The Costa Mesa Playhouse is proud to announce its 2008 - 2009 Season. This year, we've switched things up a bit by making our Christmas Show part of the regular season, and offering a Bonus Show for Halloween!
Sordid Lives by Del Shores
Directed by Michael Brown
The author of Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got the Will?) brings you a Comedy that was nominated for over thirty awards during its long run in Los Angeles. When Peggy, a good Christian woman, hits her head on the sink and bleeds to death after tripping over her lover's wooden legs in a motel room, chaos erupts in Winters, Texas.
"[This play by] the master of Texas Comedy ... is maybe funnier than Daddy's Dyin'. His colorful eccentrics are dead on, teetering on a Bowie knife's edge between the hilarious improbable and the achingly real." -L.A. Times.
"Run, don't walk to Del Shores new play!" -DramaLogue.
"Pick of the Week." -L.A. Weekly.
Winner of 14 DramaLogue awards including Best Production.
July 18th - August 10th, 2008
EXTRA SHOW
Batboy: The Musical Book by Keythe Farley & Brian Flemming Music & Lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe
Licensed by Arrangement with Weekly World News Directed by Michael Dale Brown & Ryan Holihan
Musical Direction by Stephen Hulsey
Last Season, we featured A Christmas Show as an EXTRA offering. This Season, we've decided to include a show in our regular season for the Holidays and offer instead a "Halloween Show."
Ripped from the headlines of The Weekly World News, BAT BOY THE MUSICAL is a classic love story with a serious bite. This delicious twist on the modern day musical comedy tells the amazing story of a strange boy with pointy ears, his struggle to find a place in a world that shuns him, and the love that can create both miracles and madness.
September 26th - November 2nd, 2008
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
by Edward Albee
Directed by Michael Dale Brown
George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home from a Saturday night party. Martha announces that she has invited a young couple -an opportunistic new professor at the college and his shatteringly naive new bride- to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive drinks flow and suddenly inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn't care less. But underneath the edgy banter, which is crossfired between both couples, lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair. George and Martha's inhuman bitterness toward one another is provoked by the enormous personal sadness that they have pledged to keep to themselves: a secret that has seemingly been the foundation for their relationship. In the end, the mystery in which the distressed George and Martha have taken refuge is exposed, once and for all revealing the degrading mess they have made of their lives.
Winner of both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962-63 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.
It was also nominated for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
February 6th - March 1st, 2009
(Subject to Availability)
City of Angels
Music by Cy Coleman
Lyrics by David Zippel
Book by Larry Gelbart
Directed and Choreographed by Vicki Miller
Set in Hollywood in the late 1940s, City of Angels is a film noir style detective story that presents its own writer, Stine, who is having trouble transposing his book onto the big screen. In parallel, it follows the protagonist of the film, Detective Stone, on his adventures... as Stine writes. Many of the characters have a counterpart in the other world; these parts may be double cast. It is usually staged with the "real-life" scenes in "color" and the movie scenes in "black and white".
Tony Award for Best Musical
Tony Award for Best Original Score
Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical
April 10th - May 10th, 2009
Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey Hatcher
Directed by Jason Holland
In 1661 the most famous portrayer of female roles on the London stage is not a woman, but a man named "Kynaston." Applauded onstage and off for his interpretations of Shakespeare's tragic ladies: Ophelia, Cleopatra, and especially his Desdemona, he's the toast of the town until one night, at an illegal theatre, a real woman plays Desdemona for the first time. Instead of stopping the show, King Charles II changes the law to allow women to act.
With the stroke of a pen, Kynaston's world is turned upside-down. He loses his livelihood, his lover, and his sense of self as such women as the king's own courtesan, Nell Gwynn, and Kynaston's former dresser become stars. Kynaston's own light disappears until fate and his desire for revenge give him a chance to take the stage again.
"A clever exploration of rich territory, the world of the English theater at the seventeenth-century moment when women were first allowed on the stage." -New York Times.
"Lush, world class, clever" -Variety.
"An intimate psycho-sexual backstage historical comedy. Splendidly theatrical, it's a witty allusive game with some feeling payoff, to boot." -Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The author of Daddy's Dyin' (Who's Got the Will?) brings you a Comedy that was nominated for over thirty awards during its long run in Los Angeles. When Peggy, a good Christian woman, hits her head on the sink and bleeds to death after tripping over her lover's wooden legs in a motel room, chaos erupts in Winters, Texas. 
Directed by Michael Dale Brown & Ryan Holihan
George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home from a Saturday night party. Martha announces that she has invited a young couple -an opportunistic new professor at the college and his shatteringly naive new bride- to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive drinks flow and suddenly inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn't care less. But underneath the edgy banter, which is crossfired between both couples, lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair. George and Martha's inhuman bitterness toward one another is provoked by the enormous personal sadness that they have pledged to keep to themselves: a secret that has seemingly been the foundation for their relationship. In the end, the mystery in which the distressed George and Martha have taken refuge is exposed, once and for all revealing the degrading mess they have made of their lives.
Set in Hollywood in the late 1940s, City of Angels is a film noir style detective story that presents its own writer, Stine, who is having trouble transposing his book onto the big screen. In parallel, it follows the protagonist of the film, Detective Stone, on his adventures... as Stine writes. Many of the characters have a counterpart in the other world; these parts may be double cast. It is usually staged with the "real-life" scenes in "color" and the movie scenes in "black and white".
In 1661 the most famous portrayer of female roles on the