Hollywood

Directed by Scott Paulin

Produced by Ina Russell, Stephanie Terronez, and Martha Demson, Scenic Design • James Spencer, Costume Design • Christina Wright, Lighting Design • Dan Reed, Sound Design • Peter Carlstedt, Props • Ina Russell & Bruce Dickinson

April 2 – May 15, 2010 Fridays & Saturdays @ 8 pm, Sundays @ 2 pm   call (323) 882-6912

“The Time of Your Life” Open Fist Theatre Company, 6209 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 1. $15-20. (323) 882-6912. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

From Play7.com

“A production of considerable beauty. . . . [Director] Smith sustains a gripping harmony of majesty and sardonic wit.” — LA Weekly Recommended!

“Compelling [and] entertaining” — LA Times Recommended!

“incredibly gripping story. . . . This is a powerful play with some very effective scenes–kudos to everyone in the cast for a fine performance.” reviewplays.com

Open Fist Theatre Company is proud to present the West Coast premiere of John Guare’s astonishing tale of the painful yet enduring power of American idealism, LYDIE BREEZE. Hurtling from comedy to tragedy, to satire to melodrama and back again, LYDIE BREEZE tells the gripping story of a disastrously failed utopian commune in late 19th century Nantucket and its aftermath. Years after its scandalous end, the children return to sift through the ashes of their tumultuous past. Aiming to heal the confusion in their lives, they find themselves enmeshed, yet again, in age-old rivalries and buried desires — all the while haunted by memories of the commune’s amorous founder and dominating spirit, Lydie Breeze. Old passions are rekindled, revenges taken and tragedies repeated – never in a way that one expects. (This version of Lydie Breeze is the original play — not the subsequent two-play cycle.)

“Lydie Breeze,” the Open Fist Theatre, 1625 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 4. $18, Sundays pay what you can. (323) 882-6912. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

• LA Times Review- Utopia’s not within reach for these folks – Los Angeles Times
• LA Weekly Review- Guare on Breeze – Page 1 – Stage – Los Angeles – LA Weekly
• Play 7.com- Lydie Breeze | PLAY7

L.A. Weekly Nomination – Best Revival Production

A previously anonymous man escapes from prison, kills his parents and embarks on a murderous quest through a labyrinthine metropolis. Who is Roberto Zucco, and why does he kill? While a dysfunctional community tries to ward off the trail of darkness as some demonic external force, the murderer himself, Roberto Zucco, appears to be the least callous, and most honest of them all. Based on the true story of a young Italian man, Roberto Succo, who went on a crime spree while on limited release from a psychiatric hospital.

The playwright, Bernard-Marie Koltes was born in 1948 in eastern France and died of AIDS at the age of 41. Bernard-Marie Koltes, through almost unknown in the U.S., outside of New York, is one of the most frequently produced playwrights in Europe, and considered the heir of Genet and Beckett. The London Times wrote that he was, “a creator of mythology of the underworld, a champion of the underdog and the lone wolf, and a pioneer of a wholly new style of dramatic writing.”

Open Fist Theater Company, 1625 N. La Brea Ave., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru July 17. (323) 882-6912

• LA TIMES: “Director Russell Milton and his hardworking 21-member cast make the theme of society’s preoccupation with violence abundantly clear in a stylish staging for Open Fist Theatre Company . . .”
• LA WEEKLY RECOMMENDED! “bring(s) abundant humor to an episodic series of grimly suspenseful scenes in which the audience is left guessing who will be Zucco’s next victim. . . . Standouts include Kieffer’s hilarious prison guard/police officer, Rebecca Metz’s acerbic madam and Michelle Haner’s wickedly cynical rich lady whom Zucco abducts in the show’s dramatic zenith.”