A giddy, fleet fantasy based on the love and adventures of a brother and sister, one of whom has a fatal disease. In the opening scene, the brother is wearing pajamas, but it is his schoolteacher sister who's diagnosed with a deadly virus that sends the two of them spinning off to Europe to find romance and a cure before the final crashing scenes where reality sets in. "a crazy-quilt patchwork of hyperventilating language, erotic jokes, movie kitsch and medical nightmare that spins before the audience in Viennese waltz time, replete with a dizzying fall." - NY Times. "an immensely likable winning comedy-drama." - Hollywood Reporter. Winner of the Obie Award
Reunion
drama by David Mamet
directed by David Farmer
Carol has turned twenty-four and goes in search of her father, Bernie. She hasn’t seen him since her parents divorced twenty years earlier, but when she tracks Bernie down he isn’t what she expected – or hoped for. A recovering alcoholic who has spent much of his life intoxicated and itinerant, Bernie would seem to be the last man in whom Carol should confide. Yet, somehow, a lonely lost daughter and a lonely lost father find their way to an understanding, a reunion - of sorts.
Mamet’s much-admired play is a wise and tender meditation on the gap between generations – and the ways we redeem the past.
The Actors' Group * 625 Keawe St * Honolulu, HI 96813
~ Season Brochure ~
Fences
drama by August Wilson
directed by Derrick Brown
November 2 - November 25
Merry Christmas Roberta
(A Chinatown Story)
an original work by Jon Brekke
& Eric Nemoto
directed by Jon Brekke
December 14, 2007 – January 6, 2008
A married couple, owners of a small convenience store in Honolulu’s Chinatown, notices that grocery items are disappearing from their inventory. Little do they know that the culprit is their own nine-year-old daughter. She is giving fruits and her school lunch money to a homeless person every morning when she walks to school. Finding this out, the father explodes in a rage against the bum, only to be shocked and embarrassed when the assumed man is really a woman. To make amends, the family invites her to a Thanksgiving dinner where the truth will be revealed as to why the woman became the way that she is. “Merry Christmas, Roberta,” is a heartwarming story about friendship, forgiveness and the love of family.
Mass Appeal
drama by Bill C. Davis
directed by Brad Powell
January 25 – February 24, 2008
Father Farley drinks a little. He also goes to the races, is bad with first names, and tells "little lies" to get him out of tricky situations, like those involving domestic quarrels and slideshows with Monsignor Burke. But his parish loves him. Then he is assigned to look after a passionate young deacon who challenges him to step out of his blissful rut.
Shadowlands
drama by William Nicholson
directed by Melinda Maltby
April 18 - May 11, 2008
This West End and Broadway hit is the love story of C.S. Lewis, Oxford don and author of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters, and American poet Joy Gresham. Jack Lewis is smug in his convictions about God and His plan for the world until Joy and her young son enter his life and the bewildered theoretician of love in the abstract finally confronts its direct presence. "Engrossing, entertaining ... literate, well crafted and discreetly brilliant." N.Y. Post. "I loved it." WNBC TV. "Poignant, powerful, intelligent theatre, witty and extraordinarily written." WABC TV. Winner, 1990 London Evening Standard Award, Best New Play.
A Kind of Alaska
drama by Harold Pinter
directed by David Farmer
Deborah, suffering from encephalitis lethargica, wakes after 29 years 'asleep', still convinced she's sixteen, cushioned in the midst of a loving family. A doctor and her sister delicately introduce her to an alien world but their attempts are unsuccessful; she's still mentally stranded ' in a kind of Alaska', isolated from reality.
Inspired by Oliver Sacks’ Awakenings, Pinter’s play is a haunting, poetic portrayal; gently, beautifully, he unfurls Deborah’s realization that her ‘life’ was a fantasy. The poignancy of her plight calls into question the way all our experiences are described. Was Deborah’s long exile in sleep her real life? Is ‘reality’ the cruel intrusion, the nightmare from which she must escape?
A modern classic by one of America's finest contemporary playwrights, this play is part of Wilson's majestic cycle of plays chronicling the African American experience in the 20th century. Fences centers around Troy Maxson, a former star of the Negro Baseball Leagues but now an embittered and resentful garbage collector, who is coming to terms with his own lost dreams while struggling to hold onto pride and keep his family together. He spends the better part of the play building a picket fence around his yard, at his wife's request--one of those household projects that never seems to end--but the hero of Fences has faced far more daunting barriers in his lifetime. Fences explores boundaries, both actual and figurative within society, personal relationships and ourselves. Winner of every major award, including Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, New York Drama Critics, Tony and Pulitzer Prizes.
