The California stage will also present the West Coast debut of Sonia Flew, A Marvelous Party - The Nöel Coward Celebration, Shear Madness and The Ice Breaker as part of its 2006-2007 lineup. The limited-run return of Christmas holiday special Sister's Christmas Catechism (Nov. 19-Dec. 23) and the continuing Late Nite Catechism 2 (Sunday and Monday evenings) will be offered as a special bonus for subscribers.
The season at Laguna is scheduled as follows (subject to change):
Bruce Jordan and Marilyn Abrams' comedy mystery, based on a Paul Pörtner work, where the audience gets to solve the crime makes its Orange County premiere.
Melinda Lopez's drama about a Cuban wife and mother of two living in Minneapolis comes to the Laguna stage. The woman of the title struggles to understand how her parents sent her away, unaccompanied, from the political turmoil of her homeland in the early 1960s.
David Ira Goldstein, Carl Danielsen, Mark Anders, and Patricia Wilcox collaborated to devise this revue featuring the words and music of Nöel Coward. Goldstein directs and Wilcox choreographs the "evening of song, dance and scenes of sparkling repartee," as materials describe.
Commissioned by Laguna, Bernard Farrell pens this play set at an annual Verdi Weekend in Milan, Italy where opera aficionados cause their own drama at the festival events including a performance at La Scala Opera House, lectures and the fiercely competitive Verdi Quiz.
David Rambo's tale of a young PhD student on the verge of a discovery who seeks help from a disgraced genius. The work debuts at San Francisco's Magic Theatre in February 2006 and will return for California audiences at Laguna in 2007.
Shmuel Hasfari's 2003 drama, which still runs in Israel's The Cameri Theatre repertory, comes stateside under the direction of Laguna executive director Richard Stein. In the work, about a woman who hopes to completely remodel her house while her husband doesn't want to change a thing, the marriage is used as a mirror for the complexities of contemporary Israel.
Another Laguna commission, Richard Dresser's new comedy finds a mother obsessed with getting her daughter into college, a workaholic father consumed by a new hobby and a young girl who wants nothing to do with college seeing as how it did nothing for her parents. Andrew Barnicle directs the world premiere. Tickets and subscriptions to the new season at the Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach, CA, can be purchased through (949) 497-2787. For more information, visit www.LagunaPlayhouse.com.
