Laguna Playhouse is an historic Equity theatre located
in the charming arts colony of Laguna Beach, California. Steps away from the Pacific Ocean,
Laguna Playhouse is known for its year-round season of captivating comedies, dramas, musicals, stand-up comedy and family fare.
Even though we have passed by this theatre many times (it's located right next to the Festival of the Arts
and Pageant of the Masters) we had never gone to any of the performaces.
It came highly recommended by one of our friends, so we got tickets for "Clybourne Park."
Bruce Norris' 2010 play, Clybourne Park, imagines the events that unfolded in, before, and after Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun.
It takes place in the home purchased by Lena Younger in Hansberry's play, and, like her play, addresses issues of race, class, and gender.
The play examines how conversations around these issues have, and have not, changed over fifty years, often using humor.
For a beach community, the people came well dressed. Our outfits.
The next show, MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET, is the smash-hit musical inspired by the famed recording session that brought together rock 'n' roll icons Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins for the first and only time. On December 4, 1956, these four young musicians gathered at Sun Records in Memphis for what would be one of the greatest jam sessions ever. MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET brings that legendary night to life. The cast did a fabulous job and had the audience on its feet for the final four numbers.
Angela Ingersoll’s “powerful, breathtaking performance” (Broadway World) as Judy Garland returns to Southern California in Peter Quilter’s Tony nominated END OF THE RAINBOW. It’s December 1968 and Judy Garland is about to make her comeback ….again. In a London hotel room, with both her new young fiancé and her adoring accompanist, Garland struggles to get "beyond the rainbow" with her signature cocktail of talent, tenacity and razor-sharp wit. Featuring some of Garland’s most memorable songs, “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want To Do it),” “For Me And My Gal,” “The Trolley Song,” ”The Man That Got Away,” and, of course, “Over the Rainbow,” this savagely funny play offers a unique insight into the inner conflict that inspired and consumed one of America’s most beloved figures.
It's Christmas Eve in a small coastal village north of Dublin, and Sharky has returned to look after his irascible, aging brother who’s recently gone blind. As Sharky attempts to stay off the bottle during the holidays, he contends with old drinking buddies Ivan and Nicky, who are holed up at the house too, hoping to play some cards. With the arrival of a stranger from the distant past, the stakes are raised ever higher and Sharky may be playing for his very soul. Inspired by Celtic folklore, London’s Sunday Times states “the writing is poetic, brutal, athletic, hilarious.” The New York Times calls Conor McPherson’s Tony-nominated Best Play “a work of art.”
