; Maxwell Caulfield as Wilkins; Jon Matthews as Watson; Darren Richardson as Gosling; Nick Toren as Crick.

It’s 1929 as The Jazz Singer hits the silver screen and the talkies promise to change movies forever. Enter three down-and-out vaudevillians who hatch a hare-brained scheme to “make it big” in Tinsel Town. Their plan? To open a voice academy for the witless stars of silent movies. The only things standing in their way are ditzy starlets and power-hungry movie moguls.

During a winter storm a busload of weary travelers are forced to shack up at a roadside diner until morning. Inge was renowned for his in-depth character studies, Bus Stop is no exception and offers a warm play about the intersecting lives of eight ordinary people.

In three short months, Oscar Wilde, the most celebrated playwright and wit of Victorian England, was toppled from the apex of British society into humiliation and ruin. Drawing from trial documents, newspaper accounts, and writings of the key players, Moisés Kaufman ignites an incendiary mix of sex and censorship, with a cast of characters ranging from George Bernard Shaw to Queen Victoria herself.

Based on the book of the same name, Born Guilty is a moving and elegiac play about one man's journey into the hearts of children raised by Nazi parents. As Peter, a Jewish journalist, tries to uncover the truth, he runs into psychological barriers more daunting than the towering walls of Auschwitz. Born Guilty is based on interviews with the now-adult children of Nazis.

Taking place on a single day in May 1909, a self-made millionaire and his family invite their future nobleman-in-law for a visit to their estate in Surrey, England. In this delightfully clever play, issues of gender, class, politics, and family are all targets for Shaw's keen wit.

Two boys commit a murder - not for gain, or out of passion - just to do it, just to experience the thrill. Based on the infamous 1924 trial of Leopold and Loeb, Never the Sinner is their story and the story of one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians, Clarence Darrow. In the case of a lifetime, Darrow is called in to defend the monstrous and win freedom for the depraved.

In this outrageous new comedy, playwright Mamet skewers everything from sexuality to the justice system to world peace. In a world where nothing is as it seems, prepare to be offended!

How well do you know your family? Your social class? Your race? Sensitive "Spoon" LeVay and his brother "Flip" see their weekend at the family home on Martha's Vineyard as a perfect opportunity to introduce their girlfriends to their upper class African American parents. Instead they stumble into a domestic powder keg that exposes secrets of prejudice, hypocrisy, and adultery. This fantastic new play comes from the pen of one of the country's most provocative new playwrights!

Shakespeare's drama tells the story of a young man who can only come into his own upon his father's death and the father who longs for immortality. Using only Shakespeare's words, this adaptation tells the deeply personal story of Prince Hal's coming of age and his relationships with two father figures: the mistrustful King Henry IV and the hilarious, irrepressible Falstaff. A Court Theatre Production.

A darkly satirical play written at the height of the AIDS crisis. As a young woman is diagnosed with a mysterious new illness, she and her beloved brother flee to Europe in search of a cure...and to escape the pain and uncertainty of the future.

Before Lucy and Desi became America’s favorite television couple, Lucille Ball developed her show-business-aspiring housewife character from 1948-1951 on CBS Radio. Some of TV’s most popular sitcom stars reprise two episodes from the radio series that inspired I Love Lucy. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Samantha Bennett, Jeff Conaway, Harold Gould, Marilu Henner, Joe Liss and Alley Mills.

A crumbling convent school is on the verge of insolvency, when a young postulant begins to display strange heavenly powers. And when a dashing film executive arrives to buy the rights to her story, the Reverend Mother refuses to put profits over prayer. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance.

Drawing upon his childhood memories of West Texas, artist, musician, and writer Terry Allen has created this magical, multi-layered evening in the tradition of Southern story-telling. As Allen explains, “Dugout is a love story; an investigation into how memory is invented."

The quiet porch of a rest home for the aged explodes with emotion when prim Fonsia Dorsey sits down to play gin rummy with the cynical Weller Martin. Fonsia is drawn to Weller, but she just can't stop winning at cards, while Weller bemoans the bad luck that is ruining his game and has dogged him throughout his life. Tragic yet uproariously funny, this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama examines themes of individual responsibility and society's mistreatment of the aged. A co-production with The Smithsonian Associates and Voice of America.

This thrilling production of one of Algren’s best-known stories traces the gritty lives of Polish youths in the Chicago slums of the 1940s. A full-cast performance featuring Kurt Brocker, Richard Cotovsky, Sharon Gopfert, Andrew Hawkes, Jonathan Lavan, Loren Lazerine, Robert Maffia, Guy Massey, G. Riley Mills, Turk Muller, Lara Phillips, and Andy Roski.

A full-cast dramatization of one of the great classics of contemporary Western literature. Dorian Gray, an effete young gentleman, is the subject of a striking portrait by the artist Basil Hallward. Gray’s narcissism is awakened, and he embraces a lifestyle of hedonism and casual cruelties. Increasingly consumed by his own vanity, he is forced to confront his true inner-self, in a manner that is as shocking as it is terrifying.

Based on a real-life event, a moneyed client at a progressive law firm pressures the partners to drop a pro bono case they passionately believe in. Will they choose the easy path to preserve their business or keep fighting for what they believe is right?

The original version of LATW’s groundbreaking docudrama about the Pentagon Papers, the infamous classified documents about US involvement in the Vietnam War, and how The Washington Post fought the government to publish them. Includes a 1991 panel discussion with journalists Ben Bradlee, Peter Braestrup, Robert Maynard, Carla Robbins, Robert Scheer, and George Wilson.