One performance only! Tuesday, January 6 – 7:30pm! Acting Ensemble on the Avenue (602 E. Mishawaka Avenue in Mishawaka) produces the StageWorks Staged Reading of:
“It’s Only a Play” by Terrence McNally.
Kyle Hutslar and Melissa Gard direct Mariah Donley, Daniel Grey, Will Larry, Brad Mazick, Jeff Merwin, Sarah Myers, and Russell Pluta in this hilarious ensemble piece that pokes fun at theater people behaving at their not-so-best!
“This show is without a doubt hilariously, sidesplittingly funny…These are among the funniest lines to roll off a stage in years…IT’S ONLY A PLAY deserves only a rave.” —The New York Times.
THE STORY: It’s the opening night of “The Golden Egg” on Broadway, and wealthy producer Julia Budder is throwing a lavish party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs in the bedroom, where a group of insiders have staked themselves out to await the reviews. The group includes the excitable playwright; the possibly unstable wunderkind director; the pill-popping leading lady, treading the boards after becoming infamous in Hollywood; and the playwright’s best friend, for whom the play was written but who passed up this production for a television series. Add to this a drama critic who’s panned the playwright in the past and a new-in-town aspiring singer, and you have a prime recipe for the narcissism, ambition, childishness, and just plain irrationality that infuse the theatre—and for comedy. But don’t worry: This play is sure to be the hit they have all been hoping for.
The show lasts 2 hours, including intermission, and will appeal to audiences who enjoy light-hearted entertainment.
HISTORY: “It’s Only a Play” was originally produced by Manhattan Theatre Club at The Space at City Center Theater, in New York City, on December 18, 1985. It was revised and produced by the Center Theatre Group, Ahmanson Theatre at the Doolittle, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles on April 16, 1992, and was originally produced on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, opening on October 9, 2014, with Matthews Broderick, Megan Mullally, F. Murray Abraham, Rupert Grint, Stockard Channing, Nathan Lane, and Micah Stock.
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and LGBTQ+ trailblazer, described by The New York Times as “the bard of the American Theater.” One of the few playwrights of his generation to successfully pass from the avant-garde to mainstream acclaim, Terrence redefined American playwriting for six decades and was the recipient of five Tony Awards® (two for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class, two for the books to his musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and the 2019 Tony Award® for Lifetime Achievement). Terrence was also the recipient of an Emmy Award (Andre’s Mother), four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, three Hull-Warriner Awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the 2011 Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award (where he was Vice President from 1981 to 2001), the 2015 Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award, and an induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996. In 2018, Terrence was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Terrence was an alumnus of Columbia University and received honorary degrees from NYU and from Juilliard, where he helped create the playwriting program in 1993. His incredible legacy lives on in his plays, musicals, and operas that continue to be performed all over the world, as well as in his papers, which are kept and open to the public at the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Texas at Austin.
“At the heart of the humor is the sublime narcissism of the professional players and their honest conviction that nothing matters except the theater…You really must laugh at McNally’s unquenchable wit—but those sloppy-kiss tributes to the theater…are deeply felt and honestly moving.” —Variety.
“This is the sort of comedy that puts the broad in Broadway, with a genuinely funny script boasting pointed barbs at theater mainstays such as Liza Minnelli, Harvey Fierstein, Audra McDonald, and New York Times critic Ben Brantley…IT’S ONLY A PLAY is a poison-pen mash note to New York theater, at once gleefully bitchy and affectionate.” —Entertainment Weekly.